Thoughts of work invaded my life until I learned how to unplug | Hacker News Reader

Thoughts of work invaded my life until I learned how to unplug

sciencemag.org

257 pointsPikkie113 comments

I struggle with this daily. As the founder of a startup, I would routinely pull 100 hour weeks. I remember being invited to a Halloween party and just showed up as "exhausted software person" because I had no time to prepare a costume.

I took a break for 8 years from startups, because I was unable to create boundaries in my mind.

This April, after what I thought was a long enough break, I just joined another one.

I'm writing this right now because I woke up early in a panic attack about an announcement from one of our competitors. We have a big launch coming up this week, and I'm afraid that we're already too late. I feel my stomach clench and my mind race when I think about the next steps for the company.

The problem is that I'm only 4 months into the startup and I've already alienated my partner enough that I have to move out. My whole life has become devoured by this puzzle, and I'm always checking Twitter and Discord to see what I can work on next. I can't slow my heart-rate down and just work at this job normally.

If any of you have a good way of "turning off" in order to keep your family stable and mental health okay, please let me know. And I'm not looking for a run of the mill response -- I really would like some advice from people who have really dealt with this before. It's easy to give advice if you have good boundaries, but I would like some help from those who have really struggled.

I love my work, but I don't like how it makes me feel. Thanks for your help, everyone.

I have been in a similar situation and the only thing that helped me was religion. Believing in God removes stress and puts things in perspective for me.

Among other things, religion helps you realize there are things beyond your control, which is essential to unplugging.

I don’t have any advice for you, but I can at least say that I’m in a similar boat. I have periods in my past/present where some big challenge lies ahead and my team and I need to sprint HARD to meet it.

I originally used to see these moments like a soldier preparing for battle, believing that on the other side that things would be great and I would be proud of the grind. Instead, I sorta look back at those times with a big ‘meh’. If there was success, it wasn’t due to the grind. If there was failure, the grind made it worse. And it put everything else I cared about on the back burner — relationships, health, hobbies, friends.

In some ways, I feel that these cycles of grind are partially my destiny, they’re when I’ve done my most challenging and perhaps meaningful work. But it doesn’t match up to my expectations and nowadays I see them as a kind of crutch for not having a better strategy of doing consistently great work.

Wondering if anyone has any similar feelings or experiences.

Hey! You’re not alone.

I had huge work life (self induced) challenges for 8 or so years at the start of my career. Similar story to you but not as a founder- I just worked 80+ hours a week by default. Nobody forced me to do it, just my motor.

I worked with a psychotherapist for 4 years, once a week, with this being the predominant focus of our time together. She was immensely helpful and between the regular maintenance of those visits and her helping improve my self awareness, I now no longer blitz myself week after week. I certainly still have that motor in me, but I know how to divert it to other activities and focuses like my family, hobbies, and myself. I still love to work because I love what I do, but it’s not how I define my life.

Get help. This is sufficiently a problem where it’s impacting your relationships with others, which is a huge red flag.

This is definitely the best advice offered thus far. If you haven't sought out professional help yet, give it a whirl and see what happens. For many, it's surprisingly effective and often life-changing.

Excellent advice. I wish had more votes to give this comment.

I had a similar experience. Working with a therapist helped me learn boundaries and eventually grok (with support, considerable patience, and repetition from her) that I was addicted to 'saving the day', to solving the problem, the pace, chaos, the deluge of information and technical challenges. I was energized by it. I felt smarter when I was in the eye of this storm. It took me quite a long time to fully integrate and understand that working those hours and wearing 'the cape' is toxic to yourself AND others. I assumed that my efforts were wanted, appreciated, and valued. Only in hindsight, did I 'notice' it had the opposite effect. My intentions didn't matter, the high I felt, the passion, and manic energy I radiated was easily misunderstood. I realized too late that my boss and many of my colleagues resented me for these behaviors. It was decsribed as exhausting by a friend. It takes time to learn new habits, to change, and learn boundaries and how to be present. For me, it was worth the effort.

Well said. Thanks for sharing your story.

Are you having fun?

Confidence is the key, but it is sometimes out of reach, even if only momentarily.

So rationalizing is one way: about competition first, it doesn't matter (really, like... really), whatever you are doing with focus will end up different than what others do (the state space is too large), and the rest is not within your hands. No need to worry then, it's a recurrent, automatic, bad habit.

Now, overall and most useful I believe, what we are doing in tech does not matter, it'll be outdated in months, years, whatever. What matters is the people we are working and spending time with. People first, tech second.

Good luck, serenity is within reach, especially in tech, it's a matter of body and mind working well together.

Oh and exercising is fundamental, walk, run, dance, jump, ...

There’s so much material on this subject. It’s been discussed many times right here at HN. But you are externalizing yourself for your startup, you’re experiencing harm, and you still want an externality to solve the problem for you. You make yourself a victim. You’ll have to sort yourself, by and as yourself, to stop this. You have to really see yourself, to start.

> by yourself

But you can have a friend with you to talk this through. You are not alone, but you need a phone call… not a forum of internet strangers.

Can you share some of the better discussions and resources you've found for this?

I was in a similar boat. I turned to books. Read all that I could find in philosophy, leadership, and science of life in general.

I also spent lot of time studying other startups and what they did differently to win.

The founder fatigue is natural especially when we pour our heart into it. Failure hits hard. I read an interesting discussion between kapil gupta and naval. We attach our 'self' to much with the startup.

While most literature focuses on avoiding thoughts, my learning after last couple of years is - the only skilll that can help is patience. Being able to wait is the primary skill I now focus on.

Good luck.

Some book recommendations: Anything from JD krishnamoorty, why zebras don't get ulcers, extreme leadership, charles duhigg both books, power of now (mindfulness), and most important why we sleep.

How coincidental. I believe I listened to the same Naval-Kapil talk you are speaking of just last night. Followed by my usual dose of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s talk.

K’s videos have struck a chord with me and I try to practice what he talks about.

What you are describing doesn't sound like a typical "turning off work" situation. Startups, as you know, are a different animal.

Are you sure startups are what you want to be doing? Being all-consuming is kinda the nature of the beast...

Seconding this. If the OP has the problem as he describes, he really needs to avoid his trigger, which is the startup work environment.

