Burnout caused by chronic stress is widespread
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We are making employees lives miserable to reduce the need of planning for companies. Quite often management lacks the emotional maturity needed in their positions that hides normal mistakes that are part of the job, push for unrealistic schedules and sometimes even get into bulling as a way of getting what they want.
8 hours plus commute time, that has increased as cities have grown, does not allow people to have time to attend their families, their own finances and have time to relax.
When it comes to human management in companies we are closer to the middle ages than to the current knowledge about human nature.
The 40-hour work week was seen as a step towards ever shorter workdays and weeks thanks to technology. I realize many people now work longer hours, but that should be seen as a problem instead of a fact of life.
Upper management usually does not seem to care whether the people you manage leave the company eventually or try to change teams to get away from you.
I would be interested to know if that is actually the case.
Here in Australia we're going mad for certifications. I had a friend who looked after kids in an after school program. A minimum wage job, but one that she loved. She'd been doing it for nearly 20 years. The government mandated that she needed a $2500 certificate in order to continue to do the job she'd been doing for two decades.
I don't believe there was anything that this certification could have taught her that she didn't already know. Heck, she should have been the one teaching the course. Instead it was being run by an organisation that specialised in running these kinds of certification programs, but certainly didn't specialise in the subject matter.
If we were to mandate certification for managers, my concern would be that - at best - it would end up as just another piece of paper. At worst, it would actively exclude the people who were most qualified and competent, like it did with my friend.
Professional training organisations may not have direct experience with the subject matter, but given a good curriculum prepared by someone who DOES have experience, I don't see why they couldn't deliver a reasonable result. I agree that any "Q and A" sessions, or questions along the lines of "What is it really like working as a..." would not be that useful, though.
Teaches everywhere.
To put it differently, in a 6-man team each employee is responsible and held accountable for around 1/6th of the productivity, but the team manager is responsible and accountable for 100% of the effort.
Hence managers earning higher salaries.
This to reach an office at some arbitrary time everybody seems to follow of the 8/9am start. Hence you have this sudden rush into cities around that time and again with the bulk leaving home in the early evening.
Travel outside those hours or against the commuter grain are such a joy, that the contrast is huge.
Whilst many companies offer flexible hours, they are still the exception and until more flexibility becomes more widespread along with home working or local hub/satellite office working. Such stress will play more and more a factor.
I'd dare say that having a stressful commute alone can on many levels kill of your entire morning productivity. Then you have the costs, adding more stress. Again costs that would be much cheaper (public transport trains here in the UK) if you travel outside peak hours. But then, roads much more pleasant off peak.
But a 4 day week can sure make a difference over a 5 day one. Working longer hours for 4 days, avoiding some of that peak commute stress and focusing on work, for those days and giving yourself 3 days of freedom. It is a fine balance over having 5 days of self imposed stress if your late home and the impact upon a social life. Which means you end up with a less quality social life and/or work life and by this approach you get quality time with both. Though not always suitable for all, it's more palatable for companies who are less flexible. At least what I've found. Though again, depends upon your job.
I spent 5 years making a 1 hour (each way) commute by car, a distance of 8 miles (also each way). It was soul destroying! Wasting 2 hours of my life every workday just felt so meaningless!
Eventually I moved out of the city to a small town 10 miles out of the city, and only then did I realise just how awful it had been. I'm now lucky enough to work from home 3 days a week and work 1 day in the office - and it's only a 20-25 minute drive.
Unfortunately, cycling isn't an option for everyone.
Some times of the year (in many places, half or less), and only if you have showers in your office.
You're spot on here. The option to travel before/after the rush makes a world of difference.
I'm a freelancer/consultant and I've found that when I'm working as a "vendor", as opposed to a "temporary employee" working on-site during normal business hours, and only need to be on-site for meetings and such, I don't mind commuting at all and actually look forward to heading into the city. Novelty aside, I'm sure this is because I'm usually traveling before (heading to a cafe to prepare for an early meeting) or after (late meeting) the rush and can find a seat, have room to breath, etc. However, when I'm stuck doing the 8/9/10-5/6/7 commute, I find the train/subway ride (and myself) miserable.
1. Reduces stress, because all of a sudden your commute is not a total waste of time
2. Makes your client feel better about you working from home
This is precisely why I don't have a standard contract -- which, after doing this for a number of years, still seems very odd to me. A while back, I hired a lawyer to revise and amend a contract _supplied by customer_ only to have it rejected because of the time and effort it would have taken their lawyers to review/revise/amend my changes. As I understand it, this same line of reasoning would also prevent (most) of my clients from signing a contract presented by me. This makes businesses sense, and I've since learned that it's standard practice, but I resent that I'm the one who has to make the take-it-or-leave-it decision about whether to work _for_ this client, as opposed to _with_ this client.
