Ask HN: How do you know when you need a break?

2 points·nowherebeen··5 comments

What are the signs of burning out for you? And what do you do to re-energize?

One highly consistent signal is the growing feeling of "I absolutely cannot take a break right now", entering the burnout phase when I start feeling frustrated or angry when someone else suggests I need to take a break. I suspect this signal is reliable because it correlates with how much I'm over-indexing on the Current Critical Thing, leading to reactive & pigheaded actions and the loss of broader perspectives.

This is brilliant, I'm stealing this. If I can't sit on my ass for half an hour and watch the clouds go by, it's probably because I've wound myself up too tight.

I bought a Garmin watch for the body battery feature. I track my usual body battery throughout the day. If it's low, then I could use a break.

At 3 PM, it's normally 50. If it's 60, I push myself. At 30, I take a nap.

Naps are good way to reenergize and they keep you from dumping more energy on other stuff (e.g. HN, Facebook). Otherwise, I like just watching music videos. Some would say meditation, but paying attention to music is a form of meditation for me.

Interesting, I don't find the body battery very accurate. I had high hopes for it.

In my experience, it tells you how you're physically feeling, not mentally. I don't need a watch to tell me how I'm mentally feeling.

Sometimes I feel like I need more sleep, and it shows me I'm at 100. So that's a good sign that I already had enough sleep and need to start moving.

Often when I'm very low on energy, I'm too tired to sleep. But there's a burst of energy, the kind you see in tired kids late at night. So the watch would say energy level is at 11 or so and I'd turn off the phone and close my eyes. But when you're tired, often the last thing you want to do is rest.

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