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Comment by ryanianian | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, burnout is cured not by vacation, time away, switching teams, or switching companies. These are (attempted) implementations of the real cure: change of perspective.

Time away only helps if burnout is project related (not existential). Switching teams/companies only helps until you find the same situation has arisen in a separate company or context. The problem wasn't them: it was you.

The cure? Figure out what actually matters to you, and learn to treat everything that's not that as a means to that end and no more.

This is far easier said than done. Therapy works wonders. Perhaps even psychedelics. The point is to try new things and be active in your own decisions. The burnout is your brain telling you that whatever it is you're currently doing isn't a sustainable solution for happiness.

(Armchair psychologist here says the author needs to start his own lab. Again: easier said than done.)

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> The problem wasn't them: it was you.

I saw this sentence and my amygdala went into overdrive...

> The burnout is your brain telling you that whatever it is you're currently doing isn't a sustainable solution for happiness.

... and now it went to an idle state again.

Well, yeah. Although sometimes just by not being in the same position - completely different social structure even if the job description is identical - can be enough to address the underlying problem. If the problem is something intrinsic to the job then you are right, changing companies won't help at all.

>In my experience, burnout is cured not by vacation, time away, switching teams, or switching companies. These are (attempted) implementations of the real cure: change of perspective.

This resonates with the published research on Burnout (mostly Maslach): she argues that the causes of burnout are best understood as mismatch between expectations and workplace reality. E.g. customer support firefighting can be tolerable if you don't expect yourself to be spending time on strategic thinkiing.

However, when burnout has happened, change of perspective / removing causes just won't do (those are preventative solutions). When you've burnt out, it's time for rest.

The cure? Figure out what actually matters to you, and learn to treat everything that's not that as a means to that end and no more.

In a state of severe motivational crisis (true burnout, not the yuppie-flu decline-of-interest that is often given this name), people aren't thinking clearly and are not equipped to do that. At that point, you're in survival mode and you're barely passing at that. Fencing with existential dragons is not going to help.

People burn out for a variety of reasons but--again, if we're talking about true burnout--the cause is usually not just stress but distress: a subtype of stress that is relentless, purposeless, acutely dysphoric, and often imposed by external forces. The problem is that sometimes those external forces are wholly imagined (delusions and hypervigilance brought on by nervous exhaustion) and sometimes they are real and malevolent (such as in the case of the need to work to survive, which is imposed on us by an upper class we lack the organizational capability to remove from power and eliminate) and the burning-out person is never well-equipped to sort out which is the case.

> an upper class we lack the organizational capability to remove from power and eliminate

That's one hell of a parenthetical.

Therapist: Have you considered breathing exercises?

cs137: Yes, but I've found that the only long-term solution is to truck the managerial class to the killing fields.

I'm not saying you're wrong, mind.

It doesn't require we kill them, or anyone. We have to destroy the ruling elite's ability to function as a class. Whether that requires no violence or a significant amount, I can't predict; but, either way, we have to do it.

They've left the world worse off than it was 50 years ago, and they're destroying the planet--and all for nothing, too. The corporate system has to be scrapped before it's too late.

I agree with you, but I also do think that OP's point is important. You may not be equipped to wrestle with the existential dragons in your current position, and switching jobs will bring temporary relief. But at that point, when you have the relief, it's imperative to examine what happened and ensure that you make any changes you need to so that you don't end up back there.

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