It's because contractors are capex and employees are opex. I'm on a staff augmentation contract at a rate 2x the salary cap for the most senior employees. They keep begging me to convert but can't because I would be taking a $100,000 pay cut. It's a ridiculous situation.
I know some people have noisy kids/distractions at home, but seems like it would work for many engineers. Yet every company I've been at, I suggest it, and people give me a sarcastic look like, "yeah, right, we can't do that!"
Possibly a fear that not being seen at work will hamper advancement?
Or just be overly-active in email/chat.
such a great point. we seem to live in a zero-planning world now.
i'm surprised at how often, at least in app programming projects, i go to great lengths to show a manager how the app is progressing and where it's ultimately heading, and get no meaningful course correction or even a "that looks great"
then, the other shoe drops: after the app is complete and ready (or even after it's gone live) -- only then -- do they take the time to actually look at it and demand a change. and they don't care that it's harder to accomplish at that late stage, or that it damages programmer morale. they actually consider that to be a valid process.
I have a lovely and smart boss but I can not get him to look at stuff properly until after I roll out a potentially massive change to our internal ERP.
Real money on the line as well.
I think a lot of it is that non-programming managers don't really grok on the intrinsic level the vast complexity that can be under the skin of a seemingly simple change.
In fact that is largely our job I guess, to hide all that complexity, when a user selects "order following required stock from supplier" they don't need to know what is happening under neath, they just care about price and when it'll be delivered on a container to one of our sites.
JIT is for more than just compilers these days!
I just refused to join a conference call on Saturday (opting instead to watch my son’s soccer game), and I know I’ll have to answer for it on Monday.
I chose to forgo children as they would have been a distraction from work. Now it’s too late. Ah well.
I am currently recovering from a mild burnout. Self-diagnosed, but I had surely felt a lot of exhaustion, cynicism and ineffectiveness. The curious thing is that I didn't even work that much! (In the end I barely worked at all because I couldn't). What caused it in my opinion was not overwork but the combination of sociopathic senior leadership and an incompetent immediate boss. The senior leadership tried hard to institute a culture of self-blame and fostered the feeling that you were never doing enough while my immediate boss had a preference for the "zerg-rush" style of software development with little design and planning, constantly changing priorities, "motivation" by unrealistic schedules and disregard for quality control (that resulted in several entirely preventable production outages). He also did little to shield us from outside distractions and expected an "always on" attitude (he would message us in the wee hours of the Sunday morning and expect a timely response). All this pushed me hard towards burnout.
In the end I decided to quit my job (high salary be damned) and go on a sabbatical. Already I feel a lot better and am starting to regain some of the interest I had in programming.
Off the top of my head, there should be a moratorium on requiring email responses for non-essentials outside of office hours. I'd like to get rid of most salaried positions and get people paid by the hour. I've a sneaking suspicion that all the crazy hours that are currently "required by the times" would miraculously evaporate once employers were charged for the time they demand of their people.
If you made enough money you could easily save 10+ hours a week by moving closer to work, paying people to run errands for you etc. You could easily have more free time working 50 hours a week than someone with less money would working 40.
My 40h is also already 100% remote, so very hard to improve on in terms of commutes etc. In fact, if I were to switch to non-remote I’d never accept a 40h ass-in-seat position either.
Glad I’m not the only one having this exact line of thought about my future career. If it matters I live in Eastern Europe and I’m approaching 40.
Everything above 35 hours feels like I have no time for myself anymore.
I think the main reason why I don't get the 'FIRE' mentality is because in my country we have a healthy pension system I can look forward to.
Excluding those that are very low on the income scale, for whom everyone agrees life is difficult, I simply don't understand the claims of inescapable demands on skilled white-collar workers' time. If you're making any sort of non-negligible surplus above the basics, then you're at some level making a conscious choice of that surplus (usually for consumption) over a lower-stress job.
I have a friend who's a quant at Goldman Sachs, whose work life is miserable but who makes a good 150k more than me. His labor isn't (currently) valued at more than mine: I could get a similar TC with little effort and a much _better_ working environment, but I have absolutely no interest: I'm consciously trading off compensation consumption for a better work-life balance. The flipside is that he's consciously trading off quality of life for more compensation, for whatever his personal reasons are. It's bizarre to me to claim that it's a bad thing that that choice is presented to him (or to me for that matter).
