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My hot take is I don’t think burn out has much to do with raw hours spent working. I feel it has a lot more to do with sense of momentum and autonomy. You can w

My hot take is I don’t think burn out has much to do with raw hours spent working. I feel it has a lot more to do with sense of momentum and autonomy. You can work extremely hard 100 hour weeks six months in a row, in the right team and still feel highly energized at the end of it. But if it feels like wading through a swamp, you will burn out very quickly, even if it’s just 50 hours a week. I also find ownership has a lot to do with sense of burnout

apwell23 1y ago
> You can work extremely hard 100 hour weeks six months in a row, in the right team and still feel highly energized at the end of it. Something about youth being wasted on young.
matwood 1y ago
And if the work you're doing feels meaningful and you're properly compensated. Ask people to work really hard to fill out their 360 reviews and they should rightly laugh at you.
parpfish 1y ago
i hope thats not a hot take because it's 100% correct. people conflate the terms "burnout" and "overwork" because they seem semantically similar, but they are very different. you can fix overwork with a vacation. burnout is a deeper existential wound. my worst bout of burnout actually came in a cushy job where i was consistently underworked but felt no autonomy or sense of purpose for why we were doing the things we were doing.
catoc 1y ago
Exactly this - if not at all about hours spent (at least that’s not a good metric; working less will benefit a burned out person; but the hours were not the root cause). The problem is lack of autonomy, lack of control over things you care about deeply. If those go out the window, the fire burns out quickly. Imho when this happens it’s usually because a company becomes too big, and the people in control lack subject matter expertise, have lost contact with the people that drive the company, and instead are guided by KPIs and the rules they enforced grasping for that feeling of being in control.
ip26 1y ago
At some level of raw hours, your health and personal relationships outside work both begin to wither, because there are only 24 hours in a day. That doesn’t always cause burnout, but it provides high contrast - what you are sacrificing.
- antupis 1y ago
  Yup, the yearly average should be that 35-45 hours per week, but sprinting is fine if opportunity is there.
petesergeant 1y ago
2024 my wife and I did a startup together. We worked almost every hour we were awake, 16-18 hours a day, 7 days a week. We ate, we went for an hour's walk a day, the rest of the time I was programming. For 9 months. Never worked so hard in my life before. And, not a lick of burnout during that time, not a moment of it, where I've been burned out by 6 hour work days at other organizations. If you're energized by something, I think that protects you from burnout.

apwell23 1y ago

> You can work extremely hard 100 hour weeks six months in a row, in the right team and still feel highly energized at the end of it. Something about youth being wasted on young.

matwood 1y ago

And if the work you're doing feels meaningful and you're properly compensated. Ask people to work really hard to fill out their 360 reviews and they should rightly laugh at you.

parpfish 1y ago

i hope thats not a hot take because it's 100% correct. people conflate the terms "burnout" and "overwork" because they seem semantically similar, but they are very different. you can fix overwork with a vacation. burnout is a deeper existential wound. my worst bout of burnout actually came in a cushy job where i was consistently underworked but felt no autonomy or sense of purpose for why we were doing the things we were doing.

catoc 1y ago

Exactly this - if not at all about hours spent (at least that’s not a good metric; working less will benefit a burned out person; but the hours were not the root cause). The problem is lack of autonomy, lack of control over things you care about deeply. If those go out the window, the fire burns out quickly. Imho when this happens it’s usually because a company becomes too big, and the people in control lack subject matter expertise, have lost contact with the people that drive the company, and instead are guided by KPIs and the rules they enforced grasping for that feeling of being in control.

ip26 1y ago

At some level of raw hours, your health and personal relationships outside work both begin to wither, because there are only 24 hours in a day. That doesn’t always cause burnout, but it provides high contrast - what you are sacrificing.

antupis 1y ago
Yup, the yearly average should be that 35-45 hours per week, but sprinting is fine if opportunity is there.

petesergeant 1y ago

2024 my wife and I did a startup together. We worked almost every hour we were awake, 16-18 hours a day, 7 days a week. We ate, we went for an hour's walk a day, the rest of the time I was programming. For 9 months. Never worked so hard in my life before. And, not a lick of burnout during that time, not a moment of it, where I've been burned out by 6 hour work days at other organizations. If you're energized by something, I think that protects you from burnout.