How I got a burnout | Hacker News Reader

How I got a burnout

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82 pointschriseidhof48 comments

Burnout is real. It is dangerous. I try to address burnout by doing other activities, such as acting/long boarding/creating web comics (toblender.com).

A friend told me that Henry Ford was the one who established the 40 hour week. This was not because he was kind, it was because anything over 8 hours a day produces diminishing returns.

I think I'm in a bout of burnout right now. I've opted to work a full time contract, to fund my startup, while burning midnight and weekend oils for my startup. I think a vacation, of simply doing NOTHING would be a good idea.

They bring up this point in the book "7 habits of highly effective people", you have to take time to sharpen the saw. Or you'll be wasting a lot of effort hacking away with a dull blade.

This makes me think of Paul Grahams article on wealth and how he talked about having a startup makes you money but you have to remember that you are trading that 40 hour steady job for something a lot shorter and a lot more intense, stressful, etc.

You can read here about Henry Ford and the 40 hour work week - http://www.worklessparty.org/timework/ford.htm

For knowledge work though, the studies I've come across seem to suggest that a work week of 30 hours would be ideal. You can read this article about how Kellogg's actually had productivity go up when moving to a 30 hour work week - http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1093/is_1_42/ai_53697...

Financially independent authors have also been known to just work 4 hours a day on their writing and then use the rest of the day for leisure and re-cooperation.

I think most knowledge workers only have 4 hours of productive work a day, if you don't count screwing off on facebook or hn or what have you.

30 hours, I think, is a good expectation of a salary worker, assuming they work for most of those 30 hours.

"I think I'm in a bout of burnout right now. I've opted to work a full time contract, to fund my startup, while burning midnight and weekend oils for my startup. I think a vacation, of simply doing NOTHING would be a good idea."

Yup: but don't do nothing, do family. Visit parents, uncles/aunts, places near where you grew up. I check Mum out whenever things get really mad. A walk on the beach then we do a taxi to a nice cafe. Does wonders.

     building something similar to Ruby on Rails 
     << in Haskell >> is not that hard

Actually, yes it is.

You may be able to build something similarly productive, but Rails cannot be replicated in part or in full in any statically-typed programming language, especially one that doesn't allow runtime introspection.

To me, the author's problem is that instead of working on cool projects that bring him joy and/or money, he instead went on to chase wild geese. And building yet another web framework by copying what's already done, reinventing the wheel for the N-th time in history, that's not fun. Building iPhone projects, on the other hand can be quite fun, not to mention something you can sell.

Stop chasing for the ultimate, mythical, most awesome programming experience and start doing practical things that you can finish. Compromises are a big part of that.

The problem the author probably had (and one I've experienced at times) is that those "cool projects that bring him joy and/or money" are not very cool. Unfortunately, web programming is boring. And easy. And lucrative. This means that you may not enjoy your RoR apps, but you have to do them because your more challenging projects aren't immediately monetizeable.

Building iPhone projects, on the other hand can be quite fun

This is where I think we may disagree. Fundamentally, most iPhone projects are too easy to be interesting. It's like chopping wood all day.

It may be easy in the purely technical sense, but that can be exactly the thing to afford you a view into the other aspects of making and selling software beside the programming (design, marketing, etc).

You might even learn that the coding is indeed not the hardest part of making a living off of your own software projects :)

That doesn't mean I'll get any more enjoyment out of it. My parents are both physicians -- I know their job is very difficult. Medicine, however, doesn't appeal to me. What does is hard technical problems.

"web programming is boring"

I got no more to say than: "prove it scientifically" (you can't). How can you say web programming is boring as a fact? It's your view.

It doesn't need to be any more than my opinion: my point was that some people (myself and probably the poster included) will never be satisfied by just web programming or just iPhone development. bad_user attempted to say that he should work on "real" projects that are "fun" like web dev and mobile dev, but we don't and won't find those fun.

> You may be able to build something similarly productive, but Rails cannot be replicated in part or in full in any statically-typed programming language, especially one that doesn't allow runtime introspection.

Can you be more specific? There's not much to Rails that couldn't be easily done in c#. Monorail for example was pretty close to Rails' experience except for the horrible templating engine (replacing it wasn't hard). The parts that deviated weren't really about difficulty, more just idiomatic differences. (It's not difficult for example to code-gen in c#, even back on 1.0, so the manual registration of Controllers classes wasn't because of a technical limitation.)

Considering how many alternative frameworks have grown up out of "The Big Two" VMs, I feel like I must have completely missed the intent in your comment.

Java and C# allow for introspection, however. Most web frameworks for Java and C# make extensive use of reflection and (more recently) and annotations.