I had this problem. I started going rock climbing after work. Only having to worry how I was going to get up a wall, and making that my sole focus, really helped create a couple of hours of seperation. I removed work email from my phone, personal computer and ipad. After a while it was easy to just forget about work after 17:30.

I was in this loop for a while. One day -- a rare Sunday morning when I was home -- I was just laying down on the carpet enjoying the warm sunshine on my face, when a vision of my workplace flashed in my mind. I was stunned to feel my heartbeat thump instantly. That's when I realized how truly stressed I was.

The next day I told my manager that instead of the promotion I was due, I would take Fridays off for the same salary. Somehow, when I had two days off I found it easy to overwork on the weekend, but when I decided that every week had to have a 3-day weekend, everything changed. I started spending hours and hours at bookstores and cafes, and walking around SF and Berkeley.

Of course it had a downside. I told my team not to hold meetings on Fridays, but they would forget and go ahead without me. My ego used to get bruised at my dispensability!

I'm sure I left many career options on the table, but gained many life options. So much so that I eventually started working only six months a year (did it for 19 years), and picked up a PhD (starting at age 42) during those years.

There will always be relentless deadlines, but there has to be enough whitespace built into a life.

I have retired now, but I still wake up wanting to write code or learn something now.

That's a really great career path you were able to plot out, and great your manager at the start of the journey was supportive of it.

I think a lot of people don't realize everything is negotiable and you have to set out your own path.

That said, you have to make sure you get yourself into the right organization first to make these sort of flexible arrangements. I think 60-75% of firms I have worked at would not allow either % of week / % of year type of arrangements, and the most you might get is a permanent WFH for less pay deal.

The amount of stupid things I stayed stupid late for at my previous gig because my manager was a workaholic (as was his own manager). It's never a direct order and rarely even a request, but when your boss just stays in the office til 9pm it makes it hard to walk out the door at 5..6..7pm when theres a pending release/bugfix/etc late going out the door. Likewise when they call you on your cell at 6:45pm without warning to discuss non-urgent issues because they've finally gotten to that email in their inbox..

When working six months a year how are the work months spaced out? 6 months on and 6 off? Or every other month?

It sounds like a very interesting (and appealing) way of living life.

Mostly six months on, then off. I never learnt to have a work-life balance, so I still tend to go all out when I do take up any work, but on average over a year, I have terrific work-life balance :) I've written about this and about joining a PhD as a much older student on HN, so check my post history.

Put your phone into airplane mode and give it to your wife/girlfriend/buddy/kids.

Internet articles, modern products, and social media are all optimized to be as addictive as possible. So the first step is to forcibly cut the dopamine loop.

FYI, CTO of a startup here. In my experience, co-workers and investors will actually respect you more if you have clear personal boundaries and stick to them. And it's not like "don't call on family day" is such a harsh restriction. The others have family too, you know.

+100 if I could.

What you say is especially true of someone in your role (or any higher up role), which in a small startup extends far down I would suppose.

When I see the C-levels or even just a level up or sideways mention that they had to work late on this or that or had to have a meeting at 10pm or someone was pulled into a meeting with some C-level at 10pm I loose respect for those people really fast. Work regular hours. Get done what you can get done in those regular hours. Regular hours can mean 11 hours one day and then you take most of Friday off.

There's two ways these people loose respect with me:

If you have to work 12 hour days to get the same work done as other people, you are maybe not really good at your job or you do too much 'socializing' at work but it makes the actual hard working folks that just finish their work in a regular day look bad.

Or you're the workaholic type that just can't stop. At least you're good at your job, perfect. But don't make actual hard working folks look bad.

Yeah it's crazy. My wife was in final round of interviews, about to get an offer, and all seemed to be well, suddenly the hiring manager drops a bomb.. "The team is working 15 hours/day right now, but it should go down as we onboard staff.. and the firm cares about work/life balance so we encourage everyone to take off 2 days per month out of their unlimited vacation".

I mean wtf, if they are doing 15hr/day what are you going down to once you staff up.. 12hr/day? If your hiring manager is willing to work his team 15hr/days for months on end then how is he going to look at you trying to work 10hr/days?

Note this is not a startup, but an organization with nearly 20k employees. This is not a lottery ticket job that if a product launches successfully she's going to walk away with career/life changing money. It's maybe a 15-20% raise so that she can work 50-80% more hours.

Just so dysfunctional. She was super disappointed until we talked about it being a blessing in disguise. If he had come in with a lower number like "12 hours/day but going down" or the compensation was crazy, you would maybe try to talk yourself into it.. or worse if he didn't disclose hours and you took the job..

I went on vacation recently to a town with spotty electricity, no cell service for my carrier and barely functioning Internet. I didn't realize there would be no cell service or Internet on my vacation. I brought only books, binoculars, clothes, paper/pen, food and myself. I stayed in a motel/cabin kind of lodging and did a lot of mindless driving.

It was somewhat accidental forced unplugging/disconnecting.

Between work stress, COVID, and my own slight Asperger's, I struggle to get myself out of mental loops.

During this time away, my first few days, my dreams and every moment I closed my eyes was a flush of memories or thoughts of work. It almost felt like my brain was trying to process a backlog of stress and that process was "flushing" those thoughts (or brain chemistry) out.

I went hiking, read some, and mostly took it easy, walked around, ate and rested.

It took at least 3-4 days of a 8 day trip for my brain to barely start calming down. I had to keep repeating the "simpler activities" and just put out of mind literally everything else. I literally had to "escape" from my normal life entirely.

I don't say this to be run of the mill, I literally had this anecdotal experience but a few weeks ago.

I felt a little more like I had a handle on myself after this break, but only in a "just almost barely" kind of way. In other words, I had just started to come out of my loops and my fog, when my trip ended.

Just like the work had a lingering effect, so did taking the time off. I am back at work and finding myself going back to some of my loops, but my trip gave me a little break and opportunity to take some perspective.

Therefore, my non-scientific anectodal recommendation is to study your own rhythm and see how it changes when you disconnect or take a break, especially if it includes an aspect of "slightly forced disconnecting". If you can learn to become more self aware of the rhythms you experience or fall susceptible to, it might give you a chance to subtley shift or do something actively to tweak them in a way that helps you.

I think it helped me, at least temporarily.

