8 ms·

Rekindling (on my experience with burnout)

71 points by nkohari 15y ago

endlessvoid94 15y ago
I know what you mean.
knieveltech 15y ago
This post gives me hope. I've been struggling with burnout over the last year myself. I wonder if there are enough burned out developers to form a support/meetup group in the Triangle.
- mindcrime 15y ago
  I wonder if there are enough burned out developers to form a support/meetup group in the Triangle. I've also struggled through a couple of phases of burnout... and I'll probably be there again at some point, as hard as I've been thrashing on this startup. So count me in, for one.
- mgkimsal 15y ago
  I'm with mindcrime - count me in. You all busy tonight? :)
  - knieveltech 15y ago
    I think I saw you RSVP for TriDUG tonight. I'm for discussing organizing something over beers after the meetup.
    - mgkimsal 15y ago
      argh - hackers/founders and tridug tonight - not sure which I can make it too. is there a place to meet up afterwards?
      - knieveltech 15y ago
        The TriDUG crowd is headed to Mellow Mushroom in Durham after the meetup. I should be in attendance.
  - mindcrime 15y ago
    You all busy tonight? :) I'm hosting the Hackers & Founders meetup tonight; but I'd be happy to meet and talk about this sometime soon.
cims 15y ago
This has reinforced something I have begun to suspect only recently, and over time am growing in certainty about - take holidays, take them often and get away from the daily monotony. I've experienced the same feelings that the OP mentioned, and when he said he hadn't taken a holiday since 2007, alarm bells started ringing. My bursts of inspiration, motivation and the flow of new ideas almost always comes during my 'time off' where I am completely disengaged from everything. Not saying this works for everyone, but at least for the OP and myself, this is certainly true.
rdl 15y ago
You fail at vacationing, IMO, if you just do a week or so at a tourist resort in a tourist destination. Just based on seeing a lot of people who do very stressful work for a few months or years (I know a lot, thanks to war zone contracting and startupsa). The people who do a week and then back aren't as happy long term as the people who run away for up to a year. To really recover, it is better to live like a local somewhere for a longer period of time. Assuming you are really burned out, it isn't like you are getting real work done anyway. You can also ease back into working from a remote location after a few weeks or months, maybe on another project. Plenty of places where you can do this cost effectively (under $25 per day), the key being getting out of the tourist economy.
- nagnatron 15y ago
  I've just been to India for a month. You can live there for 15$ a day.
  - ido 15y ago
    Actually you can live in India for a lot less than that (even as a comfy tourist - although I guess you definition of comfy changes with age).
- cims 15y ago
  I think short term vacationing is fine for preventing burn-out, but yes I agree to recover fully from burn-out a longer term holiday would be ideal (though obviously not everyone has this luxury.)
- richardburton 15y ago
  What an insensitive comment. You fail at vacationing. The man was trying to recover.
  - tristanstraub 15y ago
    I think the way he said it wasn't directed at anyone in particular. It was just an observation that one week vacation isn't enough. I think he might have been suggesting that the guy should holiday for longer... I've plodded through a miserable couple of years and am certain I'm burnt out. I've just handed in notice for my job, and know for certain that one week won't remove the feeling of work life AND home life sucking. As humans, we bring meaning to whatever we choose. Nothing really has meaning except through the wiring in our brains. It's unfortunate that we concentrate so much on making money, that we don't concentrate on those things that would eliminate the need for it at all.
richardburton 15y ago
This is a topic that is not discussed enough. We all know that entrepreneurship is a pursuit that requires us to ride an economic and emotional roller-coaster that can jerk us up and down far harder than if we decided to work for more established company. People do not talk about the lows enough because it is human nature to focus on the upside that a great startup can create. The tough pill to swallow here is that, even if you sell your company, things can feel awful. This paragraph really nailed it on the head: Burnout is a sneaky bastard. It creeps up slowly and attaches to you like a parasite and starts to suck your lifeblood. Once it gets its fangs into you deep enough, you need a major jolt to the system in order to shake it off. The great thing to hear is that Nate has had just such a jolt. Good luck for the future.
- nkohari 15y ago
  Thanks. I appreciate it. :)
kingofspain 15y ago
This should probably come as a timely reminder for me, as I'm dangerously close to burning out at the moment. I already find myself losing motivation and taking 2-3x longer to get anything done. I think my problems are mostly related to chasing payments. If I was paid even half what I was owed, I could take a break for a few months quite comfortably. As it is, I get just enough to cover my bills. So I find myself working longer hours to try and bring in more money, getting less sleep/time to myself and none of that is helping. It's a kind of vicious circle in a way, I haven't the time or inclination any more to create an amazing Github profile or do freebie work to land a decent gig. I'd love to take a holiday (have had maybe 7 days off in 18 months) but I just can't afford to. It's also quite difficult to talk about this to friends etc as it does sound on its face a very first world problem to have, especially when friends are having pensions slashed and the corporate axe dangling ominously. I can understand them having little sympathy. Now, this isn't to whine (although it may read like that!). I know I'll figure it out in the end but hopefully reading stuff like this will give me that extra little bit of hope or the last push I need to really starting fixing things. It's a horrible feeling and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, except maybe Hitler (what a bastard!).
- jphackworth 15y ago
  That sucks - chasing payments sounds really frustrating, because it's not even like you're doing something wrong, it's just this situation that you shouldn't even have to deal with, but you do. It sounds really stressful. Good luck with everything.
- anthonyb 15y ago
  Have you thought about hiring a bookkeeper or accountant to help out? Not being valued by clients can make you feel pretty shitty, but it's amazing what a regular "When can we expect payment?" call will do. There are other tricks you can use to perk yourself up - progress payments (including a deposit up front) and firing your most annoying client have both worked for me in the past.
- yardie 15y ago
