Ask HN: How did you overcome and avoid work related burnout?

[emailcomp]

I'm completely burnout and engaging in self-destructive behavior recently. Like reporting done tasks even before not even starting them.

This is the second time I am this burnout. Last time I had to literally drop everything and take 2 weeks off. I wasn't sure if that fixed the problem but because of shame and having to work to pay my bills I slogged through and continued working for another 3 years.

I'm at the same situation yet again where I'm just about to drop everything and take some time off. I'm looking for some direction about how to figure out root cause of this. Couple of things I would mention is that I'm in south east asia, commute is long 2+ hrs, work in small company with lot of stress (nothing too dramatic as lot of others I know have similar lifestyles but they are coping it just fine)

[namuol]

Non-computer hobbies, time with people (including romance, et al), and exercise.

Some random suggestions:

- Learn to play Ukulele

- Cook for yourself more

- Join a co-ed team sport you enjoy (this actually covers all 3)

- Talk to your coworkers about doing remote work (even just once per week)

  * Your commute is seriously long, and that's a lot of wasted time.

- Be honest, even if it scares the hell out of you. Especially when it scares the hell out of you.

- Network as much as you can -- it might help to know there are other places to work that wont stress you out so much.

  * Try meetup.com to find communities in your field
  * If you're an expat, look for expat groups on Facebook. Lots of networking opportunities involving remote workers.

[emailcomp]

I would love to do all of what you proposed. I need to find time to do all of this which is a challenge. The key is to be smart about finding time and I haven't been able to do that which has led me to this.

[tacticiankerala]

I think this is the only useful answer so far in this thread!

[go1979]

My strong suggestion is never false report anything. It is a rabbit hole that you don't want to go into. I think the odds that you will get fired for taking too long on tasks is EXTREMELY low. When you are young, you think everyone has got their shit together. In reality, there are probably developers out there who can't code for shit. In one of my first job, I had a "peer" who kept asking me basic questions until I figured out I pretty much coded up what they had to do. I didn't mind that ... what shocked me was that this person had an entry level programming job and no ability to code. I felt bad for that person.

Anyways ... long story short ... reduce your commute big time. No more than an hour for sanity. Also, if you are not highly paid in tech and are feeling burned out, may I suggest you change your field for a bit. Life is too short to do stuff you hate. And it doesn't seem like you are making a lot of money/saving up.

Best of luck and stay sane!

[re_todd]

Here are things that worked for me ...

- reduce caffeine intake; I've changed from 5 to 2 cups of coffee a day, and try not to have one after 3pm; I feel I can relax when I go home now

- exercise; I only walk 3 times a week for half an hour each time, but it has helped tremendously

- do some non-coding activities when you get home; whether a hobby or watching TV, getting away from IT and programming for awhile makes me feel refreshed the next day

- switch from Java to C# (assuming those are your only 2 options); bigger and more stressful companies tend to use Java, while the cool medium-sized companies that are pleasant to work at tend to use C#; of course there are lots of exceptions

[lsiunsuex]

"do some non-coding activities when you get home; whether a hobby or watching TV, getting away from IT and programming for awhile makes me feel refreshed the next day"

Cleaning the house / apartment can be very relaxing. It's a task that requires minimal thought and can be a good workout - saturday I washed our hard wood floors by hand with just a bucket of soap / water and a big sponge. 2 hours later my mind was clear as day (or I was high on the fumes from the Lysol haha)

[ddmf]

Walking is a great way to clear your mind and come up with other ways of doing things. Plus, the health benefits are vastly underappreciated.

[MatthewTavares]

My number one piece of advise is to set realistic expectations and speak up when you don't think others are setting realistic expectations of you and those around you. This is especially true in the competitive and isolated environments of startups. I have been in many prolonged 100+ hour a week, deadline motivated design sessions that left me in severe burnout. Everyone has different capacities for this but every human mind has a limit. It starts screaming for things it is not getting sitting in front of a computer monitor for 16 hours a day. My ability to abuse myself like this has dropped sharply as well as I have aged.