Thanks for sharing your experience :)

Now that I think about it, I believe I also had this effect that when I disconnect after a longer work period, I'll have a sort of re-processing flashback when I finally have time to relax.

Also, it's quite visible with my son. At the end of the day, before going to sleep, he will usually recount his most interesting experience again. Yesterday it was "cows are loud".

I can imagine that it'll help the learning, just like how replaying history with updated state scoring is such an important part of AI reinforcement learning. So maybe the body is post-processing work stress akin to "we successfully escaped from the hungry lion, now let's review how to avoid that in the future".

I don’t respect people who can’t get their work done during regular hours. If you are not smart enough to focus on what is most important, and ignore the rest, then you are not as smart as you think.

You've become addicted to the dopamine loop of crushing tasks. It's become your "god". You lie to yourself that what your doing is good and worthwhile. You're anticipating the adrenaline rush of that tantalizing future success. You masochistically grind because you know the payout is coming...

The only way out is to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. You have to listen to your heart and follow what it says. What that really means is, don't do anything that your inner person doesn't want to really do. Otherwise you'll just be stuck in this endless Pavlovian, button pushing trap called startups.

amen

Since last year, I've been changing course of my business to more product driven than consultancy. This has naturally put me into situations of real stress that causes churning in the stomach. The feeling stays for days if not dealt. ON couple of occasions I've successfully eliminated it using the Black Lotus app [0] RARE framework [1]. In the first instance, I chose the goal of being mindful and being stress free for the other. It combines a guided meditation specific for the goal, a breathing exercise, a RAK and some other tiny activities that should not take more than 20-30 minutes a day – but are really powerful.

In another occasion, I reflected on the cause of the stress holding conversation with the mind (sitting in meditative cross-legged pose) – what the worse can happen, what are other options etc. etc., and the stress subsided. Basically thoughts are also a form of energy which needs to be released. Either you can channelize them with good meditation or spent them with the bad one, in both cases you do get to feel relax. If you don't do either of these, you end up feeling restless and the more time they remain in your system the more damage they cause.

0: https://www.blacklotus.app/ 1: https://www.blacklotus.app/about-rare/

> I love my work, but I don't like how it makes me feel.

Some choices are more exclusive than others. Life > work.

I don’t run a company, but run a large division of one. I describe it as a psychological theme park — you’re king of the world one day, moron the next day, taking care of your people the next.

The only thing that has helped me when I feel that way is to take a leap of faith and place trust in others. That thing I think I have to personally oversee really means that I’m not trusting others. That trust problem is usually because I’ve failed as a leader to communicate. So push yourself to do that, and when your comfortable, push yourself to do more.

The other thing, which I think men are more vulnerable to, is be careful about defining yourself by work. Your partner or children or whatever need to be a part of what defines you to you.

My dad’s recent passing highlighted that for me - he spent 30 years and accomplished a lot in an field that impacted many people positively. But when friends and family all came together… that just wasn’t something that mattered. The little (and big) things that he did for people mattered. One person somehow travelled from abroad during COVID to pay respects and share how my dad helped him out in a small way that redefined his life.

I’d ask that you just think about what matters. Deal with the stuff that has to be dealt with, but don’t let it define you. Shipping some feature is what you do, not who you are.

Just quit. Moving on, change of sceneries, etc. Allows you to reinvent yourself. Start from scratch again.

What I have learned is that every behavior serves a inner goal or purpose. You can try to figure out what the goal is by asking "by doing this what am I avoiding or what am I seeking".

Posting anon for obvious reasons.

After 15yrs of aggressive, upward growth positions and three years of my own startup, I landed what seemed to be an awesome job at a Series A startup.

The company is completely mismanaged, overstaffed, on a collision course, and yet the best job I ever had. I'm not a crook - so I do put in an honest 40hrs to collect my modest 200k salary (modest given my experience.)

However, the company is so mismanaged by the C-Suite and so far gone there is no pressure to go beyond the 40hrs/week. The C-Suite is already destroying the firm, why bother plugging holes on a sinking ship on my spare time?

I enjoy the work, my co-workers, but really enjoy the free evenings and free weekends. Best experience of my life while it lasts. No longer have headaches. Have friends that I spend time with. Enjoy the outdoors.

I wish I could have the same at a company that was not mismanaged, because i'm sure it can happen. Our tech org is strong, just the MBAs in the CSuite cant seem to get out of our way.

If you don't figure out how to control this I'm afraid startups are not for you. Find a job somewhere you'll be happy with, without this stress of constant burden of startups.

You need to stop killing your self over this.

Working on the things you love should energize you. Consider if you are truly passionate about the things you are currently working on right now.

If you are having fun and are genuinely building something cool, you'll be very productive. The second order effect is that you'll be more financially successful(stable family) and happy(mental health).

> If any of you have a good way of "turning off" in order to keep your family stable and mental health okay, please let me know.

Neil Fiore's "Unschedule"

I have run an infosec consultancy for the last 8 years with a couple partners. You got a lot of good advice already, but I’ll throw in my two points:

1. You need a hobby outside of business. Something you look forward to at a lot that is intrinsically rewarding. Physical in nature is a plus for me. BJJ is my hobby and it’s great.

2. Stoicism. The dichotomy of control specifically is powerful. Sort your life into buckets of what you can control and what you can’t. Acknowledge your limits. Can you really work productively and deeply even 60 or 70 hours a week?

Honestly, find a therapist. Someone you can lay out your mental goals with and be held accountable. You will need to explore this and find out what’s at the root of the overwork. What’s truly important to you? How can you get there healthy and sustainable.

I think the hobby recommendation is a good one. When I was in a similar strait, I found rock climbing took me completely out of my headspace. If you’ve got access to a good rock climbing gym, I highly recommend it.

Stoicism is a tricky concept to internalize without first dealing with the underlying emotional responses.

Learning about something and knowing it's a better way feels good in the short term, but the risk for someone stuck in some deep emotional traumas like OP described is similar to telling an alcoholic to stop drinking.

