I think most the people who write these posts are clueless as to what burnout is. You can give people money, pats on the back, pizza parties but if you run them hard enough they will burn out.
I have been working without rest for a year on a project (http://www.stremor.com) that has had huge amounts of progress. It pays well enough, I like the people I work with, we have achieved great things, and we have gotten recognition. So by all these measures I should have no burn out.
I have been burned out several times. You can't do genius level work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks and not burn out. The Addiction to progress I have had me doing 80 and 100 hour weeks. I was burning my self out. Not because my needs weren't met, but because the brain just can't do that much work for that long.
I would sleep through an entire weekend after 2 weeks of 100 hours. But the addiction to progress and the excitement of the work meant that I didn't want to "go play".
What it really comes down to is people have limits. Those limits are additive. If you are at 40% of your financial stress limit, and 40% of your relationship stress limit, and 40% of your Micro-Manager driving you batty limit, then you are at 120% of your limits. And you can run for a while at over 100% but not indefinitely.
Even when all my Career, financial, physical, sexual, and other limits are at 5% if my Hours of intense concentration limit has been hit I will burn out. And so will employees.
The task of a good manager is to run an employee up to the point of the Mental limits and make sure all those other limits are at 5% so they can maximize the employee output. Every time you push the employee at 150% for 2 days, you need to let them recover at 75% for 4 days.
Burn out isn't a bad thing as long as you can refuel and keep going. It is about managing the sprints, and preventing the burn out from causing failures.
> The task of a good manager is to run an employee up to the point of the Mental limits and make sure all those other limits are at 5% so they can maximize the employee output.
I find it ironic that you describe the very real negative effects of burnout, but then describe a recipe for inducing ... burnout.
May I suggest that you read Tom DeMarco's book Slack? It specifically addresses what I'll term "operational fallacies" like this regarding knowledge work, and covers making an organization more effective (doing the right work) vs. merely efficient (doing lots of work) by adjusting the character and pace of work.
"You can't do genius level work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks and not burn out."
Sometimes you can't do 20 hours a week, or even 10.
A lot depends on the person, what their emotional state is, whether the work is stressful or not, how they deal with stress, how their coworkers, bosses, and customers behave, etc.
Sadly, most companies still treat their employees like robots, and expect them to put work first ahead of all other priorities (above physical and mental health, above sleep, above family, above having any sort of life outside of work).
Very sad, and there's really no indication that things are changing for the better for workers. In fact, with all the outsourcing, "free trade" agreements, and rabid opposition to unions in the tech sector, it's become a race to the bottom.
I agree largely with what you're saying, though not quite with what you say about limits being cumulative.
Personally I find that some stresses multiply more than others. For me lots of areas of work stress are often better than the same amount of stress across your whole life. If there's going to be an amount of shit then I'd rather contain it in one area so I can get away from it from time to time. For me the worst thing is where you have no area where you can get away from it.
The task of a good manager is to run an employee up to the point of the Mental limits and make sure all those other limits are at 5% so they can maximize the employee output.
WTF? Not unless your definition of "good manager" includes "motivates employees to on a killing rampage and then commit suicide" or "has numerous employees keel over dead on the job from heart-attacks at an unusually early age".
I'm a little tired of seeing all these posts about what burnout is, and how to prevent it, written by people who doesn't have any experience in clinical psychology.
"Burnout is caused by working and failing". "Prevent burnout by clicking this list of TODO items". Please don't approach these complicated issues from a "this is a trend" angle.
I'm pretty sure there are other, better, and way more complicated reasons why you can feel miserable at your job. Burnout can be linked to a medical illness, malnutrition, depression, etc, etc...
I think we're seeing what usually happens after psychological concepts "go mainstream". First they start to get over diagnosed (actually, in most cases, over self-diagnosed) and then they get so overused in the public discourse that almost anybody thinks they can chime in.
For me, the opener captured the problem:
> Burnout is a motivation problem, a listlessness, a defeatist attitude, and perhaps even a hopelessness, triggered by the lack of progress.
Even a quick glance at wikipedia tells you that the major component in Burnout is Exhaustion. Making it about motivation sounds analogous to telling depressed people that they really need to cheer up more.
If your main focus in trying to deal with Burnout is to micro-manage yourself better and track your probably already obsessive introspection on work even closer, the only thing you end up doing is driving the car even faster against the next tree.
Motivation issues might coincide with burnout, they might play into the spiral of self loathing that feeds your burnout. But they are just one of the components that make you exhausted.
The main thing you need to do when you are exhausted is to stop and give yourself time to heal.
However:
The author isn't talking about Burnout, he is just accurate in using the term as it is broadly understood. It is reasonably accurate for the early stages of a Burnout. Even the title, citing 'antidote' is reasonably accurate since antidotes are mostly given quickly after a person was poisoned. Not when that person is already deathly ill.
I would agree with you, however, that this article probably does more harm than good. Particularly hand-wavy "...and exercise, diet, reading" in the last sentence do leave a stale aftertaste, making this more blog spam than content.
