Ask HN: What next after burning out?

I've been having some therapy recently, and one of the things the therapist has pointed out is that the more anxious I am, the more I make negative generalisations. I believe this is quite a common pattern in anxiety & depression.

I couldn't help noticing that your post contains several generalisations ('every founder is full of shit', 'every product is crap', 'my 10 years of experience is worthless').

We're all wired in different ways, and this might only be a small component of your problem, but it might be worth talking to someone about generalised anxiety or similar.

I hope this doesn't come across as patronising or anything. It's just something I learned about myself recently that could be useful for you too.

Persist somehow until you've banked enough pto and get the hell away from wherever you are. Go on a roadtrip or camping or a hike. I'm not a doctor but consider using some of nature's natural medicines. (Not that a doctor would ever advise you to do that of course)

Perhaps you may be depressed, seek counseling and see if that helps.

It can be a rough world out there. Look at what you have though, a ton of valuable experience that you can apply towards the right opportunity when the time is right.

Hang in there, time changes if nothing else, and that may be all you need.

I would agree with this.

It sounds like it's a mental health issue, not an issue with your skills or the marketplace. You just need to heal your mind, and nature and a good vacation or break can do that.

I just got out of my burnout phase. It's similar - I've done a lot of startups.

It took me well over a year to get out of it. I spent practically a year playing games (thanks acquisition money!) My only job was teaching for a while.

I honestly don't know what worked.

The games, travel, spas, and idle time didn't help much. If anything, they made me feel worse about spending lots of money and time. They pressured me to do more.

Freelancing was such a terrible idea. I ended up losing money and getting even more burnt out. After that, I refused to do any coding at all for a while.

The teaching assignments helped quite a bit. It was well paid and I got to achieve my bucket list of visiting every state in the country. Teaching is also really easy with enough years under your belt and it's relaxing to have a lot to say. It's even more relaxing if they pay well.

I did a lot of exercise. Felt better than ever, but didn't cure it. Same with meditation.

I think what finally got me out of it was working 7 days a week on low difficulty tasks. It sounds really dumb to treat burnout with more work, but it worked for me. Maybe startup people have their comfort zone working 60 hours a week?

You might not even want to do hard work coding. Try working in F&B or some other grunt job. Somehow it was like a meditative process. Just do something that feels like it's not a total waste of time.

I'm right there with you. Except, I've been doing corporate jobs but no one wants to hire outside something your experienced in. So I'm stuck. And the thought of even interviewing disgust me.

Take some time off. The clarity you get from disengaging will be stunning (or so I'v seen). I generally think for X years of high stress it takes 1-2 months per year. So you'll need 1-2 years to recharge.

It might be difficult financially. I don't know your situation on how feasible that is. Perhaps you have family and other hard commitments. But I think in general people tend to overestimate the cost. Wind back your outgoings. Head somewhere cheap. Meditate, exercise, eat fresh food.

A vacation followed by a career stint as a mentor for an accelerator or within an incubator may be your best shot? You have grown the anticorps first hand and know exactly where sense becomes bullsh*t, so you may be good at providing reality checks while acting the bad cop in these environments imho.

Take a very long vacation from work?

(Your experience is not worthless, if you've been doing the relevant work then some companies will hire you even if it doesn't match previous job titles. But if you're this burned out you should probably not think about it.)

The United States is an overworked, competitive culture to the point of being toxic.

For me, the key to a long, fulfilling life is finding what makes you happy in life. It really is too short to be miserable.

Right now, I'm working remotely from a sunny, beach city in Vietnam and was previously touring many islands in Thailand. Southeast Asia has been EPIC. I love not being in the United States right now. I strongly suggest traveling to a country you've wanted to go to. Also meditation in group classes really helps.

Sad how this afflicts so many of us - it truly is terrible. And yet I bet we're all thinking 'may be there's a startup idea in here somewhere?' which may be the source of the problem.

Maybe go to a country and bring the tribal knowledge only found in SV to tackle problems never found in SV.

Plenty of countries with bright people who are like miscalibrated, misaimed, lasers looking for a target to pulverize.

Get a hobby, start a side project. Your job should be to fund your lifestyle, hobbies and side project.

I'm sorry to hear. I can definitely sympathize with what you're going through and currently recovering myself. This is just my perspective, of course.

The hardest thing to get past, and the first one I encountered, is the very real sense that what I'm doing right now is a mistake or a poor fit or below me or not enough of a challenge or etc, etc. When I'm in that burn-out mode, like depression, what I see and feel is through a particular lens. So maybe it's not that bad or maybe there are parts that are enjoyable or maybe I can make it work but when I'm in it then all of that falls away. The first step for me was to realize that I can't really trust my brain to give me an active picture when I'm rushing from thing to thing and hate every minute of it.

So my way out was not to make any rash decisions but to figure out an escape plan, even if it's temporary. I've been freelance for 10 years so I was able to pare down my projects and stop taking on new ones. I'm down to basically a single client part-time and everything new that comes in the door gets referred to someone else. I've deleted all of my various Trello lists of possible businesses to start and OSS to create and contribute to and unwritten blog posts. If I'm at a computer then I'm working with that one client. If I'm not I'm playing with my kids or riding a bike or building something in the garage.

The reduced stress, reduced time in front of a screen, and less demands on my time are very slowing starting to add up to what feels like recovery. I can trust myself a little better and have been surprised by what bubbles to the surface as important to do. It becomes easier to say no and enjoy life a little more and make better decisions. I feel like I've still got a long way to go but I don't dread my keyboard anymore.

For me, the pressure of "make a hugely important decision about your life right now! you're running out of time! you hate every minute!" was immense. It just felt like this always-looming thing that I had no answers to. What company to start or join? What idea to build? What person to meet? WHAT NEXT?!?! Once I started letting go of that question and just focusing on the absolute basics - spend time with people, work enough to pay the bills, get some exercise, eat well - then I become more competent to answer that question. It's like trying to do your best work at 8pm after a 12 hour day. Just not going to happen.

One more thing that I found can be tough but helpful. Regardless of what you're doing at any given minute, charge yourself with doing the best job of it that you possibly can. Not just for you but for those around you. Even if you're fixing spaghetti CSS or washing dishes or driving or cooking or anything else, tell yourself "I'm going to do this thing the best I possibly can right now." Good things will happen as a result but concentrate only on the action itself. I've found that I enjoy what I do far more, regardless of what it is, if I stay really present and let go of whether the task is enough of a challenge or enjoyable.

Hope that helps. Good luck out there.