  Maybe you should have shared your feelings with your friends. I just got back from a trip and visited some friends from college. Once we got past the pleasantries of not seeing each other in almost a decade we started on how our life is now. It felt good to share our collective feelings on career and life and no one was there to judge me, some of us wish we could exchange lifestyles (more vacation time, more money, more exciting cities). This is why I consider my friends from college to be my closest buddies. We all entered the world in the same socioeconomic position. We've all experienced similar problems so nothing is ever a first world problem for any of us.
leak 15y ago
I was in the same burnout boat. I took a month long vacation out of the country and when I came back I felt more energized for a total of 2 weeks. After the 2 weeks, it was back to feeling burned out and really just unhappy. I kept working and figured it was just a phase. It wasn't. I quit my job last month. We'll see how I feel in 6 months. Hopefully, that was the cause! :)
jrmg 15y ago
I'm a big proponent of properly taking weekends off (and not feeling guilty about it!). By this I mean not doing 'career' work; things like cleaning the house, DIY, shopping etc. are allowed. In the long run, I'm much more productive taking weekends off, not to mention much less likely to get RSI, which I had problems with a few years ago. I can't say I know it prevents burnout, but I do know that starting work again after a weekend, I always feel more energised than I did on the Friday before.
anthonyb 15y ago
I find this pretty offensive - if you get over it in three days, it's not burnout. You just needed a holiday. I'm all for raising awareness of it, but using "burnout" in this context trivialises it. I've seen friends struggling with burnout, and the symptoms are much more severe: depression, anxiety and chronic fatigue syndrome, and they've taken years to get over it, if ever. One guy I know is unable to face any sort of IT work, or any sort of stressful work, and is now mowing lawns for a living.
- dclaysmith 15y ago
  Burnout is not a real disorder (as far as the American Psychiatric Association is concerned). It's a problem one has with their motivation and is inherently personal in nature. How one gets over their burnout is also specific to them. Depression, anxiety, and chronic fatigue are true disorders. It likely takes most patients more than 3 days to get over these disorders (if they ever do) but it's likely that a good portion of workers can get over their own "burnout" in 3 days or less.
  - anthonyb 15y ago
    I've seen all three triggered by overwork, chronic background stress and/or adrenal fatigue. Perhaps it's not an official disorder, but burnout is frequent enough in IT that it probably should be.
- josephg 15y ago
  I suspect he hasn't recovered properly yet and hasn't realised. I've experienced burnout a couple times. For me, a week of TV will make the world start looking brighter again. However, if I try and actually work for more than an hour or two, that murky grey feeling of dread pops straight back. Both times I've gotten properly burned out its taken me ~3 months to recover properly, and really start enjoying my work again.
- lusr 15y ago
  What makes you believe that it's not possible to recover from burnout in a few days? I'm reading "The Feeling Good Handbook" (David D. Burns) and p173 talks about a man who suffered from a serious depression that had threatened to ruin his business for quite some time and was steadily getting worse. Apparently he recovered from his depression within a week after after his session. Obviously I'm not claiming this happens with all patients (it's taken me 4.5 months to move from "severe depression" on the BDC to "normal but unhappy"), but I don't understand why you're so convinced the poster wasn't suffering from a real and debilitating condition that - from his description of it - significantly decreased the quality of his life. I'd also like to suggest the possibility that the OP may not have recovered at all, but have simply found some temporary respite. I see this from time to time on Facebook with people I know who are suffering from depression but who haven't received (or worked on) proper treatment - they'll post non-stop about how great everything is, how awesome the world is... and then they'll crash. They haven't addressed the underlying causes of their depression, they've simply found a temporary distraction from it.
hnthrowaway1982 15y ago
I'm glad to read this. My experience is pretty terrible at the moment. I'm not at the burnout phase, but maybe it's taking longer and will consequently be a more spectacular breakdown. I feel myself getting to closer to the edge every day. My life situation: I have a full time day job at a small business of 18 employees as their IT director. I fight fires all day and help them dig out of constant deadline pressures. Oh, and I have my own responsibilities and we have 'initiatives' that we're accountable to which are supposed to be outside of work. It's been too much for awhile - nearly 2 years. A year ago I started diversifying so I had something to fall back on. I took on a large side project where I'm the sole developer. It was with a longtime moonlighting client of mine who has high expectations of quality and time. I would love to subcontract the development but I'm afraid that it will take more of my time to get started and the cost/quality won't be high enough. I wake up at 5am, do my moonlighting until about 7am. Help get my 8month old ready for the day and off to daycare. I then still can maintain a workout (30 minutes a day 6 days a week for 5 years straight), and then get to my day job. I'm there until about 6, come home spend a few hour with my daughter and wife and then feel compelled to dig out of the 20 emails I get from my coworkers while I'm disconnected. After that I try to make progress on my moonlighting gig until about 10pm. My weekends are the same way. Is this a good way to live? No. I fool myself into thinking that it's just one more project or one more deadline then the pressure is off. Another one immediately follows. Occasionally, I'll slip into needing to have a few beers while working to take the edge off - to just get through it. Also not good. I'm probably developing some form of RSI because my pinkies and wrist hurt as I type this. So, I'm suffering. On the other side, my wife just quit her job, we're renting in a new city with a house for sale (mortgage already paid off though) in another. We have at least 60 months of savings and another 40 if/when the house sells. Need insurance though so I can't quit and have no idea what it would take to self-insure. Also, don't want to eat away at that rainy day fund now that I have a daughter to take care of. What's the solution? I tell myself I'll finish up this side project and that'll be it. I'll try to reduce my hours at work. Hopefully I can get back to a normal life - if I even know what normal is any more...
- PGenes 15y ago
  You have 60 months' worth of saving? Dude, take a break.

