11 ms·

Avoiding Burnout

401 points by jennita 13y ago

pserwylo 13y ago
I feel like this is useful information for much more than just people involved in work. Specifically, as PhD students, my partner and I (and pretty much all of our colleagues) often face burnout, and are always looking for ways to combat it. I quite like the sound of most things in this article, and think I will try to adopt some of the principles to my study and see if they will help. Specifically, I need to get back into fiction, because that really did help when I read lots a few months ago. Also, evening walks sounds like a beautiful way to wind down. Does anybody else here have other advice on ways to combat burnout during a PhD? I (and every other student) would be most interested to hear.
- dkural 13y ago
  I have very clear advice for PhD: Agree to work 4 hours a day on your thesis + papers (including reading literature!), and stop. You won't get more done anyways, so enjoy the rest of your day guilt-free. It is a marathon, and the consistent 4-hour days add up. If you miss one day, don't do 8 hours the next day; just do another 4. Don't make more than 4 hours mandatory.
  - pserwylo 13y ago
    I completely agree. The only point where I fail at this is when I compare it to the 8 hour days I do once a week as a web developer (unrelated to the PhD). It seems so easy to power through the 8 hours and still feel like you could get more done. Then you go to uni, and if you manage 4 hours, it is a success. I always feel like I should be able to manage 8 hour days at Uni too, but of course it is a different kind of work which stresses different parts of your brain.
- oldmanjoe 13y ago
  Ensure you have (at least) monthly meetings with a supervisor. This provides good feedback and stops you getting lost in the weeds. It helps if you have small milestones attached to each meeting (reading a book/paper, editing a chapter, etc). A sign the PhD is going awry is when they stop attending regular meetings and duck out of your way in the corridor. ;-) Then they start getting stressed
  - pserwylo 13y ago
    Haha, yeah, I have experienced both ends of the stick. One supervisor I get along with beautifully, we've been meeting essentially every week for the last two years, and she has full access to the JIRA install I'm using to log my research tasks against. The other we just chat in the elevator, and have a meeting every couple of months or so.
- pcrh 13y ago
  A PhD should have a combination of high- and low-risk projects. An advisor who places their students only into high risk projects is gambling with _your_ life and career. If the project succeeds, the PI gets the lion's share of the kudos, and if it fails, you lose years of your life. Ideally, the projects should be a low-risk project which gets your feet wet in the methodology and is "guaranteed" to produce a paper, combined with a higher risk project that potentially pays off big. Once the first low-risk project works, pick a second low-risk project to replace it; the amount of time you devote to the high risk project can increase once the first low-risk one has worked.
cl8ton 13y ago
You have a good regiment for burnout. You can always feel burnout approaching which is usually about 2 weeks before it really happens (waking up and dreading working on the same thing). Stop what you're doing and do something totally different for a while. For me its working on a vastly different project and spending weekends in the mountains. This has never failed me yet as I always re-approach the offending project with the same drive I had when starting it.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  > You have a good regiment for burnout. Sounds like you've turned burnout into a military problem.
veb 13y ago
It's funny. I work in New Zealand, and I do my 37.5 hours a week as required (any more than that, and I get over-time) but that 37.5 hours takes such. a. long. time! When I was working for a startup, and working from whatever time I woke up, till 3am in the morning, time flew by so quickly. I could easily do 80 hours, and have great fun. I was creative, and energised. As soon as I went from a startup to working for a large employer and was forced to do 8.30am till 5.00pm all my productivity and energy flew right out the window. Sigh.
- rcfox 13y ago
  Sounds like there's a simple (to explain, not necessarily to do) solution for you. What's keeping you at the sucky job?
  - abcd_f 13y ago
    Not an OP, but I can answer the same. Good pay, benefits, stability, lots of free time and overall an ability to "have life" now (between 5 and 8:30) as opposed to having it after a startup maybe exits.
- ultimoo 13y ago
  Nice, I didn't know about 37.5 hour weeks in NZ. Does that 2.5 difference from 40 hour weeks account for a paid 30 minutes of lunch time everyday, or just a shorter Friday?
  - adventureloop 13y ago
    I can't comment about NZ,but in the UK the 37.5 hours work weeks are a 8:30-5 or 9-5:30 days with an hour long lunch. The number of hours goes up by 5 if you factor all time actually spent 'in office'.
    - Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
      Again in the UK it's worth noting that's not standard - I've had jobs that were 35 hours a week, 37.5 hours a week and 40 hours a week and in each case I've had the variety where that was usually the number of hours you did and where you did a shed load more.
DanielRibeiro 13y ago
