Ask HN: How are you getting through (and back from) burning out? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How are you getting through (and back from) burning out?

212 pointsleksak128 comments

Obviously, my tendency is to do what it is I did that got me here in a sense. I plan and I scheme. Maybe I should just be in the couch binge-watching Netflix, or double-down on physical exercise with the extra time on hand (not that I wasn't active before).

I'm really struggling to figure out what it is that I should be doing now to get back to wellness and then stay there so I was hoping it would help to read other people's experience.

Briefly, high-performance knowledge worker that places a lot of self-worth in the quality of his work and that subsequently spiraled as a work performance degraded as burn out symptoms started to set in that was caused by issues and events on multiple frontiers in life simultaneously. Some of those stressors remain, and are Intrinsic moreso than extrinsic and removing them doesn't really have a tangible timeline.

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One word: perspective.

At 53, with ~30 years in the industry, I've been through this a few times. The key has always been to step back and look around me. Look at other things I could be doing, and maybe do some of them. Focus more attention to family and friends, hobbies, exercise and other forms of self-care. Look at what other people are doing, what I'd do for a living if I couldn't or didn't want to keep programming any more. Compare them to the things I enjoy about programming.

Each time I've concluded that I really do want to continue, but have to plan and negotiate how to keep doing it in a way that wouldn't burn me out again. One time that meant reduced hours (on top of the sabbatical I'd already taken) for a while, and working from home ever since. Some of the negotiation might be with family. Most of it will be with your employer, so having a good manager/culture helps and finding a good one should be a priority otherwise. Changing jobs sometimes helps, but it can also just add its own stress so it should be considered very carefully.

The important things to realize that things can't be the same going forward, or you'll just reach the same outcome. You'll have to change something about your projects, your role, your working conditions. You just need to step back for a bit and figure out what.

You are a true Sage, sir!

What I see a lot around me:

Kids work really hard to get into a good high school

High School kids work really hard to get into a good college

College kids work really hard to get into a great first job

Young Adults working really hard to progress their career

Adults working hard and burning out because that is all they really know.

If you've always been an A student, and had a good career, its hard to change mentality and not put everything into your job. But if you're burning out you have to. I dont think its necessary to quit your current job. But you should consider not trying so hard. Just doing your hours, dont volunteer to do extra, and figure out what you enjoy that makes you happy. It could be enjoying nature, or making new friends, reading history, volunteering or doing a creative hobby.

It doesn't mean you can't have a great career. It could be just a quiet few months or years before charging in again, or maybe you're actually more productive not working all hours, or maybe you could change your whole path on life. The important thing is to realize that working really hard is not the only option.

This was my exact path. For the longest time, the goal was to become gainfully employed as an engineer. Achieving your primary goals seems to be a lot like meeting your heros - you'll always be disappointed. Once I had the job, then I had to figure out how to keep it from completely absorbing me.

Most of the stages you mentioned above use an external criteria for success and for motivation. If that's the only kind of system you're familiar with, then you probably hadn't had the chance to stop and think "Does doing this make me happy?" because in those systems that question is irrelevant. You do what needs to be done to achieve the grade/rating/performance review and then ask what hoop you need to jump through next.

It seems the people that build truly rewarding careers are generally more internally motivated and because they have a better idea of who they are and what drives and motivates them are in a better position to to say "no" to things.

> Just doing your hours, dont volunteer to do extra, and figure out what you enjoy that makes you happy

Im only 28, but I don't feel burned out despite working very hard at growing my abilities.

I take breaks, lots of breaks. I do my best to enjoy as much as I can. I block out and forget the annoying crap.

    But you should consider not trying so hard.

I suspect that's not going to be a popular thing for a lot of people. I agree with the advice but I'd re-word it slightly because -- at least for me -- it's not about trying. I'm paid, so I will do the work and it will be solid but I might also destroy myself in the process which kind of defeats the purpose. So I'll go with "Do something that the effort/reward properly matches how much it will drain out of you to complete"

I used to be an absolute minimum 50-hours/week guy, often around 60-80, and I did it without much pain, but I also didn't realize what I was missing out on. In my last two positions, I have managed to rarely work more than 40 hours (he says coming off of a 75 hour week last week). I'm accomplishing more on every front. This would not have been possible a few jobs ago. My new responsibilities are no "less important" in the grand scheme of what I think of should be "important in life" and they're far more important/fun for me, personally. I found an employer that operates in a more Agile fashion, with fewer deadline emergencies and I'm mentoring more, writing less code but getting to tackle much more difficult problems (which is why there's less code -- it takes a lot longer when you have to refer to docs/RFCs because there's no answers from the usual corners of the web).

I've learned that if at least two out of every five days of the week (averaged over a month, maybe?) I don't get out of bed at least reasonably motivated to work on the thing I'm working on, it's time to evaluate where things are in my life. The last two jobs I've had, "reasonably motivated" has typically been "bolt upright excited" to get up and start work.

    Don't put everything into your job

It's probably not a good idea, especially if you work for someone. They won't put everything in to you, so it's going to be a very uneven relationship. But it is a stupidly important thing in your life (especially if you're supporting a family and working full time). It occupies a large portion of your waking hours so if you're miserable there, the rest of those hours are probably not going to be great, either.

> But you should consider not trying so hard. Just doing your hours, dont volunteer to do extra, and figure out what you enjoy that makes you happy.

For me, my EGO sometimes gets in the way of what is best for me.

For example, mostly when I was younger, if I saw someone implement something or solve a problem that I thought I had a better solution for, I'd tell everybody. And then get stuck solving it myself.

I still fall into this trap even now that I know to look out for it.

Really this was me just attempting to appear clever, and in the process making more work for myself.

Not trying so hard is the rational choice. During the time that managers are getting together to stack rank us and decide on our bonuses, or even whether to lay us off, they are making cold rational decisions.

To me, workers should approach their job the same way. Think of yourself as a business of 1 doing business with your employer. If you work unpaid overtime, you are losing money. If you always go the extra mile and do all sorts of extra stuff, you are losing money.

A job should be an economic arrangement.

It's ok to be friendly and to do a little extra to retain their business, but going way beyond, that's like sharecropping.

Sharecropping is growing your crops on rented land. Sometimes it's inevitable, but in the end it's not your land you are working, but the employer's.

Just like the other comments here I'd suggest focusing on mindset and health. For mindset, I'd recommend looking at stoicism such as with "A guide to the good life." In particular, the parts about accepting reality as it is, sort of like the serenity prayer. I like to think that I go into work with the mindset of giving 100% and should therefore not feel dejected by negative occurances. If I'm not fit for a task, that's ok, I'll either grow or I won't, but I can't expect myself to magically go beyond my full effort no more than I could grow beyond my height at that moment.

Also, health. It always seems to be just a little too imperceptive to really drive home how little things make a big impact. Sleep no less than 8 hours, eat no more than your recommended calories, be active for no less than 20 minutes (walking, cardio, strength, etc... ideally to your target heart rate), and foster strong relationships [1]. Additionally, try to understand what drives your behavior: why did X make me feel Y, and take control of that causation. Seek therapy and read into behavioral literature to better understand yourself.

[1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-8...

Can confirm that this book helps. I read "A guide to the good life" and practised stoicism at a time when my anxiety and stress levels were high. Very useful comment and it's great to be reminded of the book here.

Also, the book "Mindset".

Stop competing. Life is more or less meaningless. One of the ways some people cope is competition. You don't have to be high-performance. No one except the people profiting from your labor really care about your high performance. The work you are producing is being put into the dustbin of history more quickly than you realize.

I quit my job. Had some garage sales. Went on some road trips. Now I freelance. I can work hard for good clients, and when the project is over I can take a couple of months off.