71 points by nkohari 15y ago

I know what you mean.

This post gives me hope. I've been struggling with burnout over the last year myself. I wonder if there are enough burned out developers to form a support/meetup group in the Triangle.

mindcrime 15y ago
I wonder if there are enough burned out developers to form a support/meetup group in the Triangle. I've also struggled through a couple of phases of burnout... and I'll probably be there again at some point, as hard as I've been thrashing on this startup. So count me in, for one.
mgkimsal 15y ago
I'm with mindcrime - count me in. You all busy tonight? :)
- knieveltech 15y ago
  I think I saw you RSVP for TriDUG tonight. I'm for discussing organizing something over beers after the meetup.
  - mgkimsal 15y ago
    argh - hackers/founders and tridug tonight - not sure which I can make it too. is there a place to meet up afterwards?
    - knieveltech 15y ago
      The TriDUG crowd is headed to Mellow Mushroom in Durham after the meetup. I should be in attendance.
- mindcrime 15y ago
  You all busy tonight? :) I'm hosting the Hackers & Founders meetup tonight; but I'd be happy to meet and talk about this sometime soon.

cims 15y ago

This has reinforced something I have begun to suspect only recently, and over time am growing in certainty about - take holidays, take them often and get away from the daily monotony. I've experienced the same feelings that the OP mentioned, and when he said he hadn't taken a holiday since 2007, alarm bells started ringing. My bursts of inspiration, motivation and the flow of new ideas almost always comes during my 'time off' where I am completely disengaged from everything. Not saying this works for everyone, but at least for the OP and myself, this is certainly true.

rdl 15y ago

You fail at vacationing, IMO, if you just do a week or so at a tourist resort in a tourist destination. Just based on seeing a lot of people who do very stressful work for a few months or years (I know a lot, thanks to war zone contracting and startupsa). The people who do a week and then back aren't as happy long term as the people who run away for up to a year. To really recover, it is better to live like a local somewhere for a longer period of time. Assuming you are really burned out, it isn't like you are getting real work done anyway. You can also ease back into working from a remote location after a few weeks or months, maybe on another project. Plenty of places where you can do this cost effectively (under $25 per day), the key being getting out of the tourist economy.