Definitely +1 on the therapy

The modern approach is for a therapist to get you to use CBT, which has a lot of roots in stoic philosophy. I backed into it over time… it’s powerful, but I could see how it can make things worse too. It’s something that definitely takes time to understand and integrate. I use the pieces that make sense. Especially the dichotomy of control (hence my recommendation). It’s simple enough to help sort out life problems and focus on what can be impacted. When it all clicks though, it can make life decisions effortless (in my experience). Not for everyone though :)

>As the founder of a startup, I would routinely pull 100 hour weeks

I don't understand how anyone could be remotely productive under these settings unless it was all grind work. How many "fresh" hours of work would you say this was equivalent to?

I am an owner/founder who has experienced similar anxieties and the answer was cognitive behavioral therapy and drugs, both managed by a good therapist.

The CBT can effect long term changes in your thinking and behavior, and temper your anxieties permanently.

The drugs can make the anxieties disappear temporarily and immediately and are best used infrequently in situations where the price of impaired performance is high. (Many doctors overprescribe them imo.)

It took several years of slow progress but probably 75% of my anxieties are gone. I don't overwork myself, I don't worry about things unless it benefits me to do so, and I rarely miss out on a good night's sleep.

You can change.

I had the same problem. Do any or all of the following:

- Seek professional help. This is the number one advice and will be extremely helpful.

- Remove all work-related accounts from you personal laptop and mobile. Try not to search for your work during your spare time. Search for something else, sports, books, tv series, anything.

- Find a hobby with a strict schedule to follow after work, and ideally a (short) goal-oriented one. Rock climbing is perfect because you have short term task to succeed (similar to your day-to-day tasks and tickets), but any of them can work. Just set a goal with your coach, e.g. play your first tennis match with an opponent in 6 months and so on.

- Move on. This is probably the hardest, but you really have to consider that this job or life style is not helping you and you need to change to something different. A different job, a non-startup job, a new house, a different neighbourhood, city, anything that can shock your system, help you relax and find some peace, and eventually strengthen your relationship with your partner.

- Instead of setting goals only for your work life, set some goals for your personal one, e.g. make a new friend within 2021, travel to Asia within 6 months and so on. Revisit them every now and then, and check how you are doing.

Best of luck to you.

Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal.

Ryokan returned and caught him. "You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift."

The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.

Ryoken sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused, "I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."

Can't wear a beautiful moon.

What about the hut? A mortgage free residence is an excellent gift

Epitectus would have said: "take my life, for if that's what you wish, have it, but know it will not be easy."

I ran my life into a train-wreck, after doing a start-up. I'm still recovering from a burn-out. Luckily I still have my wife and kids around. They also had to put up with a lot.

Some advice:

1. Go do a ten day retreat with Vipassana: https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/index It will learn you to 'listen and intercept' your impulses so you can deal with 'work-triggers' more easily

2. Turn your notifications off, forever. Train yourself discipline on order not to look on your electronic devices all the time

3. For every 'effort' you take, there should be an equal amount of recreation. Exerting and relaxing should be in balance (Keep in mind, using a screen is not relaxing)

4. Eat healthy, plenty of outdoors/ nature and exercise.

> Go do a ten day retreat with Vipassana

No, no, no. Spiritual retreats are not self-regulation tools, they are an education. 10 day intensive during a burnout is asking for trouble. It can’t be your first contact with Vipassana and if you use it to bypass what you need to solve, you’ll end up worse.

Just rest, engage with mundane, real life (think sunshine, nature, using your body, eating well, laughing with friends etc), then do a “postmortem” on why did this happen and how can you prevent it; ideally with a therapist. After things are back to a normal, then you can add more practices like Vipassana, just start from the shallow end.

Hmmm, I haven't though about it in this way. You do have a good point. Creating bypasses for problems is very realistic.

> Keep in mind, using a screen is not relaxing

Why would watching a movie, sports game or playing a video game not be relaxing?

Your mind stays busy. It is much better to go out for a walk and simply remain present.

I did something similar. I was in a startup with a toxic culture. It took me a while to find out how toxic the culture was, and I finally (was forced to) quit. It was that experience that my eyes opened and in hindsight, it was a really good thing to happen to me.

I decided to take an indefinite break and during my break, I wanted to do Vipassana for the first time. About a month into my break, I went for the course (and had no expectations - it was something I just wanted to try out).

It was a life changing experience for me, but not in an immediately obvious way. The 10 day retreat gave me the tools and showed me a glimpse of a more integrated mind, but the real gift was the daily habit of meditating once or twice a day. That was what made the difference.

(To address the first reply to your comment - I understand what they mean to say. To be clear - Vipassana itself is work, so doing it _during_ a burnout might not be the best idea. Maybe a short break before doing it would be ideal.)

I am back into workforce now, but working for a much larger megacorp and while it isn’t perfect, it allows me a healthy work-life balance. I am much more clear about what I want in life now, and about the things that make me truly happy. I have quit the startup race with all the trappings of “making it big”, “destroying the incumbents”, etc.

Some context for those interested:

I have also been going to therapy for over a year now. In the process, I have come to accept that I am intellectually gifted. This was hard to accept because I was so fearful of seeming “arrogant”. However, all I was doing was creating more self-conflict. Now, with this knowledge that I am gifted, I am much more sincere to myself, and I can understand other people in a much clearer light. There is no judgement - of myself and of others.

The knowledge of me being gifted also takes off the weight of other people’s expectations and opinions - which is what drove me to the toxic startup in the first place - a way to “prove myself” disguised as “wanting to change the industry”.

Now that I realise I don’t owe anybody anything, nor is the world waiting for me with bated breath, I am much more at ease with the actions I take. I don’t feel guilty or obliged to be at the cutting edge of anything. I don’t feel guilty in indulging in “me time”, sitting around doing nothing on a Sunday afternoon, and just not “accumulating” knowledge anymore.

It is freeing.

A lot of my life was driven by fear. Self-knowledge is the ultimate treatment for fear. The more I learned about myself and my emotions, the more I became confident about my actions, because I feared the negative outcomes a lot less. It is true when they say that most of our worries are about things that never happen.

It might sound weird but apart from the standard advice you are going to receive about pills, therapy and mental gymnastics, in my personal experience becoming more spiritual helps.

I know its not a popular thing in a any tech circles to even think about it but it does help. And spirituality need not involve any religion. You can try philosophies like Zen or Advaita which basically reduces you to being a doer aiming for the best way to do things without caring for the outcome. These philosophies reduce the attachment to material success and paradoxically also help you do your best on any given task because your mind is free.