I remember reading this published insight[1] from Marissa Mayer a few months ago: Burnout is caused by resentment Which sounded amazing, until this guy who dated a neuroscientist commented[2]: No. Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It's the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your brain to associate work with failure. Subconsciously, then eventually, consciously, you wonder if it's worth it. The best way to prevent burnout is to follow up a serious failure with doing small things that you know are going to work. As a biologist, I frequently put in 50-70 and sometimes 100 hour workweeks. The very nature of experimental science (lots of unkowns) means that failure happens. The nature of the culture means that grad students are "groomed" by sticking them on low-probability of success, high reward fishing expeditions (gotta get those nature, science papers) I used to burn out for months after accumulating many many hours of work on high-risk projects. I saw other grad students get it really bad, and burn out for years. During my first postdoc, I dated a neuroscientist and reprogrammed my work habits. On the heels of the failure of a project where I have spent weeks building up for, I will quickly force myself to do routine molecular biology, or general lab tasks, or a repeat of an experiment that I have gotten to work in the past. These all have an immediate reward. Now I don't burn out anymore, and find it easier to re-attempt very difficult things, with a clearer mindset. For coders, I would posit that most burnout comes on the heels of failure that is not in the hands of the coder (management decisions, market realities, etc). My suggested remedy would be to reassociate work with success by doing routine things such as debugging or code testing that will restore the act of working with the little "pops" of endorphins. That is not to say that having a healthy life schedule makes burnout less likely (I think it does; and one should have a healthy lifestyle for its own sake) but I don't think it addresses the main issue. Then I finally realized how many times I've burnt out in my life, and I became much better into avoiding it. Which is really hard to do. And it seems to me that this is one of the many points that Ben Horowitz talks about on his What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology[3] [1] http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment.html http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment... [2] http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment.html#comment-478842490 http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment... [3] http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-difficult-ceo-skill-managing-your-own-psychology/ http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-diff...
peterkelly 13y ago
Excellent article. This is the first time I've deliberately activated the Kudos mouse-over thing on this guy's blog. I can't count the number of times I've done it accidentally.
- amercade 13y ago
  Agree on this Kudos :) I activated it by accident (didn't know how they work). I don't regret it. The article was entertaining. Ok. But. The number of false positives with this kudos system is probably very high. You should click to confirm. Anyway, I don't like a web page where I have to be very careful where I put my mouse over. Feels like a minefield. </off-topic>
  - mnicole 13y ago
    Totally agree, I think the Kudos system implemented in Svbtle and other clones is fundamentally broken until there's a way to undo it. Just hovering and waiting in place for a trivial action is a pain (and many people toggle with it accidentally thinking it's some whimsical animation), no less that being at the top of the page is completely backwards in itself; put it at the bottom after I've already read the post enough to judge it.
PhilipA 13y ago
Excellent article. The funny thing is that when you don't have time to exercise, then it is the time you need it the most.
- Hydraulix989 13y ago
  Same can be said about getting enough sleep.
  - ultimoo 13y ago
    Same can be said about socializing. In fact, here in grad school we have a rule: "Choose any two from -- Grades, Social Life, or Sleep".
    - arethuza 13y ago
      A friend (who was an international level rower) was told at Cambridge: rowing, classes, social life - pick two. He tried all three and failed the classes!
ZirconCode 13y ago
Judging from the comments and the articles, it seems like I've never had a proper burnout. I always recover within days, this seems to be a longer matter however. The author talks about warning signs, and many of you mention you can feel it coming, even two weeks advanced. Would it be possible to describe this to someone like me? Not the burnout, but the warning signs?
- ttrreeww 13y ago
  Do you ever had a big dream? Is it gone? That's burnout.
- cpncrunch 13y ago
  Google 'chronic fatigue syndrome' to see what the end-point of burnout is like. Some warning signs: depression, anxiety, insomnia, loss of appetite, constant illnesses, dreading going into work, racing heartrate, etc. Although to be honest by the time you've got to that point you are already pretty burned out and you're well on your way to CFS. My solution for the past 10 years has been to live my life so there is little/no possibility of ever having burnout (and it has worked :)
  - ZirconCode 13y ago
    Ah thanks, those were the pointers I was looking for =)
dangero 13y ago
These ideas all seem like bandaids to me if they aren't personal goals that you care about. I've seen studies that show that burnout is caused by sustained imbalance between your personal goals and how you're living your life. This can also happen retro actively. For example, if you were to find out that you weren't going to get paid for a job you'd been working the last 6 months on, you would almost instantly be burned out. That is, if you were doing it for the money of course. Your personal goal is to spend a certain percentage of your time on things that will increase your wealth, and if you weren't to get paid, the sudden overwhelming sense of losing six months would burn you out immediately. Likewise in a startup, I think the studies would say that you find yourself burned out because at some point, something inside you says, "80 hours a week for the last year wasn't really completely in line with all my personal goals. I have a goal to have personal relationships, spend time with my family, and exercise, yet this startup is the only thing I've been doing." At some point a voice inside says, "It wasn't worth it." People have very different goals, so results will vary as to what causes burnout, but as a boss, something I know will cause burnout is anything that will pull the rug out from under an employee regarding benefits that they expected to receive. For startups this is super tricky because some employees are expecting an IPO with big payouts, and when they get disillusioned about that, there's really no way to stop the burnout.
auctiontheory 13y ago
Obama makes the right call on the suits. Here's Dan Ariely on "ego depletion": http://danariely.com/2012/08/15/understanding-ego-depletion/ http://danariely.com/2012/08/15/understanding-ego-depletion/