nagnatron 15y ago
I've just been to India for a month. You can live there for 15$ a day.
- ido 15y ago
  Actually you can live in India for a lot less than that (even as a comfy tourist - although I guess you definition of comfy changes with age).
cims 15y ago
I think short term vacationing is fine for preventing burn-out, but yes I agree to recover fully from burn-out a longer term holiday would be ideal (though obviously not everyone has this luxury.)
richardburton 15y ago
What an insensitive comment. You fail at vacationing. The man was trying to recover.
- tristanstraub 15y ago
  I think the way he said it wasn't directed at anyone in particular. It was just an observation that one week vacation isn't enough. I think he might have been suggesting that the guy should holiday for longer... I've plodded through a miserable couple of years and am certain I'm burnt out. I've just handed in notice for my job, and know for certain that one week won't remove the feeling of work life AND home life sucking. As humans, we bring meaning to whatever we choose. Nothing really has meaning except through the wiring in our brains. It's unfortunate that we concentrate so much on making money, that we don't concentrate on those things that would eliminate the need for it at all.

richardburton 15y ago

This is a topic that is not discussed enough. We all know that entrepreneurship is a pursuit that requires us to ride an economic and emotional roller-coaster that can jerk us up and down far harder than if we decided to work for more established company. People do not talk about the lows enough because it is human nature to focus on the upside that a great startup can create. The tough pill to swallow here is that, even if you sell your company, things can feel awful. This paragraph really nailed it on the head: Burnout is a sneaky bastard. It creeps up slowly and attaches to you like a parasite and starts to suck your lifeblood. Once it gets its fangs into you deep enough, you need a major jolt to the system in order to shake it off. The great thing to hear is that Nate has had just such a jolt. Good luck for the future.

nkohari 15y ago
Thanks. I appreciate it. :)

kingofspain 15y ago

This should probably come as a timely reminder for me, as I'm dangerously close to burning out at the moment. I already find myself losing motivation and taking 2-3x longer to get anything done. I think my problems are mostly related to chasing payments. If I was paid even half what I was owed, I could take a break for a few months quite comfortably. As it is, I get just enough to cover my bills. So I find myself working longer hours to try and bring in more money, getting less sleep/time to myself and none of that is helping. It's a kind of vicious circle in a way, I haven't the time or inclination any more to create an amazing Github profile or do freebie work to land a decent gig. I'd love to take a holiday (have had maybe 7 days off in 18 months) but I just can't afford to. It's also quite difficult to talk about this to friends etc as it does sound on its face a very first world problem to have, especially when friends are having pensions slashed and the corporate axe dangling ominously. I can understand them having little sympathy. Now, this isn't to whine (although it may read like that!). I know I'll figure it out in the end but hopefully reading stuff like this will give me that extra little bit of hope or the last push I need to really starting fixing things. It's a horrible feeling and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, except maybe Hitler (what a bastard!).

jphackworth 15y ago
That sucks - chasing payments sounds really frustrating, because it's not even like you're doing something wrong, it's just this situation that you shouldn't even have to deal with, but you do. It sounds really stressful. Good luck with everything.
anthonyb 15y ago
Have you thought about hiring a bookkeeper or accountant to help out? Not being valued by clients can make you feel pretty shitty, but it's amazing what a regular "When can we expect payment?" call will do. There are other tricks you can use to perk yourself up - progress payments (including a deposit up front) and firing your most annoying client have both worked for me in the past.
yardie 15y ago
Maybe you should have shared your feelings with your friends. I just got back from a trip and visited some friends from college. Once we got past the pleasantries of not seeing each other in almost a decade we started on how our life is now. It felt good to share our collective feelings on career and life and no one was there to judge me, some of us wish we could exchange lifestyles (more vacation time, more money, more exciting cities). This is why I consider my friends from college to be my closest buddies. We all entered the world in the same socioeconomic position. We've all experienced similar problems so nothing is ever a first world problem for any of us.

leak 15y ago

I was in the same burnout boat. I took a month long vacation out of the country and when I came back I felt more energized for a total of 2 weeks. After the 2 weeks, it was back to feeling burned out and really just unhappy. I kept working and figured it was just a phase. It wasn't. I quit my job last month. We'll see how I feel in 6 months. Hopefully, that was the cause! :)

jrmg 15y ago

I'm a big proponent of properly taking weekends off (and not feeling guilty about it!). By this I mean not doing 'career' work; things like cleaning the house, DIY, shopping etc. are allowed. In the long run, I'm much more productive taking weekends off, not to mention much less likely to get RSI, which I had problems with a few years ago. I can't say I know it prevents burnout, but I do know that starting work again after a weekend, I always feel more energised than I did on the Friday before.