[thaumaturgy]

Taking a couple of weeks off isn't likely to cure burnout, as you're probably realizing.

There seems to be a few common trends in burning out:

1. A sense of being trapped. You can't, for whatever reason, decide to stop going to work. You have limited options where work and finances are concerned, or you think you do.

2. A job that is too demanding. Stress, bad management, too many work hours, or a seemingly endless stream of dreary monotonous tasks.

3. The job is not rewarding enough. It either demands too much time or doesn't offer enough money for you to maintain a healthy work/life balance, which IMO is the root cause of burnout and why you see so many suggestions for changing diet or taking up a new hobby or getting more exercise (not that those are bad suggestions).

I don't know if it's reasonable to tell someone that's truly burnt-out to start a gym routine or change their diet or spend less time on gaming or whatever. All of those things require some amount of willpower which is in short supply when you've been pushed to the limits of the stress levels you can tolerate.

(Although they're all good habits to develop and should become a routine part of your life when you're not so stressed out that getting out of bed in the morning seems like a chore.)

Realistically the only thing you can do to cure burnout is to change your job situation. It's the cause, you have to address it. Take a look at your finances and see if there really isn't any way to change your working situation somehow. Start looking for a new job. Ask for a change of responsibilities at your current job. Ask for a temporary reduction in hours.

It may be different in your part of the world, but in many places, management will be motivated to try to help an employee be more productive. Odds are pretty good that your co-workers and/or supervisors have already noticed that your performance is suffering. If you think you can approach management and find a way to change your work situation, you should try.

Alternatively, you can take some vacation time and then spend that time with equal parts rest & relaxation, doing whatever makes you feel better, and aggressively looking for new work.

[emailcomp]

Thanks for your inputs. I'm leaning towards taking a long break myself. I'm just afraid I have burnt some bridges by doing things like faking my work report and it is stressing me out. About health, I'm reasonably healthy and within my ideal weight/BMI. I feel mentally exhausted right now.

[dennybritz]

Why are you reporting done tasks before starting them? Are you feeling pressured by your boss to get more done? What would happen if you didn't do this? Are you scared of something or trying to compete with coworkers?

What are your personal and professional goals? Does your current job help you achieve them? Whenever I felt burned out it was typically because I couldn't find any deeper meaning in my work.

Also, how many hours a day do you work? Don't assume others are coping just fine. It may look this from the outside, but you never know what's really going on. They'll likely say the same thing about you. A 2-hour commute is a red flag to me. There has been a bunch of research on how commute time has a strong influencing on work and life happiness.

[emailcomp]

I think the schedule is bit aggressive but I have worked under much more aggressive schedules in my 20s and now I'm in my early 30s and have a young family. Also being a senior I expect a bit more of myself. My professional goals and job role is in line.

Currently I'm working 9hrs + 2 hrs of commute. I find bit resentful towards my job because I'm not having any much time outside of work to do any recreational activities. This is something definitely I need to address.

Thanks for your inputs.

[kremdela]

I have been there, and it's hard to see a way out of what is making you miserable, or alternatively preventing you from being happy. Is it the work? Is it something in your personal life? Personally, I have found that I've fought against what I felt like I SHOULD be doing. I should be a hero and finish some big project. I should work towards being promoted.

Try and evaluate what you actually want, how do you FEEL? I don't know anything more about your situation, but why do you feel like you have to commute so far? Why do you feel like you need to stay in your job?

What would you rather do? Most importantly, talk to someone and ask for help. Talk with a family member, a friend, your boss. It's not in their best interest for you to burn out and rage quit. They want to help you succeed.

Don't hesitate to reach out via email if you want to chat. I've been there and maybe can help.

But take this as an opportunity to evaluate what is making you unhappy and what makes you happy.

All the best!

[emailcomp]

"I have found that I've fought against what I felt like I SHOULD be doing." I think you hit on the key issue here. Whenever I reflect on my choices I feel this is what I "should " be doing to advance my career in a traditional sense and trying to live life by default. Few years ago I came across this article and this pretty much described myself[1]. I haven't been able to act on the advice given in that article yet. It is time for that now I think.