I work remotely in a relatively low cost of living area. I have one car and a 800 sq ft house. Life doesn't have to be that hard.

> Life is more or less meaningless.

Philosophy(stoicism) has helped me free myself from stress and helped me focus on the task at hand.

Mindset is huge.

Do you mind sharing your age (ballpark range) and savings (ballpark range)?

I often read about such lifestyle, but something that would haunt me is what you would do as you age and as work dries up.

I think I'd be more comfortable with first working the hard years in silicon valley while living as frugally as possible to have savings to not ever work again, and then you can move to a low COL area to either start a startup or freelance. Theoretically with a FAANG or comparable pay job, you can get to such financial position in about 10-15 years of work.

   Fill your bowl to the brim
   and it will spill.
   Keep sharpening your knife
   and it will blunt.
   Chase after money and security
   and your heart will never unclench.
   Care about people's approval
   and you will be their prisoner.

   Do your work, then step back.
   The only path to serenity.

-- Tao Te Ching, chapter 9, Stephen Mitchell translation (http://taoteching.org.uk/index.php?c=9&a=Stephen+Mitchell)

Two points. Burnout caused by other people taking away your control of your life can become a form of PTSD actually. Take care of yourself physically.

Second, more importantly, burnout comes from using willpower to do something you have no hope of success. Your brain is trying to stop wasting resources.

Problem is your brain isn’t so smart that it knows what is the problem so it stops anything closely related.

Take a break. A vacation. Do something fun and rewarding. Succeed at small things. Go back to work on smaller things you know will succeed. May require changing directions or jobs or careers but the change doesn’t have to be major. Just get back to success.

1. You may find it beneficial to talk to a third party that isn't a friend, member of family or colleague. Somebody that can be truly objective, has the skills to get to the bottom of your thinking patterns and most probably somebody that is paid to listen and apply their skills and experience.

If you can afford it, try some Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) sessions. They can help you to recognise and understand the thinking patterns that got you here in the first place. Once you recognise these patterns and their triggers, you should be able to head them off and drain them of their power before they become fully destructive again.

You may also discover that there are other deeper underlying causes to the behaviours which inform your relationship with work. Sometimes you need to deconstruct yourself and look at the foundations before you can rebuild.

Therapy can help you get a balanced perspective on your life and hopefully to re-frame the role that work plays in that.

2. As others have said: a good amount of physical exercise also helps. Try running, swimming or cycling / mountain biking. I've been there and I cannot stress enough that physical wellness has a significant positive effect upon mental wellness.

3. Practice Mindfullness. If you don't know what that means, then now is the time to investigate.

Wishing you well. You can do it!

Burn out from my experience comes from a lack of autonomy for an extended period of time. You could be restricted by deadlines, toxic coworkers, a workaholic culture, group think, not having input on your work, or other circumstances.

The solution is almost always to change your situation. Before you do that, you need to do some introspection and identify what it is that is burning you out. The causes aren't always big and obvious, they could be as simple as interpersonal dynamics.

The fix depends on the cause but some examples could include getting a new job, switching teams, switching projects, working from home more, etc.

Once you've determined the cause of your burn out and you have a plan to change it, take some time off and take care of yourself:

- Spend time with friends and family

- Go for a run

- Meditate

- Cook a good meal from scratch

- Hang out in nature (go hiking, sit by the water)

- Take a day trip

- Read (Stoicism can be really helpful)

- Journal

- Improve your living space

- Get a full night’s sleep

- Laugh (a lot)

A common mistake people make when trying to heal burn out is to take time off just to return to the environment that caused the burn out in the first place. Change is absolutely crucial.

The short answer is: It's complicated, but doable.

There is a lot of good advice here in this thread.

I would begin by forgiving yourself, and by being kind to yourself.

I burned out almost two and a half years ago for the same reason.

My ambition didn't match my ability and I was beating myself up for it. It was an identity crisis for me. I wasn't able to perform as well as I previously had.

I spent the past few years observing my thoughts, and asking myself questions on why I was having those thoughts, and it helped me.

I funneled the energy into https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/

I think there are many areas to start, and even writing this list, can seem overwhelming.

- Be kind to yourself

- Forgive yourself

- Be grateful for where you are now

- Have realistic expectations

- Exercise

- Find/create other sources of fulfillment

- Practice mastery of your craft with a smaller project

- Learn how to empower yourself

- Find other activities where you can feel empowered

- Surround yourself with healthy friends

- Understand why you think what you think

- Understand what maintenance is needed to keep your engine going

- Have other activities where you can see progress in

- Define healthy boundaries

I really hated lifting weights for the first 30 years of my life, but I've come to enjoy it. Well, I mean, I still dislike doing it in the moment sometimes, but overall I enjoy it.

Aristotle said something like it's a shame to focus only on the mind, and not bring your body to its full potential. Modern psychology says exercise leads to greater sense of well-being.

This isn't a magic bullet that will make stressors go away. Those have to be dealt with as much as you can. But it's nice to focus on other things than work and this is something that I do outside of work and find helpful for the same reasons.

Exercise first thing every single day will do a person wonders. I prefer heavy weights and biking, but those are not the only ways to work out. I do think it needs to be at least 30 minutes of strenuous activity though.

Not sure if Aristotle said that but here are a couple of other quotes

“No citizen has a right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training…what a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.” - Socrates

“In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these two means, man can attain perfection.” - Plato. (I suspect this is a dodgy translation)

Thanks for the correction!

Some tips. Take things one at a time. Do them with all the attention. Have breaks in between. Spend time outside with loved ones. When you sleep, leave everything aside as if you enter a new world where nothing matters. If you cannot complete something today at the normal pace, do it the following day. Have a broader plan and idea, but keep inching towards it without fixing deadlines.

Oh, cool, thats all I needed to do? Awesome, so easy!

lol, good advice regardless. As with everything engineering related, this sounds good on paper... but when rubber meets the road...

In my experience burnout is not necessarily caused by overwork but by an expectation miss following a burst of lots of labor is continuously high labor. This effectively negatively reinforces your association of labor to reward. It's especially bad when something out of your control (e.g. politics) kills your project.

Doing the easy thing and goofing off or taking a break can be exactly the worst thing to do, since you're creating a reward for not-laboring.

My remedy for burnout is to power through it by doing small workful things which are intrinsically their own reward (and not in the pithy sense, there needs to be a primary rewarding stimulus associated with success). When I was a biologist, this was often doing routine molecular biology for a week, seeing those colonies was gratifying (if slow). As a programmer, those green dots carry their own gratification and reward cycle; when I feel burnout coming along it's a great time to work on those refactors or unit tests you've been putting off.

I don't have major burnout episodes anymore, and haven't for the last six years or so (disclaimer: it could also be just maturity)

A side note: if you think as a programmer you've burned bad, the worst ever case of burnout I saw was with a grad student in a high pressure chemistry lab. The student kept repeatedly failing to build catalytic antibodies. It was a very high pressure project because it was supposed to be the ultimate validation of his professor's seminal work (but at the same time the professor had moved on to sexier ideas - unnatural amino acids in proteins). The project kept failing in the big picture due to factors out of his control - it was a flawed idea because chemistry needs to bury the active sites of enzymes and antibodies have surface active sites - and it got way worse when his boss forced him to keep trying using an idea that it turned out was fraudulent (see homme hellinga misconduct)... But there were always enough small experimental reasons to justify continuing.