anthonyb 15y ago

I find this pretty offensive - if you get over it in three days, it's not burnout. You just needed a holiday. I'm all for raising awareness of it, but using "burnout" in this context trivialises it. I've seen friends struggling with burnout, and the symptoms are much more severe: depression, anxiety and chronic fatigue syndrome, and they've taken years to get over it, if ever. One guy I know is unable to face any sort of IT work, or any sort of stressful work, and is now mowing lawns for a living.

dclaysmith 15y ago
Burnout is not a real disorder (as far as the American Psychiatric Association is concerned). It's a problem one has with their motivation and is inherently personal in nature. How one gets over their burnout is also specific to them. Depression, anxiety, and chronic fatigue are true disorders. It likely takes most patients more than 3 days to get over these disorders (if they ever do) but it's likely that a good portion of workers can get over their own "burnout" in 3 days or less.
- anthonyb 15y ago
  I've seen all three triggered by overwork, chronic background stress and/or adrenal fatigue. Perhaps it's not an official disorder, but burnout is frequent enough in IT that it probably should be.
josephg 15y ago
I suspect he hasn't recovered properly yet and hasn't realised. I've experienced burnout a couple times. For me, a week of TV will make the world start looking brighter again. However, if I try and actually work for more than an hour or two, that murky grey feeling of dread pops straight back. Both times I've gotten properly burned out its taken me ~3 months to recover properly, and really start enjoying my work again.
lusr 15y ago
What makes you believe that it's not possible to recover from burnout in a few days? I'm reading "The Feeling Good Handbook" (David D. Burns) and p173 talks about a man who suffered from a serious depression that had threatened to ruin his business for quite some time and was steadily getting worse. Apparently he recovered from his depression within a week after after his session. Obviously I'm not claiming this happens with all patients (it's taken me 4.5 months to move from "severe depression" on the BDC to "normal but unhappy"), but I don't understand why you're so convinced the poster wasn't suffering from a real and debilitating condition that - from his description of it - significantly decreased the quality of his life. I'd also like to suggest the possibility that the OP may not have recovered at all, but have simply found some temporary respite. I see this from time to time on Facebook with people I know who are suffering from depression but who haven't received (or worked on) proper treatment - they'll post non-stop about how great everything is, how awesome the world is... and then they'll crash. They haven't addressed the underlying causes of their depression, they've simply found a temporary distraction from it.

hnthrowaway1982 15y ago

I'm glad to read this. My experience is pretty terrible at the moment. I'm not at the burnout phase, but maybe it's taking longer and will consequently be a more spectacular breakdown. I feel myself getting to closer to the edge every day. My life situation: I have a full time day job at a small business of 18 employees as their IT director. I fight fires all day and help them dig out of constant deadline pressures. Oh, and I have my own responsibilities and we have 'initiatives' that we're accountable to which are supposed to be outside of work. It's been too much for awhile - nearly 2 years. A year ago I started diversifying so I had something to fall back on. I took on a large side project where I'm the sole developer. It was with a longtime moonlighting client of mine who has high expectations of quality and time. I would love to subcontract the development but I'm afraid that it will take more of my time to get started and the cost/quality won't be high enough. I wake up at 5am, do my moonlighting until about 7am. Help get my 8month old ready for the day and off to daycare. I then still can maintain a workout (30 minutes a day 6 days a week for 5 years straight), and then get to my day job. I'm there until about 6, come home spend a few hour with my daughter and wife and then feel compelled to dig out of the 20 emails I get from my coworkers while I'm disconnected. After that I try to make progress on my moonlighting gig until about 10pm. My weekends are the same way. Is this a good way to live? No. I fool myself into thinking that it's just one more project or one more deadline then the pressure is off. Another one immediately follows. Occasionally, I'll slip into needing to have a few beers while working to take the edge off - to just get through it. Also not good. I'm probably developing some form of RSI because my pinkies and wrist hurt as I type this. So, I'm suffering. On the other side, my wife just quit her job, we're renting in a new city with a house for sale (mortgage already paid off though) in another. We have at least 60 months of savings and another 40 if/when the house sells. Need insurance though so I can't quit and have no idea what it would take to self-insure. Also, don't want to eat away at that rainy day fund now that I have a daughter to take care of. What's the solution? I tell myself I'll finish up this side project and that'll be it. I'll try to reduce my hours at work. Hopefully I can get back to a normal life - if I even know what normal is any more...

PGenes 15y ago
You have 60 months' worth of saving? Dude, take a break.