Its like you are a plumber or electrician who got called for consultation. You give your best possible advice and try doing the best possible work but if the customer faces the problem again, you might not feel the pain personally.

“Winning” at this work is not worth “dying” at life. But that is just “words words words” and I cannot make it mean for you what it means for me. Self introspection is nonlinear and non-rational to a real extent. Love letter to hacker news: neither of those things is bad. Just different than engineering thinking. Do not seek to engineer your mind’s thinking, if you seek lasting happiness. Instead work to find your innermost workings (feelings fears ideals etc) and integrate them into your conscious day. Integrate fear? Why yes. Do not push it down…

Back to the task at hand. More linearly now: Why do you love this work you do? Ask the hardest questions and seek the hardest answers. Maybe you are on the right path for yourself. I don’t think you would have posted this if you really believed it.

I love my work too, and something about it is killing me. It is not the thing I love (the science, the math, the physics, the code) that is killing me, but the toxic nature of the environment in which I seem to have to practice it in order to make a living.

For me, there is a riddle to be solved. The things i love are not toxic, but they are mixed with things that are. My workaday life is heavy with toxicity. Can the good be separated from the toxic? Or do I have to go and become a river guide, bum, or base jumper? Perhaps I just need to meditate on these things. (I’ve turned my comment intentionally at myself, because I cannot be so hubristic as to know what specific advice to offer you) I will say, if you have to work in an environment of toxic stress, the first fear to root out is the fear of failure. Make peace with that fear in the strongest way. Your fear blocks your success. Find this way, if you can: Work as one who is at play. Otherwise quit and make another way to work on the things you love which is more healthy.

Maybe startups, or at least the roles you have, don't suit you. Just like your startup, the tactic is to quickly learn what doesn't work and pivot, and to not endlessly pursue something that isn't working.

It might seem unthinkable, but that is a good sign that you are trapping yourself and inflexible. If you worry what everyone else will think if you leave the startup world, you are looking at the wrong market. When you find something that suits you, I promise you will never regret it.

I can only share my experience, if it's relevant and helps that's great, but as always everyone has different circumstances so take it with a grain of salt.

As someone who grew up never able to accept failure (I remember my first B in high school quite vividly), this fear drove a lot of my anxiety in my 20's and 30's. Fear can be helpful as a survival tool that warns of danger. Anxiety can be hugely motivating but it will eat away at you, like having your own inner Gordon Ramsay screaming at you 100% of the time to be better.

Some advice never worked for me in the past like "foster a work life balance by doing x, y and z" or "these simple automations will free your mind from work" etc - that kind of prescriptive steps-to-success stuff was like putting a bandage on a burning house, just completely the wrong remedy for what I had going on.

I have been getting monthly CBT with a clinical psychologist for the past year and it's been wonderfully helpful. I see it like taking your mind in for a tune up at the brain-garage. Sometimes you'll wonder if that oil change was really necessary and grumble at the expense, other times a simple oil change will dislodge something that was held together by old gunk and you'll need to spend some extra time to replace a worn out part or two, but afterwards you'll be running a lot more efficiently.

Another thing that has helped was simple meditation, nothing spiritual, just setting aside quiet time each day to sit still, disconnect, and focus on calming the mind. It might seem counter intuitive to draw on that house fire analogy to sit still in the midst of it all, but think of meditation or therapy as a fire extinguisher instead and it makes more sense.

It's really tough to advise because we're all different, however the way I see it now, there's an entire profession of people who specialise in debugging minds, finding a therapist I could gel with and making serious time for it helped me, possibly saved my life even. It might be the best investment in myself I've ever made.

Good luck with the launch, sorry to hear you've been having a difficult time of it, it definitely isn't easy.

> I've already alienated my partner enough that I have to move out. My whole life has become devoured by this puzzle

I'm so sorry to hear this. When I was facing similar circumstances the most absurd part of it was that I thought these things were my fault. It isn't. Mental health has been depoliticized and it's roots obscured. Mark Fisher writes:

> The UK's National Health Service (NHS), like the education system and other public services, has been forced to try to deal with the social and psychic damage caused by the deliberate destruction of solidarity and security. Where once workers would have turned to trade unions when they were put under increasing stress, now they are encouraged to go to their GP or, if they are lucky enough to be able to be get one on the NHS, a therapist.

> It would be facile to argue that every single case of depression can be attributed to economic or political causes; but it is equally facile to maintain – as the dominant approaches to depression do – that the roots of all depression must always lie either in individual brain chemistry or in early childhood experiences. Most psychiatrists assume that mental illnesses such as depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be treated by drugs. But most psychotherapy doesn't address the social causation of mental illness either.

> The radical therapist David Smail argues that Margaret Thatcher's view that there's no such thing as society, only individuals and their families, finds "an unacknowledged echo in almost all approaches to therapy". Therapies such as cognitive behaviour therapy combine a focus on early life with the self-help doctrine that individuals can become masters of their own destiny. The idea is "with the expert help of your therapist or counsellor, you can change the world you are in the last analysis responsible for, so that it no longer cause you distress" – Smail calls this view "magical voluntarism".

> Depression is the shadow side of entrepreneurial culture, what happens when magical voluntarism confronts limited opportunities. As psychologist Oliver James put it in his book The Selfish Capitalist, "in the entrepreneurial fantasy society," we are taught "that only the affluent are winners and that access to the top is open to anyone willing to work hard enough, regardless of their familial, ethnic or social background – if you do not succeed, there is only one person to blame." It's high time that the blame was placed elsewhere. We need to reverse the privatisation of stress and recognise that mental health is a political issue.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/16/mental...

I had the same issue until I went to therapy. I would suggest trying that out. They can help you think differently (in my case I grew up in a very dysfunctional family, look up adult children of alcoholics, we're often workaholics), and in some cases you might want to consider trying a medication for anxiety like Zoloft.

It may seem weird, but I didn't realize just how much it affected me until I got on medication myself. Now I feel free. I can still do great work and focus, but I'm not compelled to. I'm happy to focus on myself as well.

Sounds like you need help figuring out how to create boundaries. Start by practicing saying "no". If someone asks you to do something, say no. Keep at it.