Anyways the student wound up so burnt out that his sleep cycle totally flipped three times (don't want to wake up and face the world but have to show face for 100h in the lab). Biochemistry has a lot of waiting, so he got into playing flash emulated ganeboy Tetris but of course it's so addictive that he often ruined experiments by missing critical steps. Some days he would give up and go to the casino and play poker instead. His health suffered so he started going on 4am runs, then busted his back with a herniated disc. When he was in the lab, he would obsess about things like getting perfectly metal-free water and he made centrosymmetric designs in the pipette tip dispenser box (it's kind of common but I now recognize this as not ocd but a warning that a scientist is in the burnout phase).

Many of his behaviors were consistent with reward seeking behavior.

Several years ago, I got over my burnout by changing my work environment. I left a demanding job with equally demanding coworkers for a job which I was slightly overqualified for with coworkers who appreciated me and what I do. Completing simple tasks that I could do quickly resulted in positive reinforcement which reconditioned my brain to associate work with positive outcomes. Getting things done felt good again.

There's a lot of different kinds of burnout, so this might not apply to every case, but going through this episode taught me the value of positive reinforcement.

I'm no expert, let's get that out the way.

But first off, just let go. Don't plan on doing anything; you are sick. I get the impression you're lucky in that you've got only a mild case, I've had colleagues who had it quite badly and who couldn't physically get out of bed anymore - where even the idea of planning would knock them on their arse again.

Don't let it escalate any further. The first step is to accept that not doing anything is OK.

I've started a bullet journal, and I track things to do, habits, and mood. Crossing things off as done is silly rewarding, and it helps me be more aware about what's going on. No more, "what happened in January? I don't remember that month..."

Reading and writing has also helped. I've started up a small medium account for fun, and try to get through a book every few months.

Another big thing is finding a goal for the month and accomplishing it. This month is car repairs. Last month was getting the cat through his first vet visits. Next month will likely be spring cleaning.

All of this is little details. My friends and my church family are far more significant.

My recommendation is simple and it's what works for me. For a few weeks change your routine. Don't work on projects - you can think about them but don't actually work on them.

Rest - like really rest. I'm usually very guilty of never sleeping enough so when I do this I try to sleep a full 7.5-8 hours a night, sometimes more. I also take a week or two off from exercise to supplement the rest so my body can physically recover. But keep waking up at your normal time, just go to bed earlier (unless you're already getting enough sleep).

Perhaps use one of the weeks to take a vacation if the budget, timing, etc. allows for it.

Allow yourself unplanned time where you can do whatever you want. Whether that be driving around aimlessly listening to music (which I love to do), reading a few books you wanted to but never got around to, or deciding on a whim to go somewhere or do something specific.

Allow time for yourself to just let your mind wander. This isn't really possible when your phone constantly distracts you so keep that in mind. I do some of my best thinking when I can just allow my mind to wander and ignore my phone for hours on end. Also consider meditation if that's your thing (not really my thing). Related to this is allowing yourself time to just sit in silence. I don't know why but I find it very soothing and restorative - maybe because I have young children who are loud.

Do something for someone else. Maybe your mother needs something done in the house. Maybe your friend needs help moving. Maybe you just want to volunteer a day or two for Habitat for Humanity. Doesn't have to be huge but seems to be good for the soul. But make sure it's something you actually have to do - don't just cut a check to some 401c entity.

Agree with what others have said here. Stoicism, meditation, diet, and exercise all help. If you're ultimately unhappy with your work, though, your life may require deeper change.

When in doubt, make art (broad definition) about your feelings. Draw, write, or compose music to get your feelings into a tangible format you can look at. If you decide to go this route, let your art be shitty. Just let it be shitty and make it anyway. I've made some super crappy beats in Garageband that nobody else will ever hear, but they helped me process through feelings.

Have you ever been sick and given up all sense of needing to be productive, and actually felt some relief from it? Try to tap into that attitude for a bit. Learn to listen to what you actually want instead of what you think you should be doing. Stoic philosophy is popular around here, and could probably help you out a lot. Consider seeing a qualified CBT therapist who specializes in OCD. Not saying you have OCD, but the same tendencies of obsession and perfection can lead to burn-out.

Three things have helped me through a difficult period of burning out and returning to health.

+) Daily positive habits are a strong and resilient buffer against life's onslaught. Quick inventory - today did you get enough sleep, have a period of intense and sustained exercise, and did you eat multiple healthy meals? If you say yes to all three every day, I guarantee your mood will consistently improve.

+) Remove your concerns and obligations from your head to a written digital assistant. Asana has helped me move all my open loops to a single place. Getting Things Done expresses this well.

+) Define the One Thing you want to do today. Becoming overwhelmed often happens when too many things come from too many directions. Pick just one thing and do it.

If you make habits of these, I guarantee your mood and energy will improve all equal.

The easy: Drink more water. Stretch regularly.

The habits to change: Eat breakfast. Cherish loved ones.

The difficult: Empathize with your employer; understand how they (don't) value you. Contemplate the evanescence of your work; it will all someday fade away, and you must come to terms with this fact.

It's surprising to me that so many people recommend eating breakfast. There's no specific value add to eating early in the morning. There are tons of value adds to constraining the hours you eat during each day ("intermittent fasting"). Eat breakfast at your own risk:

https://priceonomics.com/how-breakfast-became-a-thing/

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/is-skipping-breakfast-b...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_breakfast

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680567/

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/intermittent-fasting-sur...

Your other points are solid. I'd add regular exercise as well.

If you exercise first thing in the morning (like myself), I'd say breakfast is essential shortly afterward.

I exercise shortly after getting up 5 days a week. I don't eat food until hours later.

Depending on your exercise goals, you may want to eat before or after exercise but it certainly isn't essential.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/eating-before-or-after-...

Eh, for retaining muscle density & mass I'll defer to sports medicine tradition and what I learned from trained coaches there—

Healthline also posts articles saying it's important to eat right after exercise, so I gather they aren't speaking unilaterally in either case:

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/eat-after-workout

Yea, I'm not trying to argue that eating right after exercise is not important. I just don't believe it's essential. Your body will use nutrients from the post-workout meal to help rebuild muscle and help your body recover so it's highly recommended. If muscle mass and density is a top priority than you may consider it essential for sure.

I lost over 100 pounds by reducing carbs and skipping breakfast. And I hardly miss it at all.

Depends what you are looking to get out of it, I never used to eat breakfast, maybe I was always just unsatisfied with it, but in a way I was unwittenly doing intermittent fasting. It certainly helped me maintain a healthy weight and I'm seemingly healthy by all metrics but for those that need the nutritional benefits to start an early morning and just feel good about getting up in the morning that's the real benefit when you have a routine to stick to.

Having a schedule and routine is massively important and can outweigh the benefits/detriments of other choices like whether or not you eat breakfast.

If you are going to eat breakfast, be wary of the stuff that's marketed as breakfast foods and cook with real ingredients.

I think little of the advice so far is that useful.

What happens when you burn out is that you engage in a unsustainable situation, often for some time, until the effect catches up with you. To not burn out again you need to regain the connection between e.g. working to much and a decrease in performance. You need the realization that engaging in this unsustainable situation will hurt you again.

Also burn out is often a nice way to say that you are essentially having mental health issues caused by the situation you are in. Not generally something to take lightly. And not something you want to experience repeatedly.

I haven't read it yet but "It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work" might be a good start.

I think the old adage "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" rings true here.

After you burn yourself out a couple of times you'll see it coming a mile away, so you dial it way back until you're all caught up on sleep and motivated to do good work again.

If it's already too late this time around use your PTO, detach from anything with a battery, and spend some time in nature.

I quit the job that was causing my burnout, flew to Argentina, and spent some time hiking in Patagonia.

Worked remarkably well.

Tell me more!

For me, it was getting into martial arts. Quit my last job due to burn out, started martial arts a few weeks after and I reckon it is probably one of the best things I've done in my life.