[1] http://www.raptitude.com/2012/07/most-lives-are-lived-by-def...

[ddoscampaign]

- I would move to absolutely close to work as possible, even if that means renting a closet from someone on craigslist.

- Consider the day job a sidejob (but of course, be professional). Always look for a better gig.

- Be frank, say you need a vacation right now/nearly immediately because you're unable to keep working at this pace. If they make up flimsy excuses, stay firm and say something like "I feel like I'm not performing at my top level because I'm headed in the direction of burning out. I would like you to help me be recharge my productivity and engagement by finding a way to get some time off very soon because this will save you from having to fire me and hire somebody else and me from having to quit because I really want your help to allow me to get back to firing on all cylinders so we can get X done."

- Build a paper clock

- Visit a massage/sauna/spa place

- Do some random hobby meetups or local community center activities

- Volunteer at church/nonprofit to help the needy

- Donate blood

[MalcolmDiggs]

IMHO: The #1 way to avoid burnout is to do work you love.

Do you find job your satisfying? Do you feel like you're making a difference? Does it give your life meaning? These are the qualities that enable you to get up and come to work day after day.

Every job sucks after a while (or on certain days, weeks, etc). But if it's truly work you love, you'll have a good reason to tough it out.

[IsaacL]

I quit my job about 4 months ago feeling the onset of burnout. I was completely useless for most of that time but have just recently managed to get back into creative work.

By the way, look up comments by the Hacker News user ahoyhere (Amy Hoy). It was her comment on the physical causes of burnout that motivated me to quit when I did. I think that nipped in the bud something that could have become much worse.

You mention you keep working because of "shame" and "having to pay the bills". Hypothetical situation: if you had another medical condition, say a heart attack, and your doctor ordered you to take 3 months in bed, could you do it? Live off savings, move in with your parents, etc?

If you're really living on the edge financially (no savings, in debt, no support network) then keep working. But, my theory is that people in that situation don't feel "burned out" - they feel stressed and exhausted, maybe, but they're motivated to keep moving. Burnout is when you're pushing hard on something that feels ultimately pointless. For me, it was working on a project I knew was going to fail, a position I could have financially walked away from at any time, but I stayed because I felt it wasn't socially acceptable to walk.

After I quit my job I had a background anxiety on what I'd do when my savings ran down and I needed to find something else. I honestly thought I'd rather Howard-Roark it and lug boxes around in a warehouse or work as a garage mechanic than write code for money ever again. (Funnily enough I'm also in SE Asia, Chiang Mai right now). What saved me was easing my way back into goal-directed activities, but goal-directed activities which I found intrinsically fun and rewarding - swimming, playing strategy games, riding a motorbike around. Eventually I wanted a more challenging project and took 2 weeks to research and write a long article for an online blog, unpaid but I treated it as a full-time job.

Just this last week I've finally got back into coding again, and realised that I enjoy frontend web coding, making something which looks cool and which you can show to people. I was a very good CS student and used to think I should work on something more challenging than HTML/CSS/JS, but - frontend web dev is something I know I can well enough to be useful.

Engineers have a problem that we're always "failing". Our work is so complex and error-prone. In most other jobs its hard to tell how well you're doing. Salespeople are one other group who also "fail" often, but salespeople also get a lot of social validation and buzz when they succeed. Engineers don't, and combined with their low self-esteem end up feeling they need to hit 100% accuracy, everything done on time with no bugs, or they're below par. Clueless and disinterested managers don't help.

Having rediscovered my confidence in one particular specialism (frontend web dev) is very powerful. If in future I encounter another hairy, undocumented ball of PHP and JS - I'll simply tell whoever's responsible that I can't fix it until they fix their workflow. On the other hand, if I find a good team, with technical (or at least technically-aware) management, realistic goals and a useful product, I know I can be valuable and useful to them.

I'm so glad I quit when I did. Had I stayed another 6 months by burnout may have lasted 3 years, not 3 months. But recovery wasn't a linear process, it was more digging around in my brain until I uncovered my natural sources of motivation.

[jamesk_au]

Amy's post is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5633063