[kempbellt]

This.

When you start asking questions like "What's a sign of burnout?", that's usually a sign of burnout.

Other obvious signs:

- experiencing less and less enthusiasm about work, making it difficult to want to go to work at all

- difficulty focusing on tasks at work because you can't muster up any "care" at all to actually think about what work wants you to do (Task: Change the font size on the About page. Internal response: "Why? Who cares...")

- taking longer breaks and finding any excuse to drag your feet when you are heading back to your desk

- taking sick days when you don't feel "sick" but really feel like you need a day off (I would argue that the way you feel is a valid reason for taking a "sick" day - which is why we call them "personal days" at my company. Sick, tired, hungover. We don't care. You need a day off, you take the day off)

- asking questions about when's the soonest you can take a vacation even if you have no vacation planned (feeling like you need to escape)

- becoming more disagreeable with your coworkers, tasks, friends, family, responsibilities, etc (related to the above "not caring". You start to not see the value in a lot of "trivial" things, and become disagreeable on their basic merits)

- eating and/or drinking more than usual (or other substance use)

The list goes on, but I would say that a lot of "burnout symptoms" are akin to those with depression.

Essentially, your energy, enthusiasm, and general give-a-shit slowly starts to fade.

Unfortunately, humans are rarely rational creatures. Even armed with this information, it can take quite a bit more "drudging along" before a person will hit their actual breaking point.

My personal recommendation when you start to feel this way, if you can, is to walk away....

It feels like a huge change to just quit your job, but looking back, I believe that the damage that burnout has caused would have been less if I had taken the financial hit and just quit the moment I started feeling it.

Edit:

In response to the poster's edit question "When is it time to change change jobs because of it?"

Asap.

The longer you stay, the more you will feel burnt out, and it will result in diminishing returns

[yadoomerta]

What sort of job did you switch to? My problem right now is that I am pretty convinced I'm burned out, but nothing seems better. Objectively the job is fine if a little pointless, and if I can't appreciate that one .. y'know?

[kempbellt]

Same type of job (software), different circumstances.

The most burnt out I've felt was when I needed to be in an office from about 9-5 every day. I lived in a town I didn't really like where there wasn't much to do besides checkout yet another new brewery and I worked on a product that sounded kind of interesting for the first five minutes, but I quickly realized I couldn't care less about.

Now I work remotely. My hours are flexible and deadlines are relaxed. Most of my coworkers work remote and at different times. Most conversations are asynchronous, removing a lot of that fake urgency that comes from feeling like you need to respond immediately to someone's message. The product is more interesting and something that I can see adding value to peoples' lives.

The biggest thing for me personally though: I travel while I work. Not for work, but while I work.

I've always liked exploring and being able to spend a week working in a new town "just because" has been huge for me.

Because I don't work set hours, I can sleep in when I need to and work later that day. Or I can decide to go exploring around a new town for a couple of hours before I start work. I run errands anytime I need to - which is great for avoiding busy times and traffic.

Working remotely with flexible hours has removed a lot of small, but substantial, stressors in my life. I wouldn't say this is a panacea for burnout though because it really depends on the person and the company, but it has worked well for me.

"Work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Life" balance is more balanced.

[jcadam]

I think burnout is easier to recognize in others than in oneself.

[mcv]

These symptoms make me wonder if my son has a burnout from school. Except he's not remotely working hard.

[yadoomerta]

i sympathize a lot with all of the symptoms. in my experience, as someone who used to work pretty hard, once you're past the cusp of 'it's all pointless' it makes it really really hard to bother.

Like you're not getting anything out of it. You don't care if the work is done or not. Nobody else seems to care. And even thinking about it makes you feel ill and horrible. Difficult situation to grind hard work out of

[wnkrshm]

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor but I've had diagnosed work-related depression ('burnout') and got treated for it. This is based solely on my personal experience:

You don't need to work hard to be burnt out, you may just be continuously confronted with tasks or conditions that are too much for you to deal with. A high stress environment. Burnout is just another word for depression, caused by a specific set of circumstances that are usually work/career-related.

Your son may have clinical depression, you can't willpower yourself out of one of those.