(That's not to say I agree with the bad_user's point: there are other approaches to meta-programming)

> projects that bring him joy and/or money

I believe author pursued projects that build him joy (creating a web framework in Haskell) vs. what would bring him money (iOS apps). The two are not the same. Money can easily cloud the picture.

For some people re-inventing the wheel in Haskell may be what brings them joy. There's also nothing wrong with re-inventing the wheel: I am very glad my sports car has forged 19" alloy wheels rather than slices of a log.

Reflection is great (it's what made even static language frameworks like those in Java and C# successful), but it's also a poor substitute for genuine meta-programming as afforded by languages in the Haskell and ML family.

Haskell allows for introspection, using a technique called Generic Programming. There are a lot of ways to do it, but one way is http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/haskell-web.html.

As for the second part: so true. Thanks for the insight. In part two I'll write about that.

I like how we use the word "burnout" in place of the word "depression". When you're depressed, even the things that you used to love doing become chores.

Taking a vacation isn't the right answer to depression. You have to identify and attack the causes straight on. (Or find some drugs and idle the rest of your life away.)

Burnout and depression are different, and have different causes. The right solution to a burnout really is a vacation most of the time.

Depression is different and a vacation is not the answer. A psychologist/psychiatrist is the answer.

One strong indicator of the difference (note: I'm not a psychologist, and this is a bit oversimplifying) is how localized the 'depression' is. Burnout tends to be very work-localized, whereas clinical depression tends to be more pervasive: if you still find lots of joy in your hobbies and personal relationships, then it's probably not depression.

Burnout can ripple into other areas of your life if it's severe enough.

Put another way, I wouldn't be surprised if extreme burnout naturally progressed to mild depression.

I have to take issue with your last statement: "(Or find some drugs and idle the rest of your life away.)"

We could likely agree that over-prescription is a problem, as is people not willing to make change or enter psychotherapy. But some people even with all of that require medication and care - there's a reason why ECT therapy is still used, for some people it's the only relief.

Yes, I take exception to my statement also. I did not actually mean anti-depressives, I was thinking of harder stuff: cocaine, heroine, meth. Very poorly worded on my part.

I've had both. They're different. One can lead to the other, but there's nothing scarier than looking at a screen and realizing you're incapable of programming past a basic loop.

I take issue with your last statement as well. Anyone can idle their life away.

For many depressed people (at least myself), changing their broken neurochemistry with drugs, ECT or both is a necessary but not sufficient condition to identifying and attacking the causes of their symptoms. It's not an either-or choice, and despite lingering stereotypes that your statement seems to imply, no kind of clinical treatment (even ECT!) is intended to just numb you to those symptoms.

doc here. Burnout != depression. I appreciate you're trying to understand the difference, and I'm glad you've thought about it a bit. Please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect, and I encourage you to keep reading on your own and try to ask more questions.

I have burned out before. I dealt with it with a combination of vacation (only had 2 weeks) and just slugging through the days until it got better. My code was crap during that time and everything suffered for it.

At that company, they had burned out every single developer they had ever had. I signed on as a junior programmer and ended up doing senior level things in the first month... Alone. No help. (They did give me amazing raises to compensate for this, so I'm not complaining.)

But eventually, they managed to burn me out, too. But instead of quitting, I just kept at it.

The result is that I'm now much less likely to burn out again because I have seen what it's like to code-like-a-crazy-man, and code-like-a-depressed-monkey. And I can balance the 2 enough to make sure I never hit either extreme again.

I am really grateful that I had great friends who were able to notice when I was totally burning out.

They talked me into taking some time off to go on a road trip with them and pulled me out of a dark and ugly hole. I had to deal with the wrath of the boss when I returned, but getting out of the hole gave me the right perspective to look for something much better. I was out of there within a few weeks.

Cheers to great friends! And, please don't forget to be one.

I find this post a bit too anti-climax. I was hoping to hear a longer story for the first part, at least. Well I'm looking forward to the second part!

You "hand in" you thesis and are graded 8.5? What did you do before then? Did you ask your thesis advisor for feedback while working on it? Did you study previous 9.0 theses and compare yours? How did you track that you were on the right path to meet your goal?

"Set direction, work without feedback or correction, surface for air at the end" is not a suitable methodology for success.

I did talk with my thesis advisors a lot, and thought I was on the right track. In hindsight, I wasn't. I blamed them for it, but eventually realized it was my fault in the end.

This doesn't really explain 'how' you got burnout. What was the reason?

I worked for a startup that got acquired a couple years ago. The acquiring company means well but it's nowhere I would have ever applied to, if you know what I mean.