Two bandaid solutions for dealing with stress I'd recommend

Yoga Nidra - one of best ways calm your nerve system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_noquwycq78

EMDR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DALbwI7m1vM& it's going to sound crazy but just give it a shot. Just focus on the moving dot when feeling extremely stressed. Check out the top comments for rough how to guide, but just focusing to follow the ball alone will being immediate relief.

science behind it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZVw-9ThmSM&t=31s

Long term solutions: Stoic philosophy... Imagining worst case scenarios playing out, and making peace with it. in your case, worst case is you fail and pick yourself back up working as software engineer with great salary. You'll manage ok.

Figuring out your stress-destress equation to figure out a sustainable balance of workload and sticking to it(I imagine very difficult to do in most startups).

Seeking professional help.

1. Be willing to accept run of the mill advice. Your problem is not tricky—it is instead dreadfully frightening and painfully difficult.

2. Go for a walk outside while listening to Brené Brown audiobooks.

3. Talk to humans who can actually calmly listen —- Not people as disconnected as an internet forum nor someone as intertwined as a life partner.

You'll need to remove things from your environment that's causing you to stress out and start making changes to your daily routine that are also exacerbating the stress.

You'll never be able to completely get rid of the stress, but you can mitigate the impact it has on your life significantly so that it often times is more positive than negative.

What are all those things that are causing you to stress? That I'm not certain. However, here are some things you can do:

1. Seek professional help. If there is an option to see a therapist for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) then I would highly recommend you consider it. The therapist can help you identify things in your life that you otherwise never considered.

2. Remove Twitter and Discord from your phone. If you're constantly checking it and it's butting into your life then you need to remove them. For me personally, I removed nearly all social media and chat services from my devices. I still have slack (don't have a choice) but shut off all notifications after 5pm.

3. Find a hobby outside of work. I don't care if it's sports, videogames, board games, etc just find something outside of work that you enjoy and can help you unwind.

I too love having hard work to do and pouring myself into being a part of as much as I can.

I have discovered that, when my personal life has suffered and waned, it's because I'm trying to be a part of too much of the work.

The choice I've needed to make is whether I can give up some of the direct personal responsibility that I've internalized over the success of the program I run (big company).

If you can't be aware of the limits to your personal capacity, you'll end up living in the exhausted, stress-hormone-overdosed purgatory of burnout land, your body rebelling against your refusal to "go home" at the end of the day.

On the "things to do" side, I do better now that I keep a phone for work and don't put any work anything on my personal phone. I do carry both through the day, but I put the work one face down when I'm done and leave it on my desk until the next day.

The work computer is similarly separate from where I'm writing right now, and it too goes on silent mode and closed when I'm done. I'll go as far some weeks to unplug it on Friday and tuck it away, just to really remind myself that I'm not on the clock.

Something you can take from Judaism is the concept of Shabbat where you can take 1 day a week to devote to family, study (that isn't related to your job), personal things, host a dinner with some friend (COVID permitting, of course). Clearly you don't have to be religious to do this, but you can take a dogmatic approach (e.g. your Shabbat starts at a certain time and is not reschedulable, Slack and work email are off during this period, etc.). It seems to be a time honoured approach to maintaining some balance in life.

huge bong rip at 7pm everyday really works wonders for me. while it can increase the anxiety for some, and even me sometimes, it's always causes a "head change" where I'm like "why am I just staring at my screen right now?"

You might want to look at beta blockers and talk with your doctor. (eg: propranolol). These are non addictive and will turn off the receptors causing panic and fear. Some people cannot 'think it away' and need medical help.

I've done the startup thing twice and that was enough to make me realize it just isn't worth it.

There's a 99% chance that in 2-3 years the startup will implode and you're going to hate yourself for getting so involved that you drove away your partner. Not worth it. Not even a little bit.

I seem to have similar issues and personality as you. I co-founded a startup last year and started at a frenetic pace, but was unable to turn myself off.

Over the last 3-4 months, the insane productivity was replaced by constant anxiety which mutated to burnout, and forced me to take a break from the company because I basically stopped functioning.

At this point, it seems the choices are either figure out how to set boundaries with myself and work at a sustainable pace, or just avoid these kinds of positions (founder is probably the most extreme type) and the addiction to work that they tempt.

I'm relatively good at not checking email or IM after work is done. However I'm pretty anxious and work affects me in the form of emotions: guilt (I haven't done that thing I was supposed to do, I didnt do that right), fear (I'm gonna screw that up, I'm gonna get fired) and animosity (why is that person messing with me, why can't they see my point of view). This got bad to the point where it was preventing me from enjoying things I should have.

The first thing that helped was seeing a therapist, who got me to read my feelings and identify when I get into a pointless loop.

The second one is meditation, which also lowers the effects of fear and guilt, provided that I realize I'm rehashing emotions.

The next one is more vain, but I started prioritizing some things based on how bad they may make me feel until I do them. Somehow this seems to help with the whole urgency vs importance as well.

Last is some form of an anti-regret framework: acting with principles (e.g. I do my best, I don't take shortcuts, etc.). When I feel bad, getting back to these helps (I did my best, by definition there was nothing more I could have done at that time).

I still get affected, but definitely those help.

Things that help me some:

(1) Remembering that my happiness matters. If you are very determined to achieve a goal, or if you were brought up to believe that your achievement and your worth as a person are one and the same, or if you have a strong sense of duty and self-sacrifice, it's easy to lose sight of this. Being happy and enjoying life is something everyone deserves some measure of, and it's should be one of your goals alongside the others.

(2) Distracting myself. Intentionally. Distracting yourself may sound negative, but it's not about wasting my time with something. It's about how, just as nature abhors a vacuum, my brain doesn't really shut off and stop processing stuff; instead, it processes whatever is on hand. If I tell myself to stop thinking about work but give myself nothing else to think about, then my thoughts will quickly return to work. But if I find some engrossing activity to do, I'll have different thoughts that can out-compete work thoughts. (Incidentally, this is often better at restoring mental energy than unwinding by vegging out.)

(3) Avoiding putting in hours for reasons other than productivity. For example, in a competitive environment, everyone else puts in long hours, so you'd better too. Sometimes unavoidable, but there's a law of diminishing returns. Aim for enough hours to be on par, but don't take it beyond that. Another example is impostor syndrome: if you feel that you're not as smart or talented as others, you can compensate with "dedication" (grinding). But that's actually just insecurity.

