Ask HN: How do you recover from burnout? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you recover from burnout?

33 pointstogusa201722 comments

I find that relaxation doesn't help at all. Even after taking about a half year break after selling my startup, I was still burnt out. What helped me out of it was teaching.

Quoting Tony Robbins: "The reason you're suffering is you're focused on yourself."

It's a powerful enough quote that I'll probably print it and put it in my office.

Don't think about the work. Don't think about the pay, the holidays, the things you will buy, the fame you'll get.

Instead of focusing on the work, think what you do with it. Think of making them very happy. It could be a client or customer. It could be your boss.

Instead of focusing on the money, think of what you can do to make people happy. It could be bringing your significant other on a vacation somewhere. It could be buying your daughter a new toy or bringing them to the zoo.

You can also try giving back - if you're a techie, you can teach people to code. Or answer questions on Stack Overflow. Write articles and blogs. Make videos on Udemy. Don't focus on making money from it but on passing down your experience.

Hey I really like that you said “relaxing doesn’t work”. Weirdly enough I’ve found that to be true. I mean there are times when you’re not sleeping enough where it becomes key, but that’s about it for me.

I noticed in “Daily Rituals”, a book about the day to day lives of artists, none of them really take breaks. 30,40,50 years go by, and they just find more ways to creatively renew themselves. I’m sorry I can’t think of any examples here but if you’re reading this you should buy a copy.

Hardest for me was giving myself “permission” to recover. What I mean is that like a NBA star who is in the game but exhausted gets pissed when the coach pulls him out of the game for a breather (even if he desperately needs one) because well he’s the “the man” and you don’t put the man on the bench. I was exhausted, depressed, and anti-social outside work. But I did not want to stop because work was also my identity where I was “the man”. I forced myself (eventually) to take a time out but it has been very difficult being idle and I find myself struggling for something that is interesting and makes me happy to do. I can’t just sit on the bench. I find “doing nothing” basically impossible.

It really depends on how you are set up, what your job is, how long you've had burnout for, how long you've been working for and many other variables.

You have to be careful because depression and burnout seem to be best buddies. You need to deal with this sooner rather than later.

For me the answer was quite simple - to just work less - a lot less. I contract and take lots of time off between contracts. I take long walks every day - sometimes with a weight vest, sometimes without. I meditate (nothing fancy). I eat light. I occasionally row. It's important to get away from the computer, and get outside and get some fresh air. In my spare time I do my hobbies: Python coding, work on my website, photography, read, travel, stroke my cat, relax with my partner. I have a side project to watch every Star Trek movie/episode ever made! {grin}

I realized in the end I had to re-prioritize my life away from work and money. It's worked out far better than I could have hoped for. YMMV. If you want to discuss more feel free to contact me via my website (see my profile here for details). All the best.

Thanks will do so. It's a side project I have been working on for a year and so . It's very close to finish like just publish it to app store but I feel so blank with ideas or tired and fear that once I publish it in need to work harder so I m trying to get away from it for sometime coz I see signs of burnout / depression .

Release early and often.

Keep in touch with your audience and give them clear signal that this is your hobby project and you value their input before they leave any rating etc. Side-project which doesn't make you happy sucks. You may be afraid of success or failure, but avoiding validation with users and constantly imagining what they might need more will make your burnout worse. I would hide non functional features and release now! Then do small update releases often - this boosts brain's instant gratification nicely.

You are right. I am going to publish it this week no more holding onto it or adding things. Thanks for your effort, I have side projects in the form of website and never felt like this in publishing it. It's the mobile app world which is new to me scares me a little

Take time out, but don't do nothing. From what I've seen in my friends, I think burnout is a sign that the mind is craving variety. It's anecdata, but those of my friends that took up a new enjoyable pastime (music, art, sport), rather than doing absolutely nothing, seem to recover a great deal faster and their enthusiasm for their subsequent work projects was even more noticeable.

Hmm, I feel like I'm burning out right now - both very exhausted and very bored - work feels tedious. I never linked these too things together. Thank you

For me reading a few books (not work related books) did the job, it's a very absorbing activity.

I think there's another component to this that might be worth noting:

The more "nothing" you do, the faster you'll want to get back in the game, and the more likely you are to return before you've actually gotten better.

I left a really abusive job a few years ago, and was fortunate enough to be able to do nothing but smoke weed and play xbox and "recover", which I did for about 3 months.