Take a step back and figure out what you really care about and be humble.

You may find that you are placing alot of attention on things that ultimately don't matter. When I've been in tough times, 8/10 times I've put blinders on and tried to fix everything except what is broken for me. It's a cycle that you have to break!

There's a reason why pride is in religious tradition the cardinal sin thats the root to all others, it blinds you to all sorts of things -- you start believing your own bullshit.

I sat and analyzed the things that were bugging me most.

It turned out it was the hour and a half commuting on ridiculously crowded trains every day, the total lack of privacy I had in my open office, and management which wasn't flexible about my hours.

So I ran away to Europe for three months and when I came back I landed myself a remote job.

I love the product, management is very handsoff, and I'm basically left to myself most days.

I get tons of work done because it's so easy to focus.

I'm never on a super crowded and long commute (or at least not daily).

Everyone in my company is always happy to hear my updates which I post here and there as I work.

And sometimes I take a nap for thirty minutes during lunch.

Life has never been better for me. I've eliminated the bad (commute, bad management, lack of privacy, inability to focus in a crowded office environment) which lets me focus on the parts I love (delving into a problem and solving it, letting myself be tired when I'm tired, not bounded by hours but instead by output).

It's not for everybody, and I love seeing my coworkers in the office, but I have enough of a social life I can make sure I'm not ending up a loner.

So in the end, I recommend identifying exactly what it is that's burning you out. For me it was the aforementioned issues, for others it might be something else. Once you can solve for X, Y can be less burnt out :-).

Long runs.

Before a long run my mind cycles through what I need to do at work, at home, for my aging parent. I just get trapped thinking through this laundry list of worries.

After a long run my mind is different. I need calories. I need a shower. I want to do something outdoorsy with my kids.

1. Sports

2. In a given team, never be the person who cares the most. Lots of power come from simply not caring so much. Only care deeply about things you're in a position to change.

3. Weed

"high-performance knowledge worker that places a lot of self-worth in the quality of his work "

I have a very similar story to yours and it took me a few years to figure this out. You may have to learn to accept a lower level of performance from yourself. You may need to accept that you can't put out the type of quality that you used to, and at the speed you used to. Burn out is _serious_ and it can drag you down a pretty dark path. Beating yourself up over not being who you know you are will make things a lot worse. It isn't easy to do, but it also isn't permanent. It's better to let things go for a while (maybe even a year or two) until you are in a place mentally where you can handle the load of your own expectations (in combination with the load of all the different stressors in your life).

Move slowly and accept a long timeline for recovery. I'm finding that it is still quite easy to slip back into burnout if I push too hard. Spend time working on basic self care. Are you sleeping well? Are you eating healthy food? Are there any chronic health concerns that you could take this time to address? Are you depressed? Consuming too much alcohol? You might find that the way back starts with just taking care of yourself, and doing what you can to shield yourself from internal and external stressors.

"I plan and I scheme"

Before I started to recover I had a list of all the things that I expected myself to do. I even broke it down into the quarters of the year that I expected to achieve things by. That list, and the consequences of planning and self expectation had nearly terminal consequences. Consider that, and be gentle with your own expectations. I still record my ideas and the things that I want to do, but they aren't actionable. They'll still be waiting for me when I'm ready.

Burnout is often when you expend a lot of energy and accomplish little. You can make lots of money, get promotions, but it has to align with personal goals.

For me, my image of success was buying an Alienware and playing games all day, so the long hours of a startup took me away from that after a certain level of wealth.

I find the cure for burnout is not doing nothing, but rather expending energy towards something where you have progress. If you like to play games, play competitively for a while. Go for some exercise, learn a new language, pick up martial arts. Something that's quite tiring but gives you rapid progress.

My first major cure was going from tech to a 14-hour shift barista job. Second cure was teaching programming to students, two months on the road. Third cure was picking up a CTO job to rescue a dying startup. Fourth playing and winning a major multiplayer game. Fifth was two back to back weeks of corporate training and startups.

YMMV, but I've had year long rest breaks which didn't help. It was the tiring jobs that cured me.

It's been mentioned a few times already but I just wanted to +1 the suggestion of considering therapy. And I don't even mean that in a "you sound like you need therapy" sense; I think therapy can be a great tool for anyone trying to improve the way they handle stresses like this, regardless of whether you think anything is "wrong" with you (e.g. depression, anxiety, etc). I have struggled with fairly severe anxiety at points in my career/life, but therapy has just generally helped me a lot with handling stress, not taking things so personally, fighting procrastination, not coupling so much of my self-worth to my work performance, etc.

Consider traveling somewhere far for 2-3 weeks. Leave the phone at home.

For me, traveling resets my anxiety to zero. It reminds me there is so much more to life than “work,” and lets me enjoy those things: nature, natural wonders, cultures, languages, food, arts, ...

Strick no work days. When I feel the early signs of burning out, I just do a weekend without working at all. Including checking emails or monitoring things.

It works only if you actually like what you do. You might have bigger issues that need to be addressed.

What works for me is learning to have fun (again). That means discovering a new activity (or an old one that I haven't done in years). It has to be something non coding related like cooking, painting, playing an instrument, a video game, exercise, a writing project, maybe a couple of those at the same time.

My hypothesis is that the little spark of having fun at something will trigger something in my brain that will fuel my passion and energy after a couple of weeks.

Personally meditation has never worked for me. I did it daily for years when I was younger. It's possible I was too young, or maybe I wasn't doing it properly.

Light exercise and good sleeping habits also work great.

I am focusing on one day at a time, one week at a time. Seeing a psychotherapist and attending various groups when I have the energy.

Burnout for me is a deeply physical experience of contant tension and utter exhaustion, with mental overwhelm and low stress-tolerance. So I find that I have to take things on the moment-by-moment level to see what I'm good for, and give myself permission to cancel everything if need be.

I'm also taking small, but practical and tangible steps towards a difficult life transition and health goal. Each step I take (there have been many) has lifted a bit of weight off me and put wind in my sails, because I've been on the fence about it for so long. I really enjoy and appreciate these 'small wins'.

Even on that personal journey side of things, I am not planning much, if anything, beyond the next day or two at a time (even while I have longer-term projects I am working on).

I have put my business on indefinite 'tickover', servicing existing clients but not doing any work of expansion at this stage. I have communicated with all staff about that as well and let them know that I am not available for any kind of meetings, calls or creative work.

I have 'uncommitted' from various projects (whether personal or shared/group) for which the ball was in my court. This alone gave me a lot of headspace to move forward in other ways.

I'm sleeping a lot, mostly at night, with some daytime naps. I've been enjoying playing RuneScape again, spending time tidying up and decluttering at home, sitting in cafes, going for short walks, doing self-care stuff.

People say to read books, but part of my burnout was information overwhelm. The one book that's been helping me a lot is Essentialism by Greg McKeown. GTD is also helpful but only when I have the energy to follow its guidelines.

For me the trick is to just really not expect anything much of myself for now. It's also Winter where I am, so I can call it hibernation, which helps.

One general thing that has really helped is being honest about where I am at, coming out to other people about it, and treating this burned-out stage of life as seriously as if I had pneumonia. Treating it as a friend rather than an enemy.

Hope this helps.

You got this!

Take vacations! That means time completely unplugged from work and work-like things. I once went about 7+ years without any vacations. I literally hit a point where I was so burnt out, I was unable to function.

Don't put up with more than one or two weeks of 45+ hour weeks in a quarter. It's one thing to have a push for a release... If it's taking more than that, you aren't the problem.