proles 13y ago
while often overlooked in our industry, it's the importance of hitting the "reset" button. we're making sure clients are happy, sales people have the information they need, and that can creep very hard into the rest of they day. instituting a "hard stop" can go a long way, it did for me. i've spent 12-15hrs at the office, per day, dealing with meetings, questions, providing guidance and the like. eventually you must put you interests first. whether it's picking up that book, working on that personal project, or calling that friend who works in a different field. ultimately, the problems are not crazy new, but it's the day to day that burns people out. there's knowledge to be shared but when you feel like day in and day out it's the same old, then all the more reason to institute basic guides/metrics that let us know things are on track. vacation is equally important, truly the 'reset' button, get off the grid. after all, it things fall apart while we're getting replenished, it's time to rethink our priorities.
UniZero 13y ago
This article really hit home for me. If I could I would take this advice, but I literally can't afford to. My only option is to continue working 12 hour days or I'll actually become homeless. So if anyone here has been through a similar situation I would appreciate any advice you may have to offer.
- pm 13y ago
  You literally can't afford NOT to, because eventually you'll get to the point where you can't function, no matter how hard you try. What situation is so dire that you can't stop working?
- bermanoid 13y ago
  If you're billing each hour of those 12 hour days and can't make ends meet, then you have a problem managing your finances. If you're salaried and would lose your job if you didn't pull those hours, then I assure you you can find a more reasonable job. If you're struggling to get a business off the ground, then I doubt that you're getting as much done in the long run at 12 hours a day as you would at 10. 12 hour day crunches can be effective if you do them for a couple weeks; after a month or two the tortoise that stuck with a 40 hour week is probably going to beat you. At least that's true if you're writing code - longer days can still be semi productive if you're doing softer work.
- robryan 13y ago
  Is it the only option because you are earning a low hourly rate, have a high amount of fixed costs or because you are working for yourself and the business isn't highly profitable?
navs 13y ago
I've been sitting here at my computer since almost 8pm yesterday. It's 8PM now. I can absolutely identify with the OP. It's not just startups, having a full time job and going to uni as a full time student was a stupid move. It's bad enough I work myself like this but there's also all that caffeine. The coke, chocolate bars, energy drinks I consume and not forgetting the smoking. I tell myself 2 more months and I'll graduate. In the meantime I've made moves by dropping the nicotine, dropping coke and energy drinks and keeping a large bottle of water with me while I work. When the water runs out, that's my cue to get up, stretch, refill and maybe take a power nap.
gdonelli 13y ago
Has anyone ever thought that Hackathons are teaching kids how to code as well as how to get burn out?
dabeeeenster 13y ago
I cannot understand people who feel "on top of the world" yet are still working within a business that is not cash-flow positive month to month. "We didn't need a break, we felt great. Better than great." Yet they are still burning up runway. Just lunacy.
- asdashopping 13y ago
  Because for some people happiness is about more than cash flow.
quotha 13y ago
So basically get a life
ttunguz 13y ago
Coincidentally, NPR profiled a productivity researcher from HBS this morning. (I haven't been able to find the segment yet, but when they post it I will link to it.) According to her research, the most important driver of productivity is motivation which aligns with Daniel's comment. Her recommendation for improving motivation? Use tools like IDoneThis to track what you've accomplished each day and take the time now and again to reflect on your progress through that journey. At Google, we had an internal product called Snippets which is functionally identical to IDoneThis. I'd always believed the purpose of Snippets was to improve communication across a team and company about the contributions of employees. But perhaps I missed perhaps the more important benefit: motivation management and burnout prevention.
- gertef 13y ago
  What if your Snippets just say "tried to fix stuff. still broken" over and over and over again?
  - ttunguz 13y ago
    ha!
ttunguz 13y ago
Coincidentally, NPR profiled a productivity researcher from HBS this morning. (I haven't been able to find the segment yet, but when they post it I will link to it.) According to her research, the most important driver of productivity is motivation which aligns with Daniel's comment. Her recommendation for improving motivation? Use tools like IDoneThis to track what you've accomplished each day and take the time now and again to reflect on your progress through that journey. At Google, we had an internal product called Snippets which is functionally identical to IDoneThis. I'd always believed the purpose of Snippets was to improve communication across a team and company about the contributions of employees. But perhaps I missed perhaps the more important benefit: motivation management and burnout prevention.
obvious1111 13y ago
So your saying to avoid burn out dont work as much, this is amazing cant believe others havent thought of that!
ttrreeww 13y ago
You never burn out buying lotto tickets.
marcbarros 13y ago
Totally. I just left Contour and realized I spent most of my twenties behind my laptop. I was completely exhausted and it has taken me almost six months of doing nothing to have my full energy back. I wrote a similar piece about enjoying the ride. I missed a lot of it at Contour. http://marcbarros.com/enjoying-the-ride/ http://marcbarros.com/enjoying-the-ride/
bconway 13y ago
Excellent post. One of the top reasons I don't let employees work more than 40 hours a week, and start kicking people out of the office at 5:30 (if they're still there).

