10 ms·

Demystifying burnout – A deep dive into its symptoms and remedies

104 points by ochronus 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
paulcole 3y ago
One of the things nobody ever mentions is that burnout (by any definition) isn't necessarily bad. It could just be that you don't want the job you have anymore – and that is often good! You get to find a job you do want and your employer gets to find somebody who wants to do your job more than you do.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  one thing people don't realize is, serious injury on the job isn't necessarily bad! It could be that the job was just too dangerous and difficult for you. You will be removed from the jobsite, and maybe that is what you wanted all along. Someone else that wants to have a job can take the one you left. And your employer gets a benefit from getting a fresh, uninjured person.
- boesboes 3y ago
  yeah, hard disagree. Once you burn out, you are way too late to just find a new job. I'm currently going though something close to a burn out, things like making coffee can make me cry. Haven't slept more than 3 hours in a month and can barely form a coherent sentence half the time. But hey, at least now i know i need to find a new job! Sure that is gonna go great.
  - nonrepeating 3y ago
    Good lord. That sounds like a living death, and I’m sorry to hear you’re experiencing that. I can think of ten different optimistic aphorisms to spout at you right now, but instead I’ll respect you enough to simply acknowledge what you’re going through and agree that life should be better than that.
  - 000ooo000 3y ago
    Nevermind that putting on your clown shoes and doing the Pls Hire Me dance is one of the most dehumanising parts of working life. If burnout makes you sad, just stop being sad and get a new job!
- lisasays 3y ago
  Right, but only in the sense that depression and anxiety aren't "bad", they're just "pain signals". You get to find a job you do want and your employer gets to find somebody who wants to do your job more than you do. As if the root problem is that you just don't want to really do your job. (As opposed to the far more likely: you absolutely did when you started out -- until the employer started getting in the way. And telling you to take more yoga classes as a way of coping).
  - paulcole 3y ago
    > As opposed to the far more likely: you absolutely did when you started out -- until the employer started getting in the way You can be the thing that changed as well.
    - lisasays 3y ago
      Yup, that's how burnout works -- by tricking you into continually coming up with reasons to believe that it's all your fault. Fortunately, however -- once you have enough observational data with these things (so as to be able to make a balanced assessment about them) -- it becomes perfectly reasonable to come to the conclusion that "It isn't me, it's them." Cause you know, sometimes it just is.
- wonderwonder 3y ago
  Burn out follows you from job to job. I burned out 3 jobs ago and am still fried. I take it you have never burned out as it seems you dont understand to complete mental wall that it erects in your mind that crushes everything in both your work and pesonal life.
  - swayvil 3y ago
    In your 3 jobs, was the work the same or different? I mean, was it all computer stuff or did you change it up with ditchdigging?
    - wonderwonder 3y ago
      The same, software. Can't really afford to take the massive paycut that comes from starting a new career now. I actually did it once ~15 years ago. Left software due to burn out and took a 50% paycut. All my stress disappeared. White collar non sales jobs are pretty easy coming from a software background if you have some complementary people skills. The complexity is much lower so it's easier to shine. Was great for a few years then decided to have kids so I needed more $ and went back to software. The stress had just been waiting for me the whole time :)
      - swayvil 3y ago
        That would explain why the burnout persisted over the next jobs. It was the same work.
        wonderwonder 3y ago
        yup, no real way to avoid it though
- outworlder 3y ago
  > One of the things nobody ever mentions is that burnout (by any definition) isn't necessarily bad. That is completely missing the point of what burnout actually is. Some people take years to recover - good luck starting a new job. Dissatisfaction with the current job is a signal to go somewhere else. Being on the verge of completely stopping to function as a human being is necessarily bad.