Ensure a daily downtime... for me, I tend to be a late starter. I spend the morning catching up on emails, setting up tasks for the day, reading sites like this. I take lunch away from my desk. If there are meetings, I try to reschedule them all for before lunch. I then take lunch and work mostly noise cancelling headset on the rest of the day. I tend to be more productive in the afternoon/evening anyway. You may find inverting this is more beneficial.

Ensure at least 3 days a week with a 4 hour uninterrupted block to get work done. This is key if you're doing development. This is when you get your real work done, and stress less about the hours outside this core block.

At least that's where I am. I've been at this a couple decades now, and constantly learning. Which is another aspect of my mornings. They allow me to read/experiment etc.

I went through a really bad burn out and depression a year and a half ago. I was dealing with layoffs at work, a failing relationship with my wife, death in the family and having to support two people financially when their health was failing.

At the darkest moment I was incapable of sleeping and eating. I lost 17 pounds in about 2 months. I stopped work for a month and a half and worked 2 days a week when I came back, slowly raising that to 4 days over a period of 5 months.

I broke down my problems thusly:

1) Professionally I wanted to either accept my situation with the layoffs or find a new job. Things changed at work and I decided to stick around. I offload a lot more work to my team and delegate way more than before. My team accepts their new responsibilities because it allows them to prove themselves and I get to manage my energy levels.

2) Socially I needed to accept that I had little control over outcomes even if my decision process was the right one. I read Marcus Aurelius as well as books to deal with divorce and separation.

3) Physiologically I went to cuddling events and connected on deep levels with people. Took up meditation (even got a Muse Headband which I recommend) and do sunbathing once or twice a week to keep energy levels up. I also have co-workers pair with me on brutal intensive workouts once a week.

4) Mentally: Therapy helped me deal with death and other aspects of my life I was unhappy about and it's continuing today.

If I were to be totally frank... I'm still not 100% and I'm still considering reducing my work hours some more so I can spend more time fixing my new house up and doing projects that bring me joy. /edit formatting

I took six months off last year after spending six and a half years at a startup, from beginning through acquisition and eventual decline. I went from front-end developer to director of engineering, and completely burned out by the end.

I read "Ego is the Enemy", which helped me a lot in identifying why I stayed so long in a position that was bad for me (I was addicted to the title). When I quit, I established all these rules on how I was going to spend my day: out by 9am, back no earlier than 6pm, walk all day, take photos, become a better person.

Terrible idea.

I'd substituted one form of stress (imposter syndrome) for another (impossible goals). Pretty quickly I realized my mistake and accepted I actually had some baggage I needed to let go.

For the first month, I let myself do nothing. I could sleep late, watch movies, walk, or do anything else as long as I wasn't pressuring myself to succeed. In doing so, I was able to jettison my identity (I was a DIRECTOR after all..yeesh), and begin to identify what I actually wanted in life. It took me a full month until one morning I woke up without dread.

After that day I set a simple good: take one good photo a day. I eased back into a creative lifestyle, making sure I enjoyed the work every step of the way. My wife, through quitting coffee, inspired me to build an app that helped track my lesser addictions: coffee, chocolate, sugar, gaming. Now I was being creative and improving myself.

Through all this I learned what I really wanted, what was hurting me in and out of work, and with this knowledge I was able to rebuild my persona into someone who was happy and energized.

tl;dr Take it slow, don't pressure yourself.

> "My wife, through quitting coffee, inspired me to build an app that helped track my lesser addictions: coffee, chocolate, sugar, gaming."

Can you please share more details about your app? Thanks in advance!

I took a 2 year break, and moved in to a tangentially related job. It helped a lot, but I still don't have the drive I did at one point to work 8 hours and then come home and work on person projects all night.

I was a full stack and then primarily backend developer for ~7 years. The burn-out hit hard in the last year or so. A lot of it was burn out specifically due to working on primarily B2B stuff, but it affected everything.

I went to a new company that let me move around job wise. I did special projects for a few months that were heavy on the programming side, I bootstrapped a small security team for about a year, and then I bootstrapped a small platform/devops team for about a year.

Then I got bored and went back to being a full time backend engineer at my current company.

It was a great experience, I'm really glad I did it. I learned a ton about stuff I knew existed but didn't know well enough to speak intelligently about. I'm glad im not doing it anymore, and the company I was with during my 2 year break wasn't great, but I wouldnt trade it for anything else.

I try (keyword try) to stick to my base routine that involves sleep, work, exercise, cook food/prep, washing/cleaning, meditation, duolingo practice, shopping for necessities and non-essentials that makes things a little nicer e.g. new high thread bedding and bed topper, coffee (for the times I give myself a reward for staving it off for several days), oil-infused humidifyer. Reading and writing is also thrown in whenever I can stop myself from procrastinating on youtube. All that fills up most of my daily time, I always find I have a list of things to do but either put them off or don't get around to it which is my struggle to have true "free time".

That's probably the crux of it, being able to forget about work and have your mind taken off it. Perhaps making a vacation plan that will ensure you are busy having a new experience or relaxing whatever it may be to take your mind off work. After all our employment does occupy most of minds on a daily basis.

For me, it was taking time for some self-motivated projects. I am really only happy if I a planning/designing/building something. The way I cure burnout is to stop working on other people's priorities, and take on a challenging project that is entirely self-motivated. An achievable dream, that a few weeks of full time effort (with time off to sleep and eat well) will make happen.

For my first episode of burnout, I took some time off and built the ham radio antenna system that I had wanted for a while. Which involved some engineering planning, some construction planning (schedule the backhoe, schedule the concrete, schedule friends for a tower raising party, planning the after-antenna-raising BBQ party...), and lots of physical work out in the sun. It was an achievable dream, and entirely about scratching my own itch for fun.

For me, just "relaxing on the beach" never works, whether I am burned out or not. I need to be planning/designing/building. YMMV.

10 years ago, I went through an intense period of burn-out after 2 consecutive death marches at work. Just the thought of work gave me stomach cramps.

I told my manager at the time that for the foreseeable future, I'd be coming in at 10:30am and go home at 4 or 5pm and to give me an assignment that was isolated (as in: something that could be developed without many interactions with critical pieces of the rest of the system). It was either that or just quit. My manager was very understanding so that's how it went.

I decided to dive into new hobbies and classes that took a lot of time, often 5 days a week, and often starting at 5pm.

After about 6 months I could bring myself to occasionally read an email after work again and I was my old self again after about a year.

To avoid these issues in the future, I simply stopped working as hard as I did. It helped that I also met my now-wife at the end of my recovery year, which forced me into a better work/life balance. (E.g. dinner at 6pm.)

I put a strict timeline on the activities that were burning me out, which were contracting and legal problems. I scheduled about 4 hours a week to work on them, and I told myself if the outcome wasn't good then it could go to hell because that's all the time it was worth. Then I worked on stuff I liked and thought was important in the rest of my time.

It took about 1.5 years to get through the work, and another year or so for the last traces of burnout to go away. In retrospect, I think letting go of the fear of failure was what helped me the most.

I was influenced by the passage on burnout from Feynman's memoirs, for what it's worth (excerpted here: https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/kilcup.1/262/feynman.html).

Square breathing helped a lot: hold breath 2-4 seconds, exhale, then inhale, hold 2-4 seconds. Do this whenever you feel stressed, kicks you out of fight or flight.

Tying up loose ends helps. Reduce the number of things you need to focus on. And fix any little problems in your life.

I don't mean big problems. Little naggy things. Just reduce the number of things you need to worry about.

Make sure to sleep. I've found autosleep on my apple watch helpful. It does an hrv measure now. Hrv correlates strongly with overall stress level. Tracking this seems to have helped.

Time helps. And if I could have done something different, I would have done far fewer trips: my burnout was extended by a series of trips all in a row.