401 points by jennita 13y ago

I feel like this is useful information for much more than just people involved in work. Specifically, as PhD students, my partner and I (and pretty much all of our colleagues) often face burnout, and are always looking for ways to combat it. I quite like the sound of most things in this article, and think I will try to adopt some of the principles to my study and see if they will help. Specifically, I need to get back into fiction, because that really did help when I read lots a few months ago. Also, evening walks sounds like a beautiful way to wind down. Does anybody else here have other advice on ways to combat burnout during a PhD? I (and every other student) would be most interested to hear.

dkural 13y ago
I have very clear advice for PhD: Agree to work 4 hours a day on your thesis + papers (including reading literature!), and stop. You won't get more done anyways, so enjoy the rest of your day guilt-free. It is a marathon, and the consistent 4-hour days add up. If you miss one day, don't do 8 hours the next day; just do another 4. Don't make more than 4 hours mandatory.
- pserwylo 13y ago
  I completely agree. The only point where I fail at this is when I compare it to the 8 hour days I do once a week as a web developer (unrelated to the PhD). It seems so easy to power through the 8 hours and still feel like you could get more done. Then you go to uni, and if you manage 4 hours, it is a success. I always feel like I should be able to manage 8 hour days at Uni too, but of course it is a different kind of work which stresses different parts of your brain.
oldmanjoe 13y ago
Ensure you have (at least) monthly meetings with a supervisor. This provides good feedback and stops you getting lost in the weeds. It helps if you have small milestones attached to each meeting (reading a book/paper, editing a chapter, etc). A sign the PhD is going awry is when they stop attending regular meetings and duck out of your way in the corridor. ;-) Then they start getting stressed
- pserwylo 13y ago
  Haha, yeah, I have experienced both ends of the stick. One supervisor I get along with beautifully, we've been meeting essentially every week for the last two years, and she has full access to the JIRA install I'm using to log my research tasks against. The other we just chat in the elevator, and have a meeting every couple of months or so.
pcrh 13y ago
A PhD should have a combination of high- and low-risk projects. An advisor who places their students only into high risk projects is gambling with _your_ life and career. If the project succeeds, the PI gets the lion's share of the kudos, and if it fails, you lose years of your life. Ideally, the projects should be a low-risk project which gets your feet wet in the methodology and is "guaranteed" to produce a paper, combined with a higher risk project that potentially pays off big. Once the first low-risk project works, pick a second low-risk project to replace it; the amount of time you devote to the high risk project can increase once the first low-risk one has worked.