Thing is, it just wouldn't make financial sense to leave. I have to stay until I'm vested. Nowhere else would come close to making that up.

I took a road trip with my family this summer, hoping it would relieve the burnout. We had a brilliant great time driving across the American Southwest.

Coming back, burnout is worse. I find I care even less. I find myself avoiding major projects and looking busy. I'm nudging features and scope in ways to most minimize my effort. I worry that I'm gonna get warped and dull. What's gonna happen by the time I am fully vested?

I've had that happen before.

Generally, I find I have two types of burn outs.

One is where I am just tired of coding. With those, I focus on being productive during the day. Sometimes, work on improving my diet since I find that influences my energy level and my mood. Beyond that, will leave work at a reasonable time and just not even open my laptop at home and stay off it as much as I can on the weekends. Go out and do other stuff.

The other is more around burnout on the project I'm on. With those, I try to have little personal side projects. Either some idea I had, new technology I want to try, etc. Nothing too big and crazy, but some coding I consider fun and look forward to doing. With that, I find I'm still productive during the day and have my side stuff at night, and then make it through whatever boring project phase I'm in and then looking forward to the next one.

My mom is a burnout. She is no longer capable of working at all. She can fulfill tiny things at home for a short period.

We canceled many vacations because of her burnout. So treat it serious, because it can cost you your career and will control your life!

As others have stated, it happens to all of us. I think one has to learn how to take breaks often. The world is not gonna fall apart if you take a week off every once in a couple of months to let go of your computer and snooze on a beach somewhere. Also as one other person posted, sometimes what you perceive as burnout may be clinical depression...but from the way the poster was talking about it sounded more like job dissatisfaction than depression.

Also, it depends on where you work. You have to enjoy the team you're working with and you have to enjoy the work you're doing. Sounds like a big part of it for the submitter had to do with the language in which they were programming. That's a big deal to a lot of programmers. Programming is an art! If an employer or project requirements forces tools upon you that do not jive with how your thoughts flow, not surprising you're burnt out. Do what you love, tons of companies that use Haskell...even ones that use embedded computers. Also sounded like the submitter was enjoying their academic career as a Masters student. Perhaps going down the academic route is a better option. In summary, do what you love!

What would you call if you are not "burned-out", but rather you hate the drudgery of work day-in day-out, know that you are not giving 100% and don't have the energy to put in that level of effort..what would you call that ?

Would "unmotivated" do ? I don't think that is the right word, since I know the feeling and it's not just a matter of all-you-got-to-do is get motivated....

The start of burn out.

Did you have fun before? Has it always been like this?

Something isn't right, that's for sure.

There is one important fact in our life.

We've got to love what we do, to do it right. Otherwise it won't be possible to have the job well done.

It may be done with no errors, but without the passion, it will never be the same.

If a good chef enjoys what he is doing he becomes a "great" chef.

Anyone in your situation, needs to look a way to change, the direction of his life.

Normally I would reply quickly to the discussion, but I probably won't before tomorrow morning, sorry for that.

I had my worst burnout symptoms at a 9-to-5 job after I sold my first startup. That's how I realized I'm an entrepreneur. I left the job and the lockup shares, and have since been happy, sometimes rich/stressless sometimes poor/stressed, 24/7 startup kind of guy.

Sorry to hear that this guy did not make his dream grade. A lot of us have had that experience where you don't get the job of your dreams or get into the university you love...

This is common and part of life, but if every time you fail, you give up, then its not productive.

Recently, I have been thinking that no specific job can define you as good or bad programmer. No school can really define how intelligent you are or how much passion you have for a topic. These institutions can help you discover them but a lot relies on you to really make it happen.

All the best to author of this article, I really hope he breaks out of this low and gets back to doing what he loves.

You missed the point

A bit off focus, but I always find it odd when people declare they would prefer to code in x because it is more beautiful, more y, or more z.

Languages are tools, we should select the right one for the job and use it as such.

Burnout is very real, happened to me before. You need the vacation time to decompress. The thing is, you can't take vacation time when you're leading a startup.

So you got burnout. Boo Hoo.

Part 2 should be in on page 2, not "some time later on", I won't be back, the story is not that interesting sorry!

There might be physical reasons behind burnouts.

A personal example -- a simple bacteria infection in a tooth, which didn't give any normal problems like pain etc. Allergies can make you tired -- and some (well, at least mine) food allergies won't have much throat effects, which makes them hard to identify yourself.

So check up on physical health, too.

this post is so sad..... :D

This is how I got a burnout: http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/228173_101502...

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