- swayvil 3y ago
  Seriously. If your lifestyle is making you feel bad then that's a sure sign. No mystery there.
- grugagag 3y ago
  Burnout is bad. I recovered after a bad episode but feel I lost some faculties because of it, can’t tap into some skills I used to have any longer. Maybe im more resilient now but that’s because I won’t let burnout build up anymore and enter a don’t give a shit mode to protect my sanity. And all this to make more bucks for some rich arses.
JimtheCoder 3y ago
I'm not sure this really classifies as a "deep dive"...more like a brief overview into a complex psychological and physiological issue with relatively...unhelpful...remedies for people actually experiencing real burnout.
- systems_glitch 3y ago
  Yeah reads like something HR puts out as required reading when they know they've been running everyone too hard.
uxcolumbo 3y ago
What about the feeling of stagnation and not growing and not having the ability to change your situation? Some call it boreout.
anotherhue 3y ago
Things companies can actually do: 1. Turn off async comms outside of working hours. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16314901 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16314901 Things companies actually do:
- foobiekr 3y ago
  Isn’t the asynchronous aspect meant to allow this? Just have people muted off hours.
  - ElevenLathe 3y ago
    If you really didn't want employees to answer email in the middle of their night, you would configure the company mail server to not deliver things in the middle of their night. Some companies actually do this.
    - parpfish 3y ago
      how do you handle multi-timezone teams or international companies with people spread around the world? it would be counterproductive to tell a team in london team that they can't message each other because the the email server server only sends things during california working hours.
      - grugagag 3y ago
        Could be solved with a simple expectation for reading emails during work hours company wide. Btw, I don’t check my email when outside workhours and don’t care what anyone thinks... There’s an emergency path directly to my phone but that isn’t to be abused or gets banned away. It hasn’t happened in years…
      - ElevenLathe 3y ago
        Don't deliver mail to a London recipient if it is midnight in London. If it's noon on a weekday for another recipient, go ahead and deliver it to them. Also, there would be no need to have restrictions on sending -- email is store-and-forward already. Send all you want, it will get delivered when the receiving party is available. These used to be the default expectations around email: your recipient will see it during business hours, when they next dial in. Broadband and always-on internet creeped up without us really examining this, so Outlook is now just a chat client with a weird UI.
ShroudedNight 3y ago
This article provides no citations; it's hard to tell if it's based on rigorous research or folk knowledge.
starbugs 3y ago
Yea nice article and all, but let's be honest: This is pretty much backed into the cake of how we handle things currently as a society. People are seen as a means to an end. You are disconnected from what you do and the positive effects it might have at best, and, at worst, your work might not have a positive effect at all. You might in fact feel that the whole tech thing has become toxic. And now we call this burnout? While in reality, it may just be exactly the other way around. Mass psychosis ousting those who dare to wake up. Now, you can call me cynical, but I'd invite you to think about who's really cynical here. Just a thought.
- haswell 3y ago