I get that this sounds like a general-purpose argument against worker protections, but there's a key difference: in the absence of a robust, UBI-like safety net, we as a society have accepted that coercion can include nominally consensual actions taken to avoid bumping up against a lack of whatever we've defined as the basic necessities that everyone is entitled to (food, shelter, etc).
But the work burnout problem is, statistically, almost entirely a middle- and upper-class problem[1], and these are precisely the people who have the comp surplus to consciously choose to trade off compensation for a better quality of life.
I know as always the dimmer readers of comments like this will pattern-match this to the victim-blaming buzzword, but you can simultaneously bemoan the state of a culture and work to improve your lot within it. In this case, there's a fairly simple, concrete solution: perform worse at your current job by putting in less hours or get a job that isn't so rigid as to require a number of hours above what you find to be your healthy level.
[1] the job-related woes of lower income people tend to involve not being able to get enough employment and thus enough income to live off of
Citation needed.
Edit: So self-evident is this equation to some people that they down vote the mere suggestion that working longer hours does not make you better at your job.
For the cases where your work doesn't blindly want longer hours but measures your productivity in a saner way, if you can perform better at your job in less hours (which is totally plausible in many situations), then OBVIOUSLY you should be doing it already.
The fragment of a sentence that you quoted is narrowly referring to a situation where 1) you're still getting productivity out of your marginal hour and 2) your work doesn't arbitrarily require absurd hours as detached from productivity.
> So self-evident is this equation to some people that they down vote the mere suggestion that working longer hours does not make you better at your job
I can't even imagine what would drive someone to spend their weekend time feverishly imagining statements that no one is making so they can feel smug about disagreeing with them.
I'm sorry my comment upset you. It wasn't my intention.
My point was that in many cases people are inclined to work longer as a result of social pressure when it has no positive impact on productivity. In that case, are longer hours "required"? Or is it strictly a choice? My interpretation of what you said was perhaps more binary than you intended.
In those cases, one can simply work less, shrug off the social pressure, and perform at the same level. You allude to this (sort of) in your second paragraph, but this is not as obvious to many people as you state and, I think, benefits from saying explicitly.
when you 'trade' you get something of value in return. if you're getting paid and you think it's a fair pay, it's not automatically 'stupid'. saving more now to pay for future expenses, nest egg, rainy day fund, whatever? how can that be 'stupid'? You have an opportunity to provide the means for a more secure future for your family, today, when that ability may be in doubt - take the pay now for more work.
your dad being a 'hard worker' may have been able to provide things to you that you never knew about at the time (or may never know about).
I think having someone counting the number of hours you have your butt in a seat is a particularly degrading form of micromanagement, and I'm glad I don't have to endure it. Your TC is the only number that matters; there's no financial difference between getting paid 300k and no overtime and getting paid 200k + 100k overtime. It's silly to claim that the one is exploitative and the other is not just because the former involves "unpaid overtime".
To correct your first misconception, we don't count peoples hours, people just tell us how many hours they worked each pay cycle.
We also pay 1.5X per hour for more than 40 hours per week if we asked you to work extra.
The primary advantage is that it aligns everyone incentives. In management I know that there is a very real cost to us if we ask people to work more hours.
It's important that we feel the sting, because it means that we are less likely ask people to work overtime, and only when it's really important.
It also lets people work more or less as they choose. Some people might choose to work 30 hour weeks for a while, and it doesn't cause resentment in other team members. People know they are getting paid less for doing it.
I do like the system, but there are times when you still have to stand up for yourself if your company isn't one of the fairest.
At least for me I can say that I don't follow up on every single request I get, especially when it's many little ones after "the heavy lifting" is done. Management must also learn that this is not bearable.
Of course one needs to be in a somehow comfortable position and one probably needs a few years of work in the field. Still, for employers it's also a risk to find good (replacement) employees which I have never heard management would admit but seen after leaving positions.
Otherwise, there's always gonna be another chump in their 20's who thinks they're just putting in their dues before being able to dial it back a bit, and you're competing with them.
Having just spent years outside the developed world and "working", I realize now that it is very much a spoken rule that "Thou shalt contribute to the economy".
> I know that to recommend that is to take a chance with your livelihood
That's a strange statement to make - it's like you are agreeing with the unspoken rule!
Working less absolutely doesn't take a chance with your livelihood. Step down to 4 days a week and drive a use car, don't have a TV and don't buy a new cell phone. At the end of the month you'll still have exactly the same money.