The only thing I got from startups were good friends and an experience. It’s not something you want when you have other life obligations.

The pay sucks, the work is long, you’re always ‘on’. Living like this with a family would be a very poor and selfish decision.

Be an adult, get a job at a public company with decent comp, and take care of your family not work.

I just recently decided to draw a line in the sand here. I don’t want to be interrupted during weekend dinners with fire alarms. I don’t cause fire alarms, I don’t have the requisite extreme compensation to justify the stress (and don’t really want it), so no.

People will often squeeze whatever they can out of you until you push back. So push back.

Good. There are also bits of advice in "Deep Work" from Cal Newport. He writes about a daily "shutdown procedure" 20mins before leaving work. I mainly apply it by writing down all of the day's leftover "todos" as detailed as possible on postits so that I can leave the office with peace in mind. I find it helpful and rewarding.

When I joined my current employer, I got a company phone. I thought: "great, now I can get rid of my private phone. This saves me money!".

On the best things I ever did, was come back on that decision a couple of years ago. I was checking my work email in the weekends or in the evenings.

I bought a cheap phone and just turn off my work phone in the weekends and don't look at it anymore when I come home.

Couldn't work just be more interesting in that context?

At least for myself, weddings/funerals/etc are relatively obligatory social events where I do not know that many people. I will attend and there will be some interesting parts, but otherwise I am mostly just a spectator there. After a couple minutes, any active problem becomes more interesting.

I was in a meeting this week where I wasn't really a participant and there is also a contest where I can win $50 if I propose a new way to serve rotisserie chicken. I spent the meeting thinking of ways to serve chicken. Not because the problem was important, but because it was the main active option open to me.

Startups are hard so they need people with no outside life/interests. That's why folk under 26 are usually the ones holding the spade as they have no family of their own and don't know any better.

Unlike others below I don't have an issue not being able to look at emails or work on weekends/evenings.

I do have a real big problem forgetting about work and all its problems to solve. Sometimes, it's not even my fault - the brain wakes me up with thoughts and worries and nightmares.

There's something structurally wrong here, I'd rather not focus on all the things that stress me. I find myself seeking out full distractions, like drinking or video games. Kratom helps.

Meditation takes me back to a place where I think. I'd rather not think.

I feel you. It’s about the same for me. I can look at my phone, see work mails and teams notifications pile up and totally ignore that if I don’t want to look. Sometimes I want, sometimes I don’t and sometimes I read mail and decide to ignore them until Monday. But waking up and thinking about that bug or a solution for a difficult problem nervet stops. I think it may be something that happens when you make your passion also your job. I feel passionately about the code I write, the problems it solves or causes, and there’s nothing in my brain separating work from private code directly. It’s an extra step I have to do „manually“. But when reading the problems other described here, I feel very very lucky.

What you could do is compensate for that by ending your day an hour early or by taking a long lunch break. You were working late or early unwittingly and solved a problem. I’ve learned to notice when I’m just spinning my wheels to hit that 8h for the day and now I just stop for the day when that happens. Then if something does come up I don’t end up doing overtime on top of everything. I don’t feel guilty since I get paid for results, not hours in front of my machine and because I know I can’t stop thinking about the problem in the shower or when I wake up in the middle of the night

Yeah, that’s pretty much what I do. It’s hard to put numbers on those things but I basically do what you suggested. Works great for me, and my employer and team seem to be very happy about my results. What more can I wish for?

> I find myself seeking out full distractions, like drinking or video games.

Everyone needs a break but find healthy ones, where you feel better when the break ends (e.g., not usually the case with drinking). Constructive hobbies (e.g., music, building model planes, etc.) are good for that.

> Meditation takes me back to a place where I think. I'd rather not think.

Meditation, at least in forms I know, is being present in the moment with your emotions and leaving behind thoughts of the past and future.

Ctrl-f therapy: 0 results

A decent therapist will help you learn the skills you need to manage your mental health. I've found therapy to be extraordinarily helpful, both as an external sounding board but also as a person who can help me find resources without spinning my wheels for hours and days.

Therapy itself can only do so much.

There are many bad therapists.

(Finding a good therapist is a bit like tech recruiting --- signal is low, false signal is high, quality variability is tremendous, search costs are high, consequences of a poor decision are high.)

I started in IT (officially) late in life at the bottom; help desk. I don't know if I could survive anything more stressful. College was a blast but help desk is torture it's not what I (or anyone) want but it pays well. The call app we use pops up in the lower right side of the screen when a call comes in. One day when I was off work there was an antivirus update on my own computer the notification popped up in the lower right part of the screen and I got a jolt of adrenaline and anxiety.

Software engineer: I was on the verge of being burned out and was sent to the emergency room with very strange symptoms.

So: I separated my work phone from my private phone. My private phone as no apps that are in anyway connected to my work.

When I'm home, my family is my job.

I recently had a trip where I made a change that made a huge difference for me and I wanted to share it here.

Turn off notification previews

It made a world of difference to see “gmail notification” vs “email from xyz person on xyz topic”. The former is a lot easier to avoid getting wrapped up in. The latter strikes your curiosity and it’s a steep downward slope from there.

I liked it so much I may do the same on my work computer during work hours.

What works well for me is configuring my work email account but keeping it switched off on my phone, and setting chat to notify on directs and mentions only.

If for some reason I need it, I can easily switch it on. But I haven't needed to do that in years, I simply clear my inbox each morning and periodically through the work day.

Setting boundaries is a huge secret skill. I force people to explicitly tell me that i must do something extra and it almost never happens and I get to work a 35-40h week.

Boss messages me to look at something after hours? I won’t read it. If it’s a problem they can explicitly tell me that they expect me to be available at all hours and then we’ll have that discussion. And in that I’ll say that it’s not acceptable for me but I can split my day in two if it’s important for me to be available late in the day. If they want me to do calls at 5am I’ll say it’s doable and then I’ll end my day at 1pm of course

Exactly this. Imagine one Friday evening, your boss says, “We need this to be done by Monday”

You - “Monday EOD?”

Boss - “Um, no Monday first half”

You - “This seems like a whole day’s work, and it’s already Friday. Are you expecting me to work over the weekend to do this?”