  As someone about a year into a sabbatical to recover from burnout, I tend to agree. I had a series of expectations about the role of the break I was about to take, and how it would serve as a recharge to enable me to jump back in. Instead, it’s been a gradual process of waking up to the systemic reasons that led to the burnout, many of which had nothing to do with the (legitimately stressful) work environment I was in. It’s hard to summarize this in a comment, and I’m currently working on an outline for an extensive series of blog posts exploring these realizations in depth. But a few of the big things were (and I should emphasize that the following points just scratch the surface): 1. I am not my thoughts or feelings. It’s surprising how far this one will take you 2. If work is your support system, your life exists on shaky ground 3. Personal struggles become work struggles and vice versa. You can’t draw a clean box around grief and loss, or pretend that work stress can stay at work 4. There were major gaps in my life in terms of social connections, time spent in nature, finding artistic outlets, etc. 5. Focusing on real self-care/improvement as one’s primary purpose in life open doors internally and externally As I transition back to work, it won’t involve picking up where I left off, but something completely different and oriented around these deeper realizations about myself and helping other people find the same insights for themselves. These things are nearly impossible to see while in the midst of a burnout state.
  - throwuxiytayq 3y ago
    Can I follow you somewhere?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
anotherhue 3y ago
Listen, I've gone very very deep down this rabbit hole, let me summarise my lessons: 1. Fluffy pieces like this abound, and they are worthless. It may help you to draw similarities between articles espousing the urgency and importance of tackling climate change and the deafening silence of actions and consequences that follow. Why is this so? Because talk is cheap, and feigned concern is much cheaper than expensive change. 2. Why is there burnout? Because corporate incentives are antagonistic to human needs and corporations are more important than we are. This manifests every time some over-elevated micro-despot demands deadlines and urgency from their underlings. Much as banks lending against fractional reserves is the true source of money creation, emotionally stunted 'leadership' making misguided plans for the future is the true source of stress. Remember always that their goal is to be promoted into a higher strata of distance from effort, and your toil will be forgotten the moment that happens. 3. Gaslighting you into thinking more yoga will improve your working environment further increases the problem, as it recontextualises the problem from one of their making to one of your failing. If you're stressed or burned out, it's obviously your fault. 4. Meaningful change _was_ possible, but is likely no longer as the labour market has shifted back in favour of the corporations. Most people are currently more interested in keeping their job than causing a fuss. Unions are an obvious fix here but until they become more palatable by a) improving their significantly outdated image and practices and b) overcoming the stigma imposed on them by corporations, then they'll be forever waiting in the wings. 5. Cross-timezone work is fundamentally inhumane. There is no right to one's circadian rhythm but to suggest it's not important is a biological fallacy. However as corporations do not sleep it is inconvenient for their workers to do so. Conference calls from PT to India are common, no one is happy in that arrangement. This could be solved by partitioning work into same or very-similar timezones but that would be a burden to the leadership so it does not occur. 6. Work outside of working hours is entirely to the company's benefit and your personal detriment. A quote I read recently said it best "In ten years, the only people who will remember that you went above and beyond for your job are your kids.". If you are working for yourself or have a >10% equity then this does not apply, you do you. 6a. Given the above, your reachability outside of working yours is a direct attack on your life, yet we all install the corporate messaging app on our phone and check it like a drug habbit. Slack repackages your availability as a product and sells it. If any company was serious about work-life balance then they would simply turn off slack at the end of the work day. I have more of course but these are probably the best. Coda: If you want to learn about the actual science, then I suggest listening to Dr. Maslach who literally created the field (and was responsible for stopping the Stanford prisoner experiement) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQy1Zc37Bd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQy1Zc37Bd0 Edit 2: Here's the timezone overlap between SF and Mumbai, in case you were not aware: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meetingtime.html?iso=20230626&p1=224&p2=44 https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meetingtime.html?iso=...