Step down to three days a week and just live in a smaller place and cut out more things - you'll still have exactly the same money.
There are no chances being taken there, just choices.
We live in an extremely competitive world where we must fight for our livelihoods. The majority of non-white-collar jobs are worse than whatever crap we have to put up with in the good jobs - they get treated worse, paid less, and have less prospects to escape their situation. So every high-paying becomes increasingly competitive, and you cannot realistically spend too little time working or push back too much because you will be replaced. Employers have always been tyrannical to the greatest degree they can get away with, and they will always do so. They don't care, they will squeeze everything they can out of you. Only reason some programmers have it good for now is extremely short supply, and thats quickly changing as more people rush into the field.
That entire structure makes things very convenient for the rich people at the top. As long as there are enough people stuck in dead-end situations, they can simply pay a little better and have a supply of people willing to do anything - program weapons or junk ads, work 80 hours/week whatever. Its a question of power plain & simple and its frankly ridiculous how many hoops people collectively jump through to avoid facing that fact.
I've never owned or used an alarm clock.
I did however manage to save the project on more than one occasion.¹
When people complain I tell them I'm an ability guy, not an availability guy. If they don't like that then I move on.
¹ One time I hacked a buggy compiler we received from IBM that was preventing us from presenting a demo at a trade show. I did it in 8 hours and we made the trade show in time.
What happens is that, once a company is reliably making money for everyone, the need to "innovate" and make things more "efficient" is dramatically reduced. At the end of the day, most people want to just show up to the office, do what they're told(what they don't actually want to do), and then go back to their lives with their money. If some young engineer shows up with ideas about making things "more efficient", that can only mean people's daily routines get disrupted or they are made obsolete. Nobody really wants to make things better, including those who are running the business since their joy is in being in charge of lots of people(whether they're well-meaning or not). Accountability and integrity gets thrown out the window because, in order to maintain them, someone has to get mad at someone else, and these days people aren't interested in being the person who has to scold people or let them go.
As much as I care about my craft as a software engineer, I realize that every company suffers from this syndrome to some extent, and the most healthy thing to do is to accept that people don't want you fucking with their cash cow. I don't take seriously claims companies make when the talk about "excellence" and "innovation", because once they've got more than 10 employees and their growth pattern has a definite upward trend, those values really go out the window.
And you know something? There's nothing wrong with that. Most people aren't working because they want to. Think you can make things better? Go start your own company.
I did actually, turns outs those same people show up and they damage the growing cash calf so to speak. :)
edit/ I should probably also make the point that, IME, there's 2 broad cohorts that I'm speaking generally about. Those cohorts are people who are capable but checked out, burnt out, etc... and the other are people who are not capable yet are never held accountable to that fact. I am railing against the second group, because they actively cause harm, again, IME.
The problem is that no one takes them aside to explain any of this, so they become frustrated and eventually cynical. Correctly channeled and nurtured, these engineers can do a lot of good in an organization.
That said, sometimes it is the organization itself. The key to understanding is identifying the right people to ask, and asking the right questions.
- Stoic philosophy. Accept that you have control over nothing (only the chance to influence) and eventually that feeling that you carry the world on your shoulders will disappear.
- Stoic philosophy (just to reiterate how important it is)
- Near infrared radiation - improves mitochondrial function and releases NO (a radical caused by cell stress) from the mitochondria. There are plenty of options, i have a device from redlightman.
- CBD - I vape it regularly. It’s legal where I live, but it’s illegal in some countries and US states. It believe it had a tremendous effect on me, even increased sociability.
- Blue light blocking glasses - Staring at my laptop screen for longer periods stresses me out, and using f.lux all day improves this a lot. But using the blue blockers is something different entirely. Sometimes I put on the glasses in the early afternoon and am more focused and relaxed as a result. Sleep also got much better, sometimes I fall asleep while coding in the evening. Take care to use the really yellow/orange ones, as the only-slightly-tinged ones don’t filter heavily enough.
- Sort out family problems, ASAP. Don’t feel stuck - if you do, just do _something_, even if it’s dumb. Feeling stuck kills you. You need to feel accepted by the people you are close to. You need someone you tell your (supposedly) darkest secrets without them condemning you.
- Find a job or position where your „boss“ values you and your work. For me as a freelancer this means I only work with clients for whom the project is important, or even vital (not just a cost-factor).
You have control over your reaction to things. And I think this is a key component of Stoicism, especially in the modern working world.
If you are acting (and reacting) true to yourself, then it is other's reactions to your actions that are failing. This goes a long way to reducing the amount of stress felt.