cl8ton 13y ago

You have a good regiment for burnout. You can always feel burnout approaching which is usually about 2 weeks before it really happens (waking up and dreading working on the same thing). Stop what you're doing and do something totally different for a while. For me its working on a vastly different project and spending weekends in the mountains. This has never failed me yet as I always re-approach the offending project with the same drive I had when starting it.

dredmorbius 13y ago
> You have a good regiment for burnout. Sounds like you've turned burnout into a military problem.

veb 13y ago

It's funny. I work in New Zealand, and I do my 37.5 hours a week as required (any more than that, and I get over-time) but that 37.5 hours takes such. a. long. time! When I was working for a startup, and working from whatever time I woke up, till 3am in the morning, time flew by so quickly. I could easily do 80 hours, and have great fun. I was creative, and energised. As soon as I went from a startup to working for a large employer and was forced to do 8.30am till 5.00pm all my productivity and energy flew right out the window. Sigh.

rcfox 13y ago
Sounds like there's a simple (to explain, not necessarily to do) solution for you. What's keeping you at the sucky job?
- abcd_f 13y ago
  Not an OP, but I can answer the same. Good pay, benefits, stability, lots of free time and overall an ability to "have life" now (between 5 and 8:30) as opposed to having it after a startup maybe exits.
ultimoo 13y ago
Nice, I didn't know about 37.5 hour weeks in NZ. Does that 2.5 difference from 40 hour weeks account for a paid 30 minutes of lunch time everyday, or just a shorter Friday?
- adventureloop 13y ago
  I can't comment about NZ,but in the UK the 37.5 hours work weeks are a 8:30-5 or 9-5:30 days with an hour long lunch. The number of hours goes up by 5 if you factor all time actually spent 'in office'.
  - Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
    Again in the UK it's worth noting that's not standard - I've had jobs that were 35 hours a week, 37.5 hours a week and 40 hours a week and in each case I've had the variety where that was usually the number of hours you did and where you did a shed load more.

DanielRibeiro 13y ago

I remember reading this published insight[1] from Marissa Mayer a few months ago: Burnout is caused by resentment Which sounded amazing, until this guy who dated a neuroscientist commented[2]: No. Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It's the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your brain to associate work with failure. Subconsciously, then eventually, consciously, you wonder if it's worth it. The best way to prevent burnout is to follow up a serious failure with doing small things that you know are going to work. As a biologist, I frequently put in 50-70 and sometimes 100 hour workweeks. The very nature of experimental science (lots of unkowns) means that failure happens. The nature of the culture means that grad students are "groomed" by sticking them on low-probability of success, high reward fishing expeditions (gotta get those nature, science papers) I used to burn out for months after accumulating many many hours of work on high-risk projects. I saw other grad students get it really bad, and burn out for years. During my first postdoc, I dated a neuroscientist and reprogrammed my work habits. On the heels of the failure of a project where I have spent weeks building up for, I will quickly force myself to do routine molecular biology, or general lab tasks, or a repeat of an experiment that I have gotten to work in the past. These all have an immediate reward. Now I don't burn out anymore, and find it easier to re-attempt very difficult things, with a clearer mindset. For coders, I would posit that most burnout comes on the heels of failure that is not in the hands of the coder (management decisions, market realities, etc). My suggested remedy would be to reassociate work with success by doing routine things such as debugging or code testing that will restore the act of working with the little "pops" of endorphins. That is not to say that having a healthy life schedule makes burnout less likely (I think it does; and one should have a healthy lifestyle for its own sake) but I don't think it addresses the main issue. Then I finally realized how many times I've burnt out in my life, and I became much better into avoiding it. Which is really hard to do. And it seems to me that this is one of the many points that Ben Horowitz talks about on his What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology[3] [1] http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment.html http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment... [2] http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment.html#comment-478842490 http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment... [3] http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-difficult-ceo-skill-managing-your-own-psychology/ http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-diff...