I think that:

1) I didn't do the things that I needed to do in terms of health (recovery is not wildcard leisure. it's a form of work)

2) Those activities got old fast and cause me to be eager to reenter the workforce when, in retrospect, I had merely forgotten about my problems, rather than solving them.

Overexerting your mind/psyche requires mental therapy the same way overexerting your leg requires physical therapy. It's counterintuitive that one should respond to too much work with a new kind of work, but I believe that's the case.

FWIW I think Jordan Peterson has some strong advice here around routine and the acquisition of meaning, but that's perhaps not everyone's brand.

>The more "nothing" you do, the faster you'll want to get back in the game, and the more likely you are to return before you've actually gotten better.

I left a job where I was totally burned out in June. I traveled the country from June - September. After I got back, I tried working on my personal projects full time and quickly learned I was still burned out. Looking for a job made the same point even clearer.

I'm currently working as seasonal help at UPS. I don't need the money, but it's really nice to have a job where I have tangible successes and any effort I put into it is paid back out immediately.

I'm absolutely wiped when I get home, but since I've started that job I've found that it's much easier to work on my personal projects. I think I just needed something else to concentrate on, and I needed some obvious successes in my life.

Interesting point. How do you know you have recovered ?

In my personal experience burnout can be recovered from in a week and sometimes much much longer, just depends on the person and thing. But I personally find that it's when you start thinking about it in a different way then you did before. You see all the things that you did and question them and reanalyze why you did the things you did. This leads to you re-thinking the activity in a different light than what you did while you are in burn out.

Here are a few quotes from answers I've given to similar questions in the past, over a timeline of about two years suffering on and off from burnout.

From this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15505304 > "Now things have got better. I surrounded myself with smart people, took some time off (the majority I was unable to find gainful work), and tried to find inspiration. I took some risks, had a lot of adventures, and am much more satisfied and happy. Only problem now is that software development tends to detract from all those things and it's tough to reconcile."

Also went back to school for this semester because as a Canadian I can't hypothetically get a work visa anywhere else without a degree and I wouldn't be doing anything more productive with my time."

From this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14570003 > "If there's one thing I've learned so far in my experience (at 25) it's that momentum is important. It's difficult and depressing to maintain momentum in interviewing if you get no feedback, can't improve, don't see success, and waste vast amounts of time. It's very difficult to maintain momentum in software in general if you've spent so long outside of it interviewing that you haven't worked on anything of value in months. The junior pos will allow to keep some level of momentum and at the very least that will keep.you paid and moving forward."

And this question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14390426

Many of the responses directly to me are very valuable, as are adjacent comments amongst those threads. I sincerely appreciate their time and hope someone finds this comment useful.

Start taking walks to break up your work day.

Relaxing and read a book in the evening.

Try getting more sleep for a week or two to recharge.

Find/Restart a hobby, guitar, video games.

Try something new, hiking, camping, backpacking are good activities to get you to unplug.

If I feel like burning out, I book a train to a neighboring country, get an AirBnB in a small town and live there for 3-4 days before heading back. I only address "emergency" work-related issues during my stay. I work 100% remote so that makes it possible for me.

I'm sorry if this comes off as a bit condescending, but burnout has a precise medical term, and the term itself is widely overused in other contexts which dilutes the meaning.

Burnout could be characterised as prolonged exposure to stress in work-related environments. It usually takes years, months in therapy, it very often causes career change. Many people never get out of it, especially not without support.

Everyone has periods when they feel a bit off, or a bit under the weather. What you describe is definitely not burnout in the medical sense of term.

While your characterization sounds about right, I certainly wouldn't agree that burnout is a precise medical term. The aspects of burnout vary from person to person, and while the result may be approximately similar, I don't think you can say "definitely not burnout". Though I would also agree that feeling burned out and being burned out are a bit different, but feeling burned out is certainly a contributing factor to getting burned out. The parent here is doing something that may distance themselves from burnout. One general — possible — criteria of burnout is prolonged feelings of disempowerment and control over your work that leads to the state of being. Reminding yourself that you are in control could have a positive impact.

You're correct. Its more like avoiding it at the very hint of it appearing. Remote working can be stressing :)

Heal for two years is what did it for me. Never took a leave of absence, instead I did a lot of job hopping which is ill-advised but somehow I'm okay now.

exercise, hiking, long walks, eat healthy.

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