thenerdhead 3y ago
Recently I read the book "The Stress of Life" by Hans Selye and had this obvious connection that work is such a primary source of stress that it makes you more than what this article talks about. That it can make you chronically ill without you knowing because you're too busy trying to...survive. GAS or general adaptation syndrome explains burnout quite simply. There's an alarm reaction that happens in us. Next a resistance phase where our bodies try to fight it off. Finally, an exhaustion phase where we let the stressor take its course(aka burnout). “It is not stress that kills us, It is our reaction to it” - Hans Selye
swayvil 3y ago
Implicit in the term "burnout" is that it's good and healthy to do this (rather inhuman, intense) thing in these vast quantities. That to get sick from it is somehow this weird aberration. But if you consume too much of pretty much anything you'll get sick. Even good stuff. That's perfectly normal.
quechimba 3y ago
I've burned out a few times. Every time was different. First time was the worst. It took me about one and a half years until I could work again. Long-term stress is dangerous. Toxic workplaces are dangerous. It's not worth it.
scotty79 3y ago
> cynicism Why the cynicism is perceived as something wrong or even a symptom? Cynicism is just the most probable approximation of reality stripped of forcibly uplifting false narratives.
bad_username 3y ago
From my experience, burnout happens in a prolonged situation where stakes are high, but one's capacity to influence the outcome is low. In such situations the great emotional investment is not rewarded by results; so not only the person becomes emotionally exhausted, but they are subconsciously incentivized to stop caring much.
shangbatt 3y ago
It seems like most of this post is copied, almost verbatim, from an interview published on Youtube yesterday with Yale professor Dr. Santos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMbhM59K5FQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMbhM59K5FQ
riialist 3y ago
I found the article somewhat misleading. Burnout is not classified as a clinical disease per the latest International Classification of Diseases. It is clumped together with other environmental factors such as poverty, and thus does not as such qualify as a reason for paid leave - though national qualifications differ. "Burn-out is included in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as an occupational phenomenon. It is _not_ classified as a medical condition. It is described in the chapter: ‘Factors influencing health status or contact with health services’ – which includes reasons for which people contact health services but that are not classed as illnesses or health conditions." Please see the press release by the WHO: https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases#:~:text=Burn%2Dout%20is%20included%20in,11 https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupat... I personally do know the condition called nowadays as burnout does exist, but as current medical consensus, it is a cluster of symptoms caused by systemic faults. See e.g. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2207252 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2207252
000ooo000 3y ago
Much preferred this piece [0] on burnout, which actually details the models developed by those such as Maslach et al. mentioned in the OP. Framed in terms of the Conservation of Resources model, my own burnout was illuminated and it gave me somewhere to start in how I move through and (hopefully eventually) out of burnout. Sometimes I daydream about what I would say to a bunch of undergrads as career advice, and if I had to pick one thing, it would be: learn about burnout so that you can recognise the signs and act. For most of us, our careers are a marathon, and by letting my burnout fester, I'm doing the next 10km with a significant injury. [0] https://commoncog.com/g/burnout/ https://commoncog.com/g/burnout/
gatestone 3y ago
Burnout at work is easy. Burnout in life is harder.
sharts 3y ago
Burnout is the new buzzword for life coaches and platform developers to capitalize on. This has always existed