Thanks for the insights.
I‘ve had my fair share of yelling at my kids, and regretting it afterwards. Or writing an inflammatory email response. Obviously, I don’t have full control over my reaction, even though I think I‘m a rather careful person. I do have a strong influence, that’s for sure.
I‘ve stopped beating myself up for knee-jerking something. The unconscious has so much control over what surfaces next. I think it was an article here on HN recently that claimed that decisions are formed up to 12 seconds before they become conscious.
I‘m not sure what you mean with Default Mode Network inhibition. CBD is a cannabinoid, and those are present in all mammal bodies - it’s just an aid for faster repair, especially nerves and brain. You might find your brain working better and clearer, because it regenerates faster.
DMN is an ancient part of brain which acts like primitive unconscious task scheduler. When it goes nuts, you binge on substances and reset it, then sober up and feel happy. Something like that.
vaping is a poison - clearly. addictions just keep you on the cycle.
real acceptance is powerful but it comes from a place of being connected to yourself which means your emotions. trying to suppress them isn't living since you are suppressing your very nature.
Vaping nicotine 20 times a day is obviously a bad idea and might lead to cancer. Vaping 2 draws of CBD (a non-addictive substance) 2-3 times per week might also have a negative long term effect, but I’ll take it. I don’t use propylene glycol, but only vegetable glycerine to minimize risk.
That's certainly the conceit of rationality, but realistically the last two have a complex two-way relationship where often, perhaps most often, the reverse order of those two elements dominates.
For example, those open office layout are about putting more people per square foot. No matter what they say otherwise. Nobody "communicates" in an open office layout and they know it.
This is an example where per-employee productivity is sacrificed for other goals (getting more people into one building). And it is directly affecting stress and burnout.
Where the burnout comes in is when I get back the motivation to learn and program, and everything is going good, but then I start talking to recruiters and applying to jobs, and the farthest I get is the phone interview. I haven't been able to land a technical interview for the past 5 years about. Then it turns into a feedback loop, where my lack of motivation comes back, I let my skills wane, and then I just burnout for a few months.
Each time I try to get back at it, the wall to climb seems higher; like I seriously struggle to just sit down and read an article about this or that topic. It's also difficult to know where to jump back in to brush up on my skills. My ability to think programmatically is still solid, but I forget things like the specifics of setting up webpack or whatever.
shrug oh well. I think I've been getting that motivational tingle back, so maybe this time will be successful? In the mean time I just want to be hired for anything; not even getting calls back from minimum wage job applications.
Come up with a notable side-project next time you are inspired -- but make sure it won't take longer than 1-2wks of effort. It can be a gimmick, so long as it is somewhat notable. A trivial CRUD app, but applied to a novel/fun/interesting domain. You could even look for non-profits needing a tech solution. You want to appeal to someone hiring for a jr position, and who wants to see initiative.
Good consultants -- and even FTE career-oriented devs -- tend to have their work lined up via their network. A network is as simple as casually keeping in contact with old coworkers and then pinging them when you're looking for a new opportunity. In your case, it would just be connecting with other tech folk. Open your surface area to opportunity. This is how you end up knowing about job positions not even posted yet, and end up with inside knowledge on tech that can get you into a job much easier.
Look at 1099 contracting. It's low-risk to the employer because you're easier to drop if it doesn't work out. It pays a bit better for you, in return for that risk. If you're out and looking, you can find opportunities to contract that will never be posted to job boards, because a lead engineer just wants to bring someone on quickly. The biggest risk to people pulling 1099 contractors is that contractor ghosting on them, especially when they work remote -- make one of your big selling points be communication.
This strategy -- networking -- is one that is critical to pick up not just for landing a jr/intermediate job, but for keeping career longevity in an ageism-tinted industry.
It'll be a pain in the ass, but surely better than taking minimum-wage. I think networking-motivated individuals who are still early on the dev journey can do very well.
It’s basically when your association with an activity becomes so negative that you no longer have the willpower to push yourself to perform the activity.
Your brain has basically puts work in the same category as holding your hand against a hot stove.
I was lucky to have my associations limited to certain employers and role descriptions but it was everything as real as the physical burnout I developed later on in life.
And as far as tips for recovery; the only thing I can think of is to learn to respect the association and stop trying to fight it with willpower. Just stay within the zone You do have motivation for/that does feel good and let it lead you wherever it needs to.
That might end up leading you to a different career but in my case it led me back to basically the same career but with a bunch of ‘red flag’ activities and behaviors (mine and others’) which mean I need to get the hell out of my current job.