peterkelly 13y ago

Excellent article. This is the first time I've deliberately activated the Kudos mouse-over thing on this guy's blog. I can't count the number of times I've done it accidentally.

amercade 13y ago
Agree on this Kudos :) I activated it by accident (didn't know how they work). I don't regret it. The article was entertaining. Ok. But. The number of false positives with this kudos system is probably very high. You should click to confirm. Anyway, I don't like a web page where I have to be very careful where I put my mouse over. Feels like a minefield. </off-topic>
- mnicole 13y ago
  Totally agree, I think the Kudos system implemented in Svbtle and other clones is fundamentally broken until there's a way to undo it. Just hovering and waiting in place for a trivial action is a pain (and many people toggle with it accidentally thinking it's some whimsical animation), no less that being at the top of the page is completely backwards in itself; put it at the bottom after I've already read the post enough to judge it.

PhilipA 13y ago

Excellent article. The funny thing is that when you don't have time to exercise, then it is the time you need it the most.

Hydraulix989 13y ago
Same can be said about getting enough sleep.
- ultimoo 13y ago
  Same can be said about socializing. In fact, here in grad school we have a rule: "Choose any two from -- Grades, Social Life, or Sleep".
  - arethuza 13y ago
    A friend (who was an international level rower) was told at Cambridge: rowing, classes, social life - pick two. He tried all three and failed the classes!

ZirconCode 13y ago

Judging from the comments and the articles, it seems like I've never had a proper burnout. I always recover within days, this seems to be a longer matter however. The author talks about warning signs, and many of you mention you can feel it coming, even two weeks advanced. Would it be possible to describe this to someone like me? Not the burnout, but the warning signs?

ttrreeww 13y ago
Do you ever had a big dream? Is it gone? That's burnout.
cpncrunch 13y ago
Google 'chronic fatigue syndrome' to see what the end-point of burnout is like. Some warning signs: depression, anxiety, insomnia, loss of appetite, constant illnesses, dreading going into work, racing heartrate, etc. Although to be honest by the time you've got to that point you are already pretty burned out and you're well on your way to CFS. My solution for the past 10 years has been to live my life so there is little/no possibility of ever having burnout (and it has worked :)
- ZirconCode 13y ago
  Ah thanks, those were the pointers I was looking for =)

dangero 13y ago

These ideas all seem like bandaids to me if they aren't personal goals that you care about. I've seen studies that show that burnout is caused by sustained imbalance between your personal goals and how you're living your life. This can also happen retro actively. For example, if you were to find out that you weren't going to get paid for a job you'd been working the last 6 months on, you would almost instantly be burned out. That is, if you were doing it for the money of course. Your personal goal is to spend a certain percentage of your time on things that will increase your wealth, and if you weren't to get paid, the sudden overwhelming sense of losing six months would burn you out immediately. Likewise in a startup, I think the studies would say that you find yourself burned out because at some point, something inside you says, "80 hours a week for the last year wasn't really completely in line with all my personal goals. I have a goal to have personal relationships, spend time with my family, and exercise, yet this startup is the only thing I've been doing." At some point a voice inside says, "It wasn't worth it." People have very different goals, so results will vary as to what causes burnout, but as a boss, something I know will cause burnout is anything that will pull the rug out from under an employee regarding benefits that they expected to receive. For startups this is super tricky because some employees are expecting an IPO with big payouts, and when they get disillusioned about that, there's really no way to stop the burnout.

auctiontheory 13y ago

Obama makes the right call on the suits. Here's Dan Ariely on "ego depletion": http://danariely.com/2012/08/15/understanding-ego-depletion/ http://danariely.com/2012/08/15/understanding-ego-depletion/

proles 13y ago

while often overlooked in our industry, it's the importance of hitting the "reset" button. we're making sure clients are happy, sales people have the information they need, and that can creep very hard into the rest of they day. instituting a "hard stop" can go a long way, it did for me. i've spent 12-15hrs at the office, per day, dealing with meetings, questions, providing guidance and the like. eventually you must put you interests first. whether it's picking up that book, working on that personal project, or calling that friend who works in a different field. ultimately, the problems are not crazy new, but it's the day to day that burns people out. there's knowledge to be shared but when you feel like day in and day out it's the same old, then all the more reason to institute basic guides/metrics that let us know things are on track. vacation is equally important, truly the 'reset' button, get off the grid. after all, it things fall apart while we're getting replenished, it's time to rethink our priorities.