However, a long solo trip to a new place where you make a routine can be nice. It was little trips brought about by external circumstance that increased my stress.

Here is what worked for me:

1) Stop working after work hours. Read a book, meditate and hang out with friends or family instead. Passive consumption doesn’t help.

2) Get on a bike and ride ( hiking or other outdoor exercise worked as well)

3) Quit my job and started doing something I enjoy more (for me it was audio).

These titles helped me a a lot. The breathing technique was transformative. I've given that one out to a myriad of people.

https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Performance-Elevate-Burnout-Scie...

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Power-Breath-Techniques-Conce...

Also, maybe do some reading on the negative effects of perfectionism.

I've been there before. I recently came across Jamis Buck's talking about his experience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71suekjBV9Y and I strongly recommend it. If only to hear someone eloquently talk about going through the process.

Previously, I saw his talk about generating mazes and it has always stuck with me. (Unfortunately that one wasn't recorded). Speaking as a developer, I have been writing code and solving problems professionally for so long that I have forgotten what it's like to just write code for fun. For me, and not for anyone else. Without any expectations or stress. And listening to him talking about rediscovering fun by exploring different ways to create mazes really clicked with me.

I've only recently gotten back into that, and it has been embarrassingly awkward to knock off the rust and put myself in the mindset of "Let's just do this because it could be cool".

I even bought his book on generating mazes. Not because I'm particularly into them, but to help exercise those sore muscles and I'm thinking I can perhaps feed on his passion. A coworker told me he also put one out about building ray tracers. To branch out beyond that, I've also begun putting together a list of fun hacks that interest me personally.

Now I say all of this, but I do think while time away from your day-to-day is very important (take some vacation time! spend time exploring other hobbies!), even after a significant time away, when you come back to your day job you may still be unmotivated/numb/demoralized. I'm hoping rediscovering the fun in what I do helps put things in perspective more than just listening to others preach. Helps rekindle the feelings and reasons why I pursued my career in the first place beyond just making a living.

Good luck. I wish you the best.

Edit: OH! I completely forgot. Make sure to prioritize the easy-to-ignore-things. Spend time with friends/family. Exercise. Make sure you're getting enough sleep.

Those sound so simple, but I strongly believe it's incredibly tough when you ignore those basics.

The best advice I can offer is: find a hobby that captivates you.

For me, it was motorcycling. It’s not for everyone, but the reason it helped me is that it requires precision control and mental focus. When I got my first motorcycle and went for rides I didn’t have time to think about anything else; driving the bike well and improving my ability took 110% of my attention.

I burned out and tailspun in my job for about a year, but the relaxation I felt after going for a long ride showed me what’s healthy, and I followed that feeling until it got me out of the rut.

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Power-Breath-Techniques-Conce...

https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Performance-Elevate-Burnout-Scie...

These helped me a great deal.

One idea is to try to focus the things you once thought were fun. If you are a developer try some recreational coding. Just build something fun.

This is a bit of a plug but checkout Jamis Buck. I interviewed him about burn out and I learned a lot. It can be a slow process to rekindle things after burn out so give yourself time.

https://corecursive.com/025-burn-out-and-recreational-progra...

No choice. I had to.

Homelessness is not an option for me. I just dug myself out of the hole, even if I was out of energy.

I had a text file on my computer where I wrote down the steps I had to take. Then I followed this todo-file for maybe 6 years. It was organized into sections: Now, next phase, next phase after that, and so on. It got more sketchy the further it is into the future.

I have been following this TODO-list for 6 years now. I am now at a point where I can add whatever I want to it, almost. I kindof succeeded.

I recently interviewed a clinical psychologist who specializes in burnout about this on a podcast recently: https://www.realworlddevops.com/episodes/avoiding-treating-b...

The main takeaways: spend way more time with friends and family, get (back) into your hobbies, and take a very solid break (2+ weeks).

Depends on the type of burnout, but I would caution about doubling down on exercise.

For two reasons:

1: It can be an attempt to avoid working through the issues that led to the burnout. Sometimes it can be like replacing one addiction with another.

2: Exercise is stress, and burnout is a reaction to prolonged stress. Moderate exercise can help, by elevating mood. Heavy exercise in burnout can lead to prolonged fatigue and CFS like symptoms.

And you can get burnout from exercising too much. Had this happen when I was training for some ultra-distance stuff before I had the proper training framework.

For sure, there is a lot of overlap between overtaining syndrome and job burnout.

This might be a little out there...

Read Autobiography of a Yogi first.

Contemplate on "who are you?"

You are just a tiny fraction of the whole consciousness.

So when you do any kind of work, realize you are not the Doer. You're just an instrument serving the moment unfolding in front of you.

This is the teaching Lord Krishna gave to Arjuna when he felt can't fight in the war against his family in the allegorical story in the Bhagavad Gita.

Lens your perspective a bit...

I would recommend if your problem is overplanning, how have you responded to spontaniety? e.g. Attending figure drawing sessions where you don't know who you'll be sketching and the distinct and sudden social change around viewing nakedness. Or roller blading or dancing or jazz, all of which hold spontaneity or the appearance of such as part of the enjoyment of the activity.

I find this advice useful for breaking out of a slump, not for preventing burnout.

I have to take the opposite approach for burnout: cut things out. Do less. Cross things off the Todo list and _dont_ add a new one.

I find my biggest sources of stress are those little tasks that take you 10 hours, but would take someone else 1 hour. Constantly fighting against unknowns and feeling helpless leads to frustration and burnout.

You can do one or two things in life really, really well. If you're juggling too much, you'll be mediocre and never make try progress you need to find value and positive reinforcement through praise.

There's huge value in novelty seeking as parent pointed out, but I've always had to approach it from a "fill in the missing piece" point, not from "add this extra thing to my overworked life" point.

I was under the impression that "getting through/back from burnout" is when a burnout enters slump phase, which is what OP specified.

Sleep. I took a day off from work to just sleep. If you can take a day off for being snotty-nose sick, you can take a day off for being mentally sick. Burnout is depression and it's a real disease.

Throwing away my current TODO list, without evaluation. The important things will resurface. The unimportant things were too much psychic baggage.

That's about it. Everything else flows from there.

You should see a doc for a physical, you want to be sure your blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, and particularly thyroid hormone are in check.

If you are experiencing irritability (blowing up at people) then you definitely want to take an SSRI. Self-loathing would justify a heavy dose.

Definitely exercise more. The 20 minutes a day advise is way too little for lifelong fitness.

Do we really have to Ask HN this every few days?

It's almost as if the audience of this site participates in an incredibly toxic work culture and we're hearing regular cries for help from the victims of it.

Burnout is real. I was promoted from an entry level to senior level engineer in three years at one of the top tech companies. My compensation is great, and I’m saving heavily. Also, I’m exhausted. As in... I’m wondering what to do next with my life and work. Burn out is an understatement. I don’t talk to my spouse about this because this person has a lot of stuff to deal with, and my family relationships have wined down after they found out what I get paid and basically just wanted me to hand over everything because they believe they are entitled to it. So who do you turn to? It doesn’t solve my problems but it at least helps reading threads like this to see others perspectives.

Easy answer: therapists.

They're paid to listen to you and help you figure out your problems.

If you’re posting to the hiring thread it’s probably not a good idea to make comments like these...

It appears to be a very common problem so I guess the answer is yes.

I understand that it can be annoying to have the same question asked often. It is likely the effect of having a constant influx of new HN readers.

Perhaps if we closed the doors to new users we could solve this problem. I doubt we'll see much support for that solution, and justifiably so

Getting professional help (namely Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) to have a more positive perspective on my every day life.