The only way I see is to study new things on your own and do your own stuff if you find something you like; to survive try to get some part-time/remote work until you can reap fruits of your labor later. By all means avoid people that are putting you down; they do it so that they could dominate you and feel better about themselves. Start practicing some forgotten virtues, that would make you unique and stand out.
I'm sure you can find some kind of professional that's trained to help people in your predicament?
I wish tech companies did the same... that it was just a "normal" thing for our mental health. We focus much more on physical health, whereas mental health is taboo.
If I had some real paying work to give you I'd do it in a heartbeat. Your HN name is RandomInteger4 on HN. That says enough for me.
Let me tell you a story...
I was working for a startup over 10 years ago. We started in the back of the owner's house, a glass-enclosed greenhouse (no kidding) that got up to 90+ degrees during the summer, and housed our servers and ourselves. It was a crazy experience - the stories I could tell.
I went through a divorce, while working there, stress, burnout and eventually fell out of the place (it was a bad experience), when they sold the company for a huge amount (tens of millions), and I pretty much got nothing out of it compared to what I put in (other than a lot of experience). I learned a lot but it took a huge amount out of me.
I was depressed. I went through a long period of depression and aimlessness.
A previous boss I had worked for, as an intern, who was kind of a family friend, just told me, "come and do some stuff for me". He gave me a chance, didn't have crazy expectations for me, paid me enough to get by, and I was very lucky - I worked hard and did as much as I could, because I was grateful. It helped me get over the state I was in, and back into the workforce and groove.
It sounds to me like you just need somebody to give you that. I would do it. Can anybody on HN help?
I'm starting to believe that one of my life's goals might be to find a way to help people like you (and once me). You just need to find a space, in which to do some work, without crazy expectations, make some money, make some new connections and get things going again. Sometimes it's just finding the right person or connection to talk to, which implies some degree of social interactions.
I wish you all the best. You will make it through this. Hang in there and if you can, perhaps you will also get lucky and find that opportunity to just get back into it. I really wish for you that you will.
I hope this helps, or somebody else reads this and helps you.
Even if you do manage to disconnect, there's wreckage leftover for you to pick up the next morning. Have that happen about once a month and you'll be a frazelled mess, knowing every evening something could go horribly wrong.
Just say no to timeshift!
This basically set me up for the next several years in business, and I'm glad I did it, but ooof was the penalty high. This makes me think 1. Good heavens, most people burning out don't even get this upside, and 2. If I had just structured things somewhat differently or canceled the travel, I probably could have gotten the benefit while avoiding years of fatigue
Watch out, because it's hard to know what will break you until it does break you. And what breaks quickly takes longer to fix. I generally try to cultivate a high degree of slack in everything that I do: I ignored it once, and paid for it.
Symptoms were:
* Messed up sleep
* a sort of "deadening" where I felt less joy in regular things
* A constant sense of being overwhelmed
* Worsened digestive troubles
* Less ability to tolerate caffeine (I ended up quitting it)
* More muscle tension
* Lack of focus, tendency towards distraction
* More short term thinking
And other stuff I can't remember now. It's basically all fixed, and I feel great. One quibble with the article:
"Burnout is caused by chronic stress, not stressors, the Nagoskis say in their book. It’s important to differentiate the two. Stressors are external: to-do lists, financial problems or anxiety about the future. Stress, on the other hand, “is the neurological and physiological shift that happens in your body when you encounter [stressors],” the Nagoskis write.
To fix burnout, people need to address the stress itself. They must allow their body to complete its stress response cycle. Instead, people tend to focus on stressors. “They assume their stress will go away if they’re on top of things, if they’re accomplishing things and constantly checking things off their to-do list,” Emily Nagoski says."
--> I found that removing stressors by addressing them and getting rid of the source of the stressor was extremely helpful.
But not in a "do the whole todo list" sense. Rather, thinking about what leads to repeat stressors in my life, and eliminating that. Could be as simple as decluttering the house, improving sleep, changing cooking habits, etc. Anything in the daily routine that eliminates a pressure and lets your system cope better with the remaining stressors. Also a big part of it was working less.
I don't like talking about it at work because I don't want to be seen as damaged/ineffective, but it's really weighing on me these days.
Everyone's experience is different, but one thing I can say is this: the size of a problem is not necessarily proportional to the effect it will have on you in this state.
For instance, I had a reduced ability to multitask. Multitasking is one of those things where holding even three simple things in your head can be hard.