UniZero 13y ago

This article really hit home for me. If I could I would take this advice, but I literally can't afford to. My only option is to continue working 12 hour days or I'll actually become homeless. So if anyone here has been through a similar situation I would appreciate any advice you may have to offer.

pm 13y ago
You literally can't afford NOT to, because eventually you'll get to the point where you can't function, no matter how hard you try. What situation is so dire that you can't stop working?
bermanoid 13y ago
If you're billing each hour of those 12 hour days and can't make ends meet, then you have a problem managing your finances. If you're salaried and would lose your job if you didn't pull those hours, then I assure you you can find a more reasonable job. If you're struggling to get a business off the ground, then I doubt that you're getting as much done in the long run at 12 hours a day as you would at 10. 12 hour day crunches can be effective if you do them for a couple weeks; after a month or two the tortoise that stuck with a 40 hour week is probably going to beat you. At least that's true if you're writing code - longer days can still be semi productive if you're doing softer work.
robryan 13y ago
Is it the only option because you are earning a low hourly rate, have a high amount of fixed costs or because you are working for yourself and the business isn't highly profitable?

navs 13y ago

I've been sitting here at my computer since almost 8pm yesterday. It's 8PM now. I can absolutely identify with the OP. It's not just startups, having a full time job and going to uni as a full time student was a stupid move. It's bad enough I work myself like this but there's also all that caffeine. The coke, chocolate bars, energy drinks I consume and not forgetting the smoking. I tell myself 2 more months and I'll graduate. In the meantime I've made moves by dropping the nicotine, dropping coke and energy drinks and keeping a large bottle of water with me while I work. When the water runs out, that's my cue to get up, stretch, refill and maybe take a power nap.

gdonelli 13y ago

Has anyone ever thought that Hackathons are teaching kids how to code as well as how to get burn out?

dabeeeenster 13y ago

I cannot understand people who feel "on top of the world" yet are still working within a business that is not cash-flow positive month to month. "We didn't need a break, we felt great. Better than great." Yet they are still burning up runway. Just lunacy.

asdashopping 13y ago
Because for some people happiness is about more than cash flow.

quotha 13y ago

So basically get a life

ttunguz 13y ago

Coincidentally, NPR profiled a productivity researcher from HBS this morning. (I haven't been able to find the segment yet, but when they post it I will link to it.) According to her research, the most important driver of productivity is motivation which aligns with Daniel's comment. Her recommendation for improving motivation? Use tools like IDoneThis to track what you've accomplished each day and take the time now and again to reflect on your progress through that journey. At Google, we had an internal product called Snippets which is functionally identical to IDoneThis. I'd always believed the purpose of Snippets was to improve communication across a team and company about the contributions of employees. But perhaps I missed perhaps the more important benefit: motivation management and burnout prevention.

gertef 13y ago
What if your Snippets just say "tried to fix stuff. still broken" over and over and over again?
- ttunguz 13y ago
  ha!

ttunguz 13y ago

obvious1111 13y ago

So your saying to avoid burn out dont work as much, this is amazing cant believe others havent thought of that!

ttrreeww 13y ago

You never burn out buying lotto tickets.

marcbarros 13y ago

Totally. I just left Contour and realized I spent most of my twenties behind my laptop. I was completely exhausted and it has taken me almost six months of doing nothing to have my full energy back. I wrote a similar piece about enjoying the ride. I missed a lot of it at Contour. http://marcbarros.com/enjoying-the-ride/ http://marcbarros.com/enjoying-the-ride/

bconway 13y ago

Excellent post. One of the top reasons I don't let employees work more than 40 hours a week, and start kicking people out of the office at 5:30 (if they're still there).