104 points by ochronus 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

One of the things nobody ever mentions is that burnout (by any definition) isn't necessarily bad. It could just be that you don't want the job you have anymore – and that is often good! You get to find a job you do want and your employer gets to find somebody who wants to do your job more than you do.

mistrial9 3y ago
one thing people don't realize is, serious injury on the job isn't necessarily bad! It could be that the job was just too dangerous and difficult for you. You will be removed from the jobsite, and maybe that is what you wanted all along. Someone else that wants to have a job can take the one you left. And your employer gets a benefit from getting a fresh, uninjured person.
boesboes 3y ago
yeah, hard disagree. Once you burn out, you are way too late to just find a new job. I'm currently going though something close to a burn out, things like making coffee can make me cry. Haven't slept more than 3 hours in a month and can barely form a coherent sentence half the time. But hey, at least now i know i need to find a new job! Sure that is gonna go great.
- nonrepeating 3y ago
  Good lord. That sounds like a living death, and I’m sorry to hear you’re experiencing that. I can think of ten different optimistic aphorisms to spout at you right now, but instead I’ll respect you enough to simply acknowledge what you’re going through and agree that life should be better than that.
- 000ooo000 3y ago
  Nevermind that putting on your clown shoes and doing the Pls Hire Me dance is one of the most dehumanising parts of working life. If burnout makes you sad, just stop being sad and get a new job!
lisasays 3y ago
Right, but only in the sense that depression and anxiety aren't "bad", they're just "pain signals". You get to find a job you do want and your employer gets to find somebody who wants to do your job more than you do. As if the root problem is that you just don't want to really do your job. (As opposed to the far more likely: you absolutely did when you started out -- until the employer started getting in the way. And telling you to take more yoga classes as a way of coping).
- paulcole 3y ago
  > As opposed to the far more likely: you absolutely did when you started out -- until the employer started getting in the way You can be the thing that changed as well.
  - lisasays 3y ago
    Yup, that's how burnout works -- by tricking you into continually coming up with reasons to believe that it's all your fault. Fortunately, however -- once you have enough observational data with these things (so as to be able to make a balanced assessment about them) -- it becomes perfectly reasonable to come to the conclusion that "It isn't me, it's them." Cause you know, sometimes it just is.
wonderwonder 3y ago
Burn out follows you from job to job. I burned out 3 jobs ago and am still fried. I take it you have never burned out as it seems you dont understand to complete mental wall that it erects in your mind that crushes everything in both your work and pesonal life.
- swayvil 3y ago
  In your 3 jobs, was the work the same or different? I mean, was it all computer stuff or did you change it up with ditchdigging?
  - wonderwonder 3y ago
    The same, software. Can't really afford to take the massive paycut that comes from starting a new career now. I actually did it once ~15 years ago. Left software due to burn out and took a 50% paycut. All my stress disappeared. White collar non sales jobs are pretty easy coming from a software background if you have some complementary people skills. The complexity is much lower so it's easier to shine. Was great for a few years then decided to have kids so I needed more $ and went back to software. The stress had just been waiting for me the whole time :)
    - swayvil 3y ago
      That would explain why the burnout persisted over the next jobs. It was the same work.
      - wonderwonder 3y ago
        yup, no real way to avoid it though
outworlder 3y ago
> One of the things nobody ever mentions is that burnout (by any definition) isn't necessarily bad. That is completely missing the point of what burnout actually is. Some people take years to recover - good luck starting a new job. Dissatisfaction with the current job is a signal to go somewhere else. Being on the verge of completely stopping to function as a human being is necessarily bad.
swayvil 3y ago
Seriously. If your lifestyle is making you feel bad then that's a sure sign. No mystery there.
grugagag 3y ago
Burnout is bad. I recovered after a bad episode but feel I lost some faculties because of it, can’t tap into some skills I used to have any longer. Maybe im more resilient now but that’s because I won’t let burnout build up anymore and enter a don’t give a shit mode to protect my sanity. And all this to make more bucks for some rich arses.

JimtheCoder 3y ago

I'm not sure this really classifies as a "deep dive"...more like a brief overview into a complex psychological and physiological issue with relatively...unhelpful...remedies for people actually experiencing real burnout.

systems_glitch 3y ago
Yeah reads like something HR puts out as required reading when they know they've been running everyone too hard.

uxcolumbo 3y ago

What about the feeling of stagnation and not growing and not having the ability to change your situation? Some call it boreout.

anotherhue 3y ago

Things companies can actually do: 1. Turn off async comms outside of working hours. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16314901 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16314901 Things companies actually do:

foobiekr 3y ago
Isn’t the asynchronous aspect meant to allow this? Just have people muted off hours.
- ElevenLathe 3y ago
  If you really didn't want employees to answer email in the middle of their night, you would configure the company mail server to not deliver things in the middle of their night. Some companies actually do this.
  - parpfish 3y ago
    how do you handle multi-timezone teams or international companies with people spread around the world? it would be counterproductive to tell a team in london team that they can't message each other because the the email server server only sends things during california working hours.
    - grugagag 3y ago
      Could be solved with a simple expectation for reading emails during work hours company wide. Btw, I don’t check my email when outside workhours and don’t care what anyone thinks... There’s an emergency path directly to my phone but that isn’t to be abused or gets banned away. It hasn’t happened in years…
    - ElevenLathe 3y ago
      Don't deliver mail to a London recipient if it is midnight in London. If it's noon on a weekday for another recipient, go ahead and deliver it to them. Also, there would be no need to have restrictions on sending -- email is store-and-forward already. Send all you want, it will get delivered when the receiving party is available. These used to be the default expectations around email: your recipient will see it during business hours, when they next dial in. Broadband and always-on internet creeped up without us really examining this, so Outlook is now just a chat client with a weird UI.