So, don't beat yourself up if an apparently simple situation is causing you stress. What seems simple may not be, given how humans are wired. And you have a reduced capacity while burnt out.
What you can do is look for things that trigger situations. Then see if you can reconfigure things so that the trigger is eliminated.
It's also helpful to look for physical signs. For example, in my case, I would get a tension in my neck, when inhaling. This happened after a stressor. Paying attention to this let me identify stressors and deal with them.
I also was able to work on it from the other end. Basically, my system was identifying minor threats as larger threats. So, I did something called square breathing. Basically: Stressor --> awareness --> hold breathe, count to 4 --> exhale, then inhale --> hold breathe while inhaled, count to four. Repeat if necessary.
It was like a pattern interrupt. The body wanted to go "minor stressor --> red alert!!!!!!". The breathing interrupted this and demonstrated to the body "see, no threat. Cancel the alarms".
After doing that for a few weeks I basically no longer have to do it, except in rare cases. Though that was some time in to the burnout, so some other stuff may have fixed itself in the meantime. YMMV, including with the specific way in which you do breathing.
Another thing: sleep as if your life depends on it. Good sleep helps every other thing and especially burnout.
I recognize that saying this can make the problem worse. So: if you are awake at night, and can't sleep: don't sweat it. Don't sweat the one offs. Instead, look for causes and solutions.
I improved my sleep by working on light exposure. I wrote more on that here a couple of days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507938
Working on the general environment helped fixed my sleep. I still have occasional off nights, but the rhythm is better.
Sleep may not be your issue. The point is, to the extent you're able, get outside of a situation, analyze it, look for stressors, and consider the full rational situation. Basically your job is to teach your body to align its (presently damaged) threat response systems to the actual situation, which is presumably not an acute threat.
Some or much of this may not apply to you, so take the bits that do apply. And good luck!
I think that it relates to the stress response cycle you’re talking about. If I give my body and mind time away from stressors, I can make quick progress to escaping the “constantly overwhelmed” feeling.
1. Last April, I took two weeks to go to Cuba and work on some non-internet connected work. Cuba has little internet, so this was easy to do.
It was incredibly relaxing, and I made a fair bit of progress in reducing stress. Also generated a lot of helpful insights.
Obviously, you have to go back at some point, and when I did, much of the stress returned. But the time away was helpful, and looking back at it, insights I gained during that time proved helpful over the long run.
2. Figuring out how to manage your devices. Which parts are valuable, which parts aren't, and which part need to be limited?
Actually, in Cuba I had a bit of a revelation: my smartphone was an incredibly device. It took pictures, let me make voice notes, make written notes, do reminders, etc. Not connected to the internet, it was a wonderful assistant, and I was able to use it and quickly put it down.
Back home, I found the things that sucked me in were:
* Twitter. If I'm not careful I can end up reading too many timelines
* Reddit. Certain subreddits for tech news
* Hacker News. 1-2x per day is a great addition to my life. Constantly returning is not.
* Newspaper site. I get great value out of a subscription to the financial times. But it also generates far more than I can or should read.
So, how to deal with this? I first tried a system using the Shortcuts app on iPhone. Basically, I could only access those sites by going through a shortcut routine, and logging visits in a spreadsheet. (this was done automatically)
This worked, but ultimately it proved too cumbersome and easy to circumvent, and I eventually slipped out of it.
Instead, I used a tool that was in my netgear router. They have an integration with Circle by Disney, aimed at letting parents control their children's browsing.
Instead, I used it to control myself. I'm actually paying monthly to use it, and paying extra for their management profile I can install on my iPhone and cellular connected iPad, so stuff gets filtered even off wifi.
And....it actually works. Obviously, I can circumvent the system, but it takes more effort than any of the inbuilt blocking systems. I also removed my vpn from my iOS devices: I realized I basically never was on public wifi anymore. Removal of the VPN made it harder to circumvent the monitoring.
So, now I can't go on those sites on my phone or iPad. I can go on them on my computer. But this hasn't been an issue so far: I've found I'm not likely to spend a ton of time idly browsing at a computer. I generally just use it for work now. If that ever changes, I'll change the filter settings.
But, I do want some of those sites. So, I went through each category, and asked:
* Do they have a podcast? * Do they have an email newsletter?
What I ended up doing was for the ones with podcasts, I just use those. So, I no longer read Apple news on reddit, I just get updates from podcasts, which don't have the same effect for me. For the FT, I just signed up to a bunch of their weekly newsletters and get digests. I did the same with one person on twitter, and made a weekly email reminder to visit the twitter of one other person, who posts infrequently. I got some HN digests too.