Funnily enough, it's blog spam around a HN Comment thread. Go figure. Meta article on Burnout articles should surface any day now.
The thing is, the popular (high-level) definition of burnout is "The magic that allowed code to mysteriously flow through my fingers to the keyboard is broken". Or, to a manager, "My golden-egg-laying chicken is on the fritz". And in many cases (assuming no major underlying issue) it is a simple cause, and a simple solution. So I don't see too much harm in articles like this if they can help out some people.
The only downside is if these articles do more harm than good, by either trivializing the condition or offering harmful advice for the cases in which it doesn't fit.
I don't think you can really understand what burnout is until you have actually experienced severe and complete burnout (aka chronic fatigue syndrome).
For managers of highly creative and productive developers there are some very simple things you can do to help prevent burnout in your employees: [1] give them interesting stuff to work on, [2] give them freedom, and [3] don't be an asshole. Very simple in theory, but unfortunately most managers fail on at least 2 of the 3.
Burnouts come in various forms and one of the symptoms is exhaustion. As another comment already stated a person has a limited amount of energy that can be spent. Working at more than 100% it's possible but consumes a lot of energy.
One of the sources of this energy can be excitement (adrenaline) because you intrinsically like what you are doing or because you get a sense of ffulfillment in completing things. Which brings us back to the antidote suggested by the post. The suggested actions are typical measures for improving one's self-esteem. When one's self-esteem is low one tends to suffer from the same symptoms as exhaustion.
The post suggests that burnout is caused by repeated failure of obtaining success after spending a serious amount of effort and commitment. This however is a classic example of something that induces low self-esteem.
So be sure that you are not primarily fueled by this need for success when working over your max. Because if that is what is giving you energy you will lose it once you have some failures.
This guy is completely clueless about burnout. Lack of progress or lack of success lead to depression and not burnout. Burnout is caused by "sprinting" for too long resulting in prolonged exhaustion. "Sprinting" is ok for very short periods of time, but running a (never ending) marathon like it's a sprint results in a burnout. No success or progress can fix that. Plain and simple...
This reminds me of Dan Miller's 7 Areas of Success:
Career
Financial
Personal Development
Physical
Relationships
Spiritual
Social
As he often says on his podcast [1], you must be making continual deposits of success in every area, and career is only ONE area. For example, if you experience a temporary "interruption of employment status", the first thing you should do is start an exercise regimen (if you don't already have one).
Each one feeds into each other, and I know after a particularly terrible day, I personally feel a hundred times better after a challenging CrossFit workout with friends.
Ah yes. A list of less than ten things that must always apply to everyone by which we can measure things x and y and prevent things z and mu.
If you can't do #1, you can do #2 and #3 and feel fulfilled! That's how people work -- all people -- so take my advice! If any part of this happens to work for you, by the way, it's because I am completely right, and not due to the fact that I'm wrapping obvious things in swaths of bullshit to sell or gain subscriptions so I can get more popular and sell more speaking engagements.
Really? Success in just one area is plenty to keep me going. It's when you get success in no areas that you're in trouble, or when success in one area is balanced by a disaster elsewhere, etc.
For outstanding research on the meaning of progress in your work, take a look at "the progress principle" by Amabile and Kramer:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/142219857X/
Gist: yes, progress is essential to feel good about your work.
[+] [-] brandon_wirtz|13 years ago|reply
I have been working without rest for a year on a project (http://www.stremor.com) that has had huge amounts of progress. It pays well enough, I like the people I work with, we have achieved great things, and we have gotten recognition. So by all these measures I should have no burn out.
I have been burned out several times. You can't do genius level work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks and not burn out. The Addiction to progress I have had me doing 80 and 100 hour weeks. I was burning my self out. Not because my needs weren't met, but because the brain just can't do that much work for that long.
I would sleep through an entire weekend after 2 weeks of 100 hours. But the addiction to progress and the excitement of the work meant that I didn't want to "go play".
What it really comes down to is people have limits. Those limits are additive. If you are at 40% of your financial stress limit, and 40% of your relationship stress limit, and 40% of your Micro-Manager driving you batty limit, then you are at 120% of your limits. And you can run for a while at over 100% but not indefinitely.
Even when all my Career, financial, physical, sexual, and other limits are at 5% if my Hours of intense concentration limit has been hit I will burn out. And so will employees.
The task of a good manager is to run an employee up to the point of the Mental limits and make sure all those other limits are at 5% so they can maximize the employee output. Every time you push the employee at 150% for 2 days, you need to let them recover at 75% for 4 days.
Burn out isn't a bad thing as long as you can refuel and keep going. It is about managing the sprints, and preventing the burn out from causing failures.
[+] [-] saidajigumi|13 years ago|reply
I find it ironic that you describe the very real negative effects of burnout, but then describe a recipe for inducing ... burnout.
May I suggest that you read Tom DeMarco's book Slack? It specifically addresses what I'll term "operational fallacies" like this regarding knowledge work, and covers making an organization more effective (doing the right work) vs. merely efficient (doing lots of work) by adjusting the character and pace of work.