A bad work/life balance will make your burn out fast but many don't realize bad mental health will lead you there just as fast.

I feel like the term (burning out) is just sugar coating depression because that's more sexy to talk about.

I started seeing a therapist. They have helped me to learn more about myself and now I can better recognize my mental state.

Burnout is a complicated topic, but I think we can all agree that it has real mental health effects. Trying to solve for the symptoms is one approach, but it’s also important to understand why it happened in the first place. What motivated someone to work themselves to a state of burning out?

A therapist is one approach, and in my experience they will help uncover some of the inner workings to help you explore and understand maybe why it happened in the first place. They are like our rubber duck to help us debug ourselves. And with that information, we can start to make the necessary changes in our personal and professional lives so that we maintain a healthy work-life balance.

See this site:

https://www.mind-body-health.net/

I have suffered many burnouts, because of my background which I won't go into here, and because of too many life stressors.

I have found that site to be spot on, both in the description of the syndrome, and in its suggestions for recovery.

When I was burnout exercise really helped to get better. Not gym, I had no energy for that. But just small walks for example. Keep moving. I ended bicycling to work which was great, but started just walking from my kids school which was close by. I realized I felt better after those walks so started to walk more. Take care.

Read this book, hope it helps. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812992555/?coliid=I1001ZM95A7AZQ&...

Try Cold showers . Working well for me. Also read - https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Full-Mindful-Wisdom-Monks/dp/935... (Thank me later.)

For me, the combo was:

1. Establish healthy habits: eat well, exercise regularly, sleep well, feel gratitude, focus on the people in my life.

2. Derive my sense of self-worth from anything and everything not related to work.

Step away to take some rest, like a vacation. Take control back by doing some small projects for yourself and by your yourself.

I moved to a more commercial role. Presales. Few months of that and you really start to miss engineering. :)

Proceed with caution but what worked for me is give notice and went on to find a new, better workplace.

Be patient, it takes time for your body to recover from bouts of sustained exertion...

Join your local makerspace. If you don't have a local makerspace, start one.

Practice taking breaks. You have yo practice it to make it stick.

Start sleeping 10+ hours a day.

A dosage of Dan Peña

I'm a little late to the party but since I've just been right in the middle of going through all this, I thought I'd add my perspective.

About 6 months ago I quit my job at a big-name software company to take a year of personal leave. Up to that point my career had been on a steady upward track, so I never thought I'd find myself taking such a relatively sudden step. To make a long story short, while it might have looked to others like I had it together on the outside, my mental and physical health were suffering and I was headed in a downward spiral. I knew I needed to step back and figure things out.

For several months after I quit, I fell back into my usual patterns. With more time on my hands, I started working on a side project that consumed nearly as much of my mental energy as my day job had. Unsurprisingly, my health didn't improve much. I was still dealing with anxiety, sensitivity to stress, obsession over my work, anger issues, burnout and depression among others.

The main reason I had quit my job was to work on myself. I was in fact doing somewhat better, having moved outside the city, calmed down my pace of life, and so forth. I'd been able to travel a little, spend more time on my hobbies, etc. But my sabbatical seemed like a ticking time bomb, in that eventually I'd have to go back to work and then things would not be much improved, if at all, over what they had been before. I had the unpleasant feeling that I was hiding from reality -- postponing an inevitable reckoning. Ultimately I knew I was still bound up by the same negative habits that had weighed me down on the job.

My boyfriend eventually got fed up with me and he confronted me, making me realize that I truly was wasting my break. I began, at last, to make a serious effort to work on myself. I'm making progress now, and I think my turning point has to do with a combination of factors. Others have already mentioned a few of these, so I will just summarize the main ones: getting more sleep; waking up on schedule every day; meditating in the morning; planning my day out; picking one or two social activities every week. Also doing yoga every day; limiting my work sessions to focus blocks; interspersing with less cognitive activities like taking walks, running errands etc.; supplementing my diet to address mood issues (this has been huge); improving my relationship with my boyfriend; and greatly limiting sources of negativity in my life.

I think it's worth noting that I'm having to go through several iterations of the above list to be successful. To name some random examples: a lot of the popular meditation apps didn't work for me. It took me a while to find one that did work and that I would use every morning. I also discovered that not all kinds of exercise work for me. I'm still actively trying new workouts, yoga and stretching routines to increase my mobility and reduce pain caused from working at the computer. I initially intended to reduce or eliminate my caffeine intake, but I ended up combining it with a supplement (L-Theanine) to moderate its side effects instead. I found that too much social activity in a given week was an energy drain for me, but that going to one or two events -- like a weekly Meetup -- turned out to be a good balance. And so on.

I'm definitely still in the process of experimentation. But I can say that things are finally starting to improve and that I'm enjoying nearly every day now, which is a huge gain for me. I'm experiencing less everyday stress, anxiety, negativity, and work obsession. I'm actually starting to looking forward to going back to work again.

Burnout is a complex topic and it's possible that I'm oversimplifying the factors that started to bring about change for me. I also know that I'm fortunate having the opportunity to step back completely from working, in order to take the time I need to overcome it. But for anyone else going through this I wanted to share my experience, and say that there definitely is hope for us!

> places a lot of self-worth in the quality of his work ...

I felt exactly the same way, but over the years I've learned that it's a little more complicated for me. For context, I'm a Senior (Blah Blah Blah) ... 2 decades making stuff with code.

I place a lot of demands on myself regarding the quality of my work.

I place a lot of my own self-worth on the value of my work.

Burnout happens when my work has no value (to me and/or anyone else) any longer. This can be for many reasons, but it's typically because I've recognized that the thing that I'm working on either serves no good purpose, or simply serves no purpose at all. Less frequently, it's because I've reached the end of what I can do/learn -- i.e. that rare occasion where you can go to your boss and say "I'm done, I've finished all of my work" and you literally mean it. It runs. There are no more features. Yeah, I can refactor it another hundred times, but there's literally no reason for me to be here any longer unless I want to make-work myself[0] into a new reason for being here like I did the last 30-or-so times.

On the demand side -- I can be a bit nuts about doing things right. I've been around the block -- "best" and "practice" aren't meant ironically -- there are times it is "correct" to break practice in favor of performance, working around a leaky abstractions, actual "correctness" of the outcome requires it. There are times it is "correct" to agonize over architecture details, calculate pricing to the penny/hour/minute). But sometimes that agonizing is being done because if it weren't, there'd be no reason to write the thing in the first place.

Your last paragraph hints at something a lot bigger going on in your life, so without details I can't help you terribly well except to say:

(1) Don't believe that the situation you've gotten yourself into is unique -- you are not the first to go through it, you won't be the last[0]. There's a solution. It may be "hard" but "hard" problems but I'm guessing if you frequent here you have a few good strategies for breaking down/solving hard problems. If not, well, that's basically the gist of it.

(2) Is all of this hinting that maybe "getting through" burning out might be best done by making a change to whatever the "big thing" is that burned you out? For me, I was in a systems job when I wanted to be writing software. So I scripted my job out of existence and writing web-based intranet software became my job (early 00s) within a year and a half.

(3) Life, necessarily, involves trials/suffering. My brain is naturally wired up to resist and fear any major change (e.g. changing schools when I was young, changing jobs/careers as an adult) that comes with a large amount of unknowns. The only thing that works for me is remembering that every single other past, major, change -- including the ones that went terribly -- were all somewhere in the range of "far less awful than I thought" to "incredible things that I regret not doing sooner".