So at lunch, I have my designated time to look at distractions on a screen, and I go through the emails. This doesn't take very long at all. Basically 20 min a day covers all the reading I want to do, but I could easily spend 2 hours instead if uncontrolled.
This was my major issue, yours may vary. Other than news, I also culled notifications, and handle all my email from a computer now. I find I process faster, and I don't really have anything urgent.
My phone is now much closer to being a tool, and less a source of distraction.
I think the daily disconnection you're doing is great. If you can get extended time away on your next vacation, and/or if you can do some analysis to figure out specifically what is causing the stress from your tech, that can help. Good luck!
You could easily spend 5-6 hours a day if uncontrolled. You probably did spend that much before without noticing. I was horrified when I turned on Screen Time on my iPhone and iPad.
The email newsletters and podcasts you have to do manually.
I had to take a break for a couple months now where I worked only half days and I've also focused on 1-2 projects instead of being the "person who does everything". The company I'm working for has gone from a small start-up to a company of 150 people in a few years and while the business grew much of the organizational structure has not followed up and I ended up taking too much responsibility. I've also been "on" for the last five years without the ability to completely relax even on vacations since I was just a phone call away and there was a lot of stuff that only I could do. At one point I was ready to toss the phone in the toilet or smash it against a rock or something. Smart phones are a major source of stress.
I'm back full time now and feel much better but the key is removing the stressors as you call them and focus on fewer things. I've removed a lot of my previous "only me" tasks and focused on two key projects that will make my life even less stressful. I've also sold quite a bit of equity so I won't work myself to death of fear that my absence will send the stock down.
None have objected. I now work on average 6 hours per day, 30 minute lunch, 2x40min train+walk commute where I space out with music or podcasts. I make more money, am happier and in better shape then ever. Can highly recommend.
1) Take on as little debt as you can. This means you'll have more control over what job situations you will be forced to tolerate. Don't fall into the trap of 'rewarding' yourself for your hard work with expensive vacations, cars toys, whatever. Debt is slavery.
2) Leave your work phone in a drawer at work on Friday night, or turn it off. If they bug you about it, tell everyone you went on a camping trip, or went on a multi-pitch rockclimbing expedition or whatever. Keep your work stuff off your personal phone too.
If you have the kind of job where you are truly expected to be available all the time, start looking for another one. It's not worth your life.
And if you're wondering why the boss doesn't seem to burnout even though he's always there and works weekends, it's be cause he has control over his work hours. If you don't, then look for a way to either change that or get out.
These kind of work conditions can seem innocent enough, but if you keep that up for six months or a year and you are likely to burnout.
Are there any good case studies?
- Consider an employee with 4 kids in different schools, each with different after-school activities, a spouse who also works, and an ailing parent/grandparent who needs care and won't be around much longer. Try to target your expectations for workload and time available to be appropriate for that hypothetical employee, in such a way that they can still live their life and care for their family while also being an effective and valuable employee.
- If you're in software, plan for zero-downtime deployments from day one. Architect and develop for it from the beginning. Don't ask your employees to stay up all night doing deployments and maintenance during a 'quiet time' window in the middle of the night. It's not hard to do daytime deployments without taking the system offline if it's designed for it from the start, but it can be a major challenge to retrofit that ability.
- Continually reassess your deadlines and priorities. If your deadlines are actually hard due to external factors, consider what can reasonably be cut to make the deadline. If they're soft, consider focusing more on priorities of what is most important rather than deadline dates. Seek to relieve pressure rather than creating it, by focusing on what's most important.
And more generally, raise inequality and one group will have increased stress while the other has reduced stress. That is the point of wealth.
No, burnout is a completely different thing from depression.
While the two can often overlap, they are not the same.
My dad was working class and in the union -he had a different kind of stability.
You'll get arguments this is more efficient cause free markets blah blah. However I know one semiconductor company in the valley that bucked that trend. Everyone went home at 5-6pm. Didn't work weekends. They just moved people around instead of firing them. And they totally crushed their competition over 20 years.
The cult of metrics breeds dumb. A big company is more like a Soviet enterprise than a functional business.
BUT! the development and use of metrics like this is helpful in many ways; the problem is that when really dumb people are asked to do this they use them in really dumb ways and this bit (the lack of capability and brains) is the big issue.
Things like "jira tickets closed per day" and other equally meaningless numbers that try create an illusion of productivity.
The cult of metrics is then to optimize around the metric itself. Make smaller tickets so you can close more of them.