ShroudedNight 3y ago

This article provides no citations; it's hard to tell if it's based on rigorous research or folk knowledge.

starbugs 3y ago

Yea nice article and all, but let's be honest: This is pretty much backed into the cake of how we handle things currently as a society. People are seen as a means to an end. You are disconnected from what you do and the positive effects it might have at best, and, at worst, your work might not have a positive effect at all. You might in fact feel that the whole tech thing has become toxic. And now we call this burnout? While in reality, it may just be exactly the other way around. Mass psychosis ousting those who dare to wake up. Now, you can call me cynical, but I'd invite you to think about who's really cynical here. Just a thought.

haswell 3y ago
As someone about a year into a sabbatical to recover from burnout, I tend to agree. I had a series of expectations about the role of the break I was about to take, and how it would serve as a recharge to enable me to jump back in. Instead, it’s been a gradual process of waking up to the systemic reasons that led to the burnout, many of which had nothing to do with the (legitimately stressful) work environment I was in. It’s hard to summarize this in a comment, and I’m currently working on an outline for an extensive series of blog posts exploring these realizations in depth. But a few of the big things were (and I should emphasize that the following points just scratch the surface): 1. I am not my thoughts or feelings. It’s surprising how far this one will take you 2. If work is your support system, your life exists on shaky ground 3. Personal struggles become work struggles and vice versa. You can’t draw a clean box around grief and loss, or pretend that work stress can stay at work 4. There were major gaps in my life in terms of social connections, time spent in nature, finding artistic outlets, etc. 5. Focusing on real self-care/improvement as one’s primary purpose in life open doors internally and externally As I transition back to work, it won’t involve picking up where I left off, but something completely different and oriented around these deeper realizations about myself and helping other people find the same insights for themselves. These things are nearly impossible to see while in the midst of a burnout state.
- throwuxiytayq 3y ago
  Can I follow you somewhere?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

anotherhue 3y ago

Listen, I've gone very very deep down this rabbit hole, let me summarise my lessons: 1. Fluffy pieces like this abound, and they are worthless. It may help you to draw similarities between articles espousing the urgency and importance of tackling climate change and the deafening silence of actions and consequences that follow. Why is this so? Because talk is cheap, and feigned concern is much cheaper than expensive change. 2. Why is there burnout? Because corporate incentives are antagonistic to human needs and corporations are more important than we are. This manifests every time some over-elevated micro-despot demands deadlines and urgency from their underlings. Much as banks lending against fractional reserves is the true source of money creation, emotionally stunted 'leadership' making misguided plans for the future is the true source of stress. Remember always that their goal is to be promoted into a higher strata of distance from effort, and your toil will be forgotten the moment that happens. 3. Gaslighting you into thinking more yoga will improve your working environment further increases the problem, as it recontextualises the problem from one of their making to one of your failing. If you're stressed or burned out, it's obviously your fault. 4. Meaningful change _was_ possible, but is likely no longer as the labour market has shifted back in favour of the corporations. Most people are currently more interested in keeping their job than causing a fuss. Unions are an obvious fix here but until they become more palatable by a) improving their significantly outdated image and practices and b) overcoming the stigma imposed on them by corporations, then they'll be forever waiting in the wings. 5. Cross-timezone work is fundamentally inhumane. There is no right to one's circadian rhythm but to suggest it's not important is a biological fallacy. However as corporations do not sleep it is inconvenient for their workers to do so. Conference calls from PT to India are common, no one is happy in that arrangement. This could be solved by partitioning work into same or very-similar timezones but that would be a burden to the leadership so it does not occur. 6. Work outside of working hours is entirely to the company's benefit and your personal detriment. A quote I read recently said it best "In ten years, the only people who will remember that you went above and beyond for your job are your kids.". If you are working for yourself or have a >10% equity then this does not apply, you do you. 6a. Given the above, your reachability outside of working yours is a direct attack on your life, yet we all install the corporate messaging app on our phone and check it like a drug habbit. Slack repackages your availability as a product and sells it. If any company was serious about work-life balance then they would simply turn off slack at the end of the work day. I have more of course but these are probably the best. Coda: If you want to learn about the actual science, then I suggest listening to Dr. Maslach who literally created the field (and was responsible for stopping the Stanford prisoner experiement) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQy1Zc37Bd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQy1Zc37Bd0 Edit 2: Here's the timezone overlap between SF and Mumbai, in case you were not aware: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meetingtime.html?iso=20230626&p1=224&p2=44 https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meetingtime.html?iso=...