(4) Be thankful. This is not meant as "First World Shaming" (I have no idea where you live, so there's that!). I can't speak to you, but for me, even at the worst times there has been plenty of good standing right in front of me. At some point I realize I'm actively choosing to be miserable and I either (a) condition myself to focus on everything/everyone that I love in my life or (b) solve whatever it is that is causing me to choose to be miserable. But from that point forward, I actively attack any self-pity with a reminder that I am now actively working toward solving that problem, so I can choose to focus on how great things are going to be when I have completed executing my plan.

Nope, it doesn't always work. Most of that advice would fall into things that self-help books peddle pretty hard but who's success is limited to that of the author of the book (and most of the time, probably not even that), but I wish you well and hope you emerge victorious!

[0] There was a great song around 07-08 timeframe "This too shall pass" who's music video went viral. I loved it because I was going through some awful stuff at the time and sometimes a simple phrase can calm your mind, but I really appreciated the video. It was a room-sized Goldberg setup that ran the length of the song. The metaphor worked. There are quiet moments, loud moments, and a lot of mess. The worst experience of my entire life made the best part of my life as it is now, possible.

Most burnout is the result of a physiological phenomenon known colloquially as the "coolidge effect"- aka NOVELTY.

All animals appear to be hard wired to respond well to interesting and new environments. The "coolidge effect" has traditionally been studied through the lens of sexual reproduction. It explains why a rat, presented with the same female, will lose interest with her over time. But, a rat presented with a new female every hour, will have sex until he is physically unable to move.

You lack novelty, as almost all jobs do. The trick for you is to abstract this primal drive for novelty, into a higher order function. You need to somehow trick yourself into finding your work novel and interesting.

One example that may work for you is TDD. TDD establishes an abstract system of work + reward.

A more advanced strategy is to find a way to STOP generalizing your work. If you work in programming for example... you will find that over the years, all problems begin to look the same. Sure maybe X is Y this time, and maybe you're storing it in this database, not that one, but the generic problem you're solving looks exactly like the problem you solved a week, a month, a year ago. The female rat in your cage, is the same rat.

What you must do is never look at your work that way. Instead, dig deeper into each problem. Dig, dig, dig. Find the novelty in each solution you produce. Make it a habit to never just solve the problem. Instead, become an expert in the solution of that problem - understand it fully.

I once worked with an excellent iOS developer who not only solved every task he was given, but he took it upon himself to become an expert in UI design. He wasn't content just implementing the UI, he wanted to understand state of the art design and apply that to his work.

This all assumes that your burnout isn't SO severe that you can't even start your work most days. If you're already to that level of burnout, then you need to start with just getting your life back on the rails. ROUTINE. Add rigid structure to your day. Use google calendar to map our your "ideal day", then shoot to achieve it every day. Enable notifications for Google Calendar, to remind yourself where you should be throughout the day. Here's an example:

6:00 AM - Wake up, warm tea, breakfast.

6:30 AM - Shower, get dressed, shave.

7:00 AM - WORK SESSION 1

9:00 AM - Break. Light exercise. Coffee?

9:30 AM - WORK SESSION 2

10:30 AM - Break. Get outside. Drink some water.

11:00 AM - WORK SESSION 3

1:00 PM - Lunch. Get outside. Do some light exercise. Read the news.

3:00 PM - WORK SESSION 4

5:00 PM - Break. Personal development time. Read. Build. Play an instrument. Workout. Paint a painting. Work on side project.

7:00 PM - Dinner.

8:00 PM - Relax. Watch TV with family. Play a game.

10:00 PM - Get ready for bed.

10:30 PM - In bed

11:00 PM - Asleep.

It's important to remember this is just an "ideal day". You shouldn't expect to always hit it. Modify it to your liking, and use it as a guide.

Good luck. If you're like me, you'll struggle with burnout probably your entire life. I will probably never dive into programming tasks like I did when I was first starting out. But that's not the goal. The goal is to not burnout, and to enjoy my work every day, which I do.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, you're not alone. I'm not sure if my story will be helpful, but perhaps you can draw something from it.

It's been about 4 years since the start of my decline that included me terminating a marriage which wasn't even the bottom of the hole, that was about half way down the descent. Up until that point everyone around me looked at me as successful. Some days they look at me still and classify me as successful, and to some extent I guess they're right. I have what most would deem an impressive job, good income, two amazing kids. But what people see isn't the reality in my head. Of course, I know the reality in my head is just the depression talking, it's not real, but it feels real and that makes it real, to me.

For me, I found Quora a huge help. Answering questions - specifically those that made me really deeply analyze my own mental state, my relationships, what I really value in the world, who I am, how I got here, what I'm thinking, why I think what I do. The act of self analysis and writing about it in a manner that I thought would be helpful to other people was probably the best therapist I could have asked for. Just talking about it is huge! I started off with the questions I felt were easy to answer, sort of an ice breaker and gradually worked up to the hard "face your own existence" type questions.

This process may be helpful for you, it may not. Perhaps a real skin and bones therapist would help. The apathy and lethargy of burnout aren't just a figment of your own imagination, they're your brain's subconscious way of telling you that you need to stop. It's telling you it needs to rest. It's telling me to stop taking care of everyone else's shit and take care of me for once.

As for "getting back," I don't think that's ever going to happen for me. I'm not the same person I was when I started this journey. There is no getting back, nor do I want to. I've realized and remembered a lot of things about myself and my core values that I had let get bulldozed aside by things that don't really matter to me.

On Sunday everything I spent the last 4 years learning about myself was solidified in an instant when at 6:15am I was awoken by a massive explosion across the field from my bedroom window that wiped a house completely off the map, evacuated 35 people from their homes, including someone I care very deeply about who lives 2 doors from the explosion, and left a man dead.

I will never be going back to letting other people's needs and priorities usurp my own. The fact is, work doesn't make me happy, money doesn't make me happy. It's a means to an end. At some point, I'd made work my priority and let myself believe it was more important than me. I'd let myself believe it made me happy. It doesn't. Problem solving is my compulsion and something I'm really good at. Work enables and feeds that compulsion. That compulsion feeds my family and puts a roof over their heads, but that compulsion doesn't make me happy, it's just a habit like biting my nails.

I want to do something that matters, to me. I'm inspired to do things, I'm full of excitement and wonder again like I was before, I feel joy. But I'm not inspired by stuff that doesn't mean anything.

It may be a while before you figure out what it is that matters to you. You're grieving. Well not really grieving, but the process is similar and can't be rushed. You can't reason with emotion, you can't feel good just because you tell your brain to feel good. You can't rationalize your way out of it. It's a process that you kind of have to go through.

One thing is to get married

My bet is that those "issues and events on multiple frontiers in life" came from that sort of area in the first place.

In a word, no. If one thinks that marriage will simplify life and reduce stresses, well, I have some bad news for you.

Don't get me wrong -- marriage is/can-be wonderful, but you owe it to your partner to bring your mentally-healthy self to the table, not to burden someone else with your problems because new challenges will result. Life is struggle, and having someone to lean on is wonderful.

I agree. Marriage brings new stresses, but you shouldn't think that someone else will fix you if you're broken.

I like what one of my coworkers said: Marriage can bring higher highs and lower lows, but the average is still better.

Of course, all of that is nullified if you both don't have the commitment and put in the effort to make it work.

I take a LOT of supplements. There are deficiencies in the nutritional benefits of food due to overfarming and other environmental factors. Burning out is NOT a normal state of being - in the past humans did not have the luxury of resting.

So why do we feel this now? Lack of nutrition. Try taking supplements and see how it changes things. YMMV and please check with your physician before changing your diet or taking any pills.

I’ll list stuff here if others show interest.

Please do

Absolutely! Again, please consult with a physician before taking any dietary supplements:

Magnesium Selenium Iodine Niagen CoQ10 Astralagus Zinc Turmeric Vitamin C

To name a few!

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