If they really need this to be done, they will explicitly make the request.

You can choose to say “yes” but this also gives you space to follow it up with “but I hope this doesn’t happen too frequently” or “I understand that this is a crunch period and I’d be happy to do extra this one time”.

If you say “no”, you can help them figure out alternative arrangements.

None of this would be easy without them making the explicit request. In a healthy environment, the explicit request would come without any of these games, but we’re not always blessed to work in such places.

I’m not always great about this myself, but I think a lot of this is self-imposed/external deadlines. What I like to make sure I remember is that there is always more work. Don’t rush yourself cause you’ll just be given more. If approaching deadlines you can’t meet with a reasonable work life balance - cut the scope, break it into smaller chunks, and inform stakeholders. Set expectations that you aren’t going to complete things on a frantic 60 hour+ schedule. Work finds those who are competent. Slow down and maybe be okay with not exceeding expectations all the time.

Working in information security means waiting for the disaster to strike. When there is no disaster we do not exist.

This drove me to burnout at some point and I decided to carefully distribute the fucks I give (this comes from the book "the subtle art of not giving a fuck").

I never check anything work related outside of work hours. My phone is silenced during the night.

I am actively trying to be assertive in meeting hours, refusing the ones outside of work hours. This is probably the most complicated part.

R&D is much like startups in this respect, as many have connected. The lines between work and life easily blur. In a startup environment, especially if you're one of the key stakeholders, you have a high incentive structure nestling you along. If you succeed and maintain, you'll be financially rewarded and secured. You could even become very rich.

Research on the other hand often doesn't have this same incentive. If I succeed, it just means I might get another grant or make another funding cycle on what I'm already working on. It means I'll have income/"a job"--the incentive is more of a disincentive: you won't be scrambling to find a job or in a financially unstable predicament. Maybe you get partial ownership of a patent or royalties through your employer, maybe all you get it a meaningless accomplishment award or something.

So while this connection is similar, it's often not the same. This is why I advise most people I speak with to absolutely not pursue research work unless it's their passion they need. I have no problem "turning off" work. I can very very easily separate problem solving or "lab-like" work the author mentions from my life. With that said, I have the exact same problem the author has. I find myself at dinner thinking through new approaches, playing thought experiments of how to tackle a problem or approach it differently, and so on. Sometimes, not often, it's because the core underlying problem is so intellectually stimulating and interesting to me that I can't help but go through the motions. Then, and only then, am I myself to blame.

Most of the time however, in the research world, you're not working on your passion unless you're at the absolute top of your field and have tremendous tenure. Instead, you're thinking about problems you could get funded for and making sure you can continue to get funded for (hopefully they're kind of close to what you actually wanted to do).

You're sitting around thinking about these things because if you only work on them from 9-5, you absolutely will fail, guaranteed because there are starving post docs that aren't far behind you willing to slave their lives away--research like any passion industry has a highly competitive labor market.

In order to succeed you have to work a significant amount of hours simply thinking and rethinking about approaches to problem, that way when you arrive in the 9-5 case, you have fruitful approaches to get you moving along and meet deadlines. Someone else may promise a similar vein of work for half what you say you can do it for. People promise the moon and deliver a broken pickup truck.

So while I agree with the authors observation, I disagree with the cause. I think in R&D, the underlying problem is how research is funded, conducted, and the unrealistic (I'll say absurd these days) expectations that exist. For startups, there's a reward incentive and I encourage anyone who is interested in R&D who can pursue their research through a business model do so. At least then if and when you succeed with the tremendous effort, you'll be rewarded vs skate by.

Research environments used to acknowledge these shortcomings and provide stability and understanding that the process is inherently high risk and the tradeoff you made was you got to pursue your interest but could still be financially stable--you won't be rich but you'll have reasonable work life balance, someone else might get rich, they might also lose boatloads of money--they play the reward/risk game and you do the interesting work. If one approach failed, here's why, and that's OK, come in tomorrow and we'll try something different. You won't need to look for a new position or end up starving on the streets. Now, business has influenced R&D so much that it often is treated exactly like a startup in terms of risk but with limited reward, so you're better off just tell them to stuff it and at least have a potential reward with your risk.

I tend to be a wee bit obsessive about my work.

In my case, it’s OK. It’s actually been a lifelong dream of mine, to be able to devote all the time that I want, to writing software. I was a manager, for years, at my “day job,” and had to fit writing software into the nooks and crannies (I actually got a lot done).

I’m working with a small team, as a startup, and it’s OK, so far.

A hobby is a perfect way to disconnect. During the Olympics there was a diver that used crochet as a distraction between dives. TV announcer thought it was strange but he used it as a way to reduce the stress from competition.

In order to disconnect, a hobby, you can focus on, is a great way to unplug for a bit.

The great thing about not overworking is that you actually get more done after you stop wasting energy on pretending to work. It doesn't really matter if you are pretending for others or yourself.

I agree. By not aiming for the target, you hit it repeatedly.

Hard pass on startups

What's your preferred alternative then?

Megacorps or completely alternative things like dive store, backpacker, climbing gym, mountaineering hotel

Any experience or thoughts on NGOs or government work?

Would megacorps include the G-MAFIA or exclude current tech giants?

I ♥ the acronym G-MAFIA but which company is I?

Instacart?

It's sort of ... Irrellevent ... though you could go through the list of Unicorns: https://www.cbinsights.com/research-unicorn-companies

Exclude tech giants.

Exclude tech giants. FORTUNE100 or FORTUNE500 something like that.

Run. Running is the only super-effective method I have found so far that REALLY helps me disconnecting.

The problem with not checking email during weekends or vacation is that the emails don't go away, they accumulate. So when you're back to work you have even more stress trying to catch up.

There are systems / employers (several in Germany) which explicitly reject messages sent after hours / over the weekend for just this reason.

So, basically meditate and try to be in a moment.

I fully relate as a business owner. Technology makes it easier than ever to stay plugged in and it costs quality of life and by some research years of life.

I resisted the smart phone and linked email for a long time. Once it finally invaded life changed. Just this morning a client lost her legal documents and needs a copy from me. It is so hard to stay away. Slowly I am learning to push away from the table and walk. It isn't always that easy.

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