thenerdhead 3y ago

Recently I read the book "The Stress of Life" by Hans Selye and had this obvious connection that work is such a primary source of stress that it makes you more than what this article talks about. That it can make you chronically ill without you knowing because you're too busy trying to...survive. GAS or general adaptation syndrome explains burnout quite simply. There's an alarm reaction that happens in us. Next a resistance phase where our bodies try to fight it off. Finally, an exhaustion phase where we let the stressor take its course(aka burnout). “It is not stress that kills us, It is our reaction to it” - Hans Selye

swayvil 3y ago

Implicit in the term "burnout" is that it's good and healthy to do this (rather inhuman, intense) thing in these vast quantities. That to get sick from it is somehow this weird aberration. But if you consume too much of pretty much anything you'll get sick. Even good stuff. That's perfectly normal.

quechimba 3y ago

I've burned out a few times. Every time was different. First time was the worst. It took me about one and a half years until I could work again. Long-term stress is dangerous. Toxic workplaces are dangerous. It's not worth it.

scotty79 3y ago

> cynicism Why the cynicism is perceived as something wrong or even a symptom? Cynicism is just the most probable approximation of reality stripped of forcibly uplifting false narratives.

bad_username 3y ago

From my experience, burnout happens in a prolonged situation where stakes are high, but one's capacity to influence the outcome is low. In such situations the great emotional investment is not rewarded by results; so not only the person becomes emotionally exhausted, but they are subconsciously incentivized to stop caring much.

shangbatt 3y ago

It seems like most of this post is copied, almost verbatim, from an interview published on Youtube yesterday with Yale professor Dr. Santos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMbhM59K5FQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMbhM59K5FQ

riialist 3y ago

I found the article somewhat misleading. Burnout is not classified as a clinical disease per the latest International Classification of Diseases. It is clumped together with other environmental factors such as poverty, and thus does not as such qualify as a reason for paid leave - though national qualifications differ. "Burn-out is included in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as an occupational phenomenon. It is _not_ classified as a medical condition. It is described in the chapter: ‘Factors influencing health status or contact with health services’ – which includes reasons for which people contact health services but that are not classed as illnesses or health conditions." Please see the press release by the WHO: https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases#:~:text=Burn%2Dout%20is%20included%20in,11 https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupat... I personally do know the condition called nowadays as burnout does exist, but as current medical consensus, it is a cluster of symptoms caused by systemic faults. See e.g. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2207252 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2207252

000ooo000 3y ago

Much preferred this piece [0] on burnout, which actually details the models developed by those such as Maslach et al. mentioned in the OP. Framed in terms of the Conservation of Resources model, my own burnout was illuminated and it gave me somewhere to start in how I move through and (hopefully eventually) out of burnout. Sometimes I daydream about what I would say to a bunch of undergrads as career advice, and if I had to pick one thing, it would be: learn about burnout so that you can recognise the signs and act. For most of us, our careers are a marathon, and by letting my burnout fester, I'm doing the next 10km with a significant injury. [0] https://commoncog.com/g/burnout/ https://commoncog.com/g/burnout/

gatestone 3y ago

Burnout at work is easy. Burnout in life is harder.

sharts 3y ago

Burnout is the new buzzword for life coaches and platform developers to capitalize on. This has always existed