[+] [-] gnosis|13 years ago|reply
Sometimes you can't do 20 hours a week, or even 10.
A lot depends on the person, what their emotional state is, whether the work is stressful or not, how they deal with stress, how their coworkers, bosses, and customers behave, etc.
Sadly, most companies still treat their employees like robots, and expect them to put work first ahead of all other priorities (above physical and mental health, above sleep, above family, above having any sort of life outside of work).
Very sad, and there's really no indication that things are changing for the better for workers. In fact, with all the outsourcing, "free trade" agreements, and rabid opposition to unions in the tech sector, it's become a race to the bottom.
[+] [-] Tyrannosaurs|13 years ago|reply
Personally I find that some stresses multiply more than others. For me lots of areas of work stress are often better than the same amount of stress across your whole life. If there's going to be an amount of shit then I'd rather contain it in one area so I can get away from it from time to time. For me the worst thing is where you have no area where you can get away from it.
[+] [-] mindcrime|13 years ago|reply
WTF? Not unless your definition of "good manager" includes "motivates employees to on a killing rampage and then commit suicide" or "has numerous employees keel over dead on the job from heart-attacks at an unusually early age".
[+] [-] coldarchon|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] runemadsen|13 years ago|reply
"Burnout is caused by working and failing". "Prevent burnout by clicking this list of TODO items". Please don't approach these complicated issues from a "this is a trend" angle.
I'm pretty sure there are other, better, and way more complicated reasons why you can feel miserable at your job. Burnout can be linked to a medical illness, malnutrition, depression, etc, etc...
[+] [-] skore|13 years ago|reply
For me, the opener captured the problem:
> Burnout is a motivation problem, a listlessness, a defeatist attitude, and perhaps even a hopelessness, triggered by the lack of progress.
Even a quick glance at wikipedia tells you that the major component in Burnout is Exhaustion. Making it about motivation sounds analogous to telling depressed people that they really need to cheer up more.
If your main focus in trying to deal with Burnout is to micro-manage yourself better and track your probably already obsessive introspection on work even closer, the only thing you end up doing is driving the car even faster against the next tree.
Motivation issues might coincide with burnout, they might play into the spiral of self loathing that feeds your burnout. But they are just one of the components that make you exhausted.
The main thing you need to do when you are exhausted is to stop and give yourself time to heal.
However:
The author isn't talking about Burnout, he is just accurate in using the term as it is broadly understood. It is reasonably accurate for the early stages of a Burnout. Even the title, citing 'antidote' is reasonably accurate since antidotes are mostly given quickly after a person was poisoned. Not when that person is already deathly ill.
I would agree with you, however, that this article probably does more harm than good. Particularly hand-wavy "...and exercise, diet, reading" in the last sentence do leave a stale aftertaste, making this more blog spam than content.
Funnily enough, it's blog spam around a HN Comment thread. Go figure. Meta article on Burnout articles should surface any day now.
[+] [-] derekp7|13 years ago|reply
The only downside is if these articles do more harm than good, by either trivializing the condition or offering harmful advice for the cases in which it doesn't fit.
[+] [-] cpncrunch|13 years ago|reply
For managers of highly creative and productive developers there are some very simple things you can do to help prevent burnout in your employees: [1] give them interesting stuff to work on, [2] give them freedom, and [3] don't be an asshole. Very simple in theory, but unfortunately most managers fail on at least 2 of the 3.
[+] [-] spockz|13 years ago|reply
One of the sources of this energy can be excitement (adrenaline) because you intrinsically like what you are doing or because you get a sense of ffulfillment in completing things. Which brings us back to the antidote suggested by the post. The suggested actions are typical measures for improving one's self-esteem. When one's self-esteem is low one tends to suffer from the same symptoms as exhaustion.
The post suggests that burnout is caused by repeated failure of obtaining success after spending a serious amount of effort and commitment. This however is a classic example of something that induces low self-esteem.
So be sure that you are not primarily fueled by this need for success when working over your max. Because if that is what is giving you energy you will lose it once you have some failures.
[+] [-] kylequest|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpncrunch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Paul_D_Santana|13 years ago|reply
Each one feeds into each other, and I know after a particularly terrible day, I personally feel a hundred times better after a challenging CrossFit workout with friends.
[1] http://www.48days.com/category/48-days-podcast
[+] [-] obviouslygreen|13 years ago|reply
If you can't do #1, you can do #2 and #3 and feel fulfilled! That's how people work -- all people -- so take my advice! If any part of this happens to work for you, by the way, it's because I am completely right, and not due to the fact that I'm wrapping obvious things in swaths of bullshit to sell or gain subscriptions so I can get more popular and sell more speaking engagements.
Sorry, this just smells like crap.
[+] [-] Eliezer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gcb0|13 years ago|reply
it is easy said. but how can you have progress if you are burned out?
[+] [-] orangethirty|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsinger|13 years ago|reply
Gist: yes, progress is essential to feel good about your work.
[+] [-] milesf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CCs|13 years ago|reply