Ask HN: How do you power through burnouts? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you power through burnouts?

9 pointsshreythecray20 comments

Not much context to offer, just looking for solutions on how to power through burnouts.

You’re asking how to keep a candle lit after all the wax has been burned. You can’t. Stop trying to relight it or you’ll end up burning down the house.

What defines a burnout is reaching the limit. You need to rest, not to double down. The harder you push, the harder it will be to recover.

The question should instead be which steps can you take to stop the current situation from getting worse and what can you do to recuperate. Answering that requires context.

At one point I did, until I fell off the cliff, and it took me over 2 years to recover to a functional level. Now 10 years later I still feel it is something I have gone through and it affects my energy balance.

So yeah, just ... don't.

I can only speak of my personal experience and I agree with others here that powering through a burnout is a bad idea. If you have to keep working though one thing that can help is becoming more efficient. Spend more time just thinking and planning what you want to work on, and figure out ways to reduce the amount of time and effort it takes. Prioritize work, decide what is essential, ask for help. Sometimes you can figure out software bugs by just reviewing the evidence in your mind and thinking about it, which seems to take a lot less energy than staring at the code and wrestling it. Gather info about problems, then set them aside for a day and let your brain integrate the information. The brain seems to have some ability to figure things out on autopilot, particularly after sleep. Note which things have the biggest effect on you and try to minimize them. I found I was working on problems continuously until I had fixed them, sometimes staying focused for many hours, which was becoming painful. Take breaks often, switch tasks. You may end up only digging yourself more gradually into a deeper hole, but if you see no other choice it may buy you some time. Burnout is most likely not going to go away magically if you try harder, the opposite seems more likely.

Discipline cuts both ways.

Being disciplined in your work. And being disciplined in your self care.

Stop staying up till 4 am playing video games, and instead establish a good sleep schedule. Stop forcing yourself to work all weekend or evenings. Stop procrastinating during work hours, and instead lean in to your work.

I don't. I usually say I'm taking a few days off. I've never seen a project's deadline so important that I should sacrifice my mental health for it. After a rest, I take it very slow, stopping whenever I feel pressure mounting.

Well, if you absolutely must continue your burnout, then don't take vacation. You will spend it dreading the return and it will make you miserable.

Try and rationalize away all the concerns about the meaningfulness of what you do. Make sure you are not operating on power saver during the day and give it all you got!

Also give it all you got in after work hours and make sure you get some positive emotions out of it regularly.

Wake up well rested in mornings with proper sleep habits.

Adjust your position in a way that situations that cause strong negative emotions are not your concern.

my answer to this is to do things that would have prevented the burnt out in the first place. Which means have various interests and hobbies, have healthy social life, also perfect sleep schedule, good diet, sunlight, going to fun places, hanging out with people... basically all things a normal life offers you. I feel it's like sprinting, there are only so many mental games you can play before your legs just can't go on any further. Walking and jogging is more sustainable.

Last time i got burnt out it took me 3 years to start coding with passion again. And first I had to get away from coding to heal. In the start I'd just spend all day outdoors and in gym. Then I started to go to events and parties. Then I started to read books and feeling intellectual curiosity coming back. Then I got into movies, esp movie recap/summaries on youtube. Then I got into gaming and I went from noob to competitive. Started to feel good about myself. Then I got into video editing. It was more challenging and vague. I was blown away at every thing I'd end up creating following tutorials and such. THEN... once I was rested, confident, curious and happier I came back to coding. Now I can detect burn out coming and peace out, doesn't matter how many deadlines are there, they are bs deadlines set by people not coding.

Trying to power through burnouts is seriously dangerous for your long term mental health. Don’t sacrifice your long term mental health for short term gains or to make your CEO rich. If you really really can’t take a break (I call BS on that btw) then time limit the number of hours you spend working. Yes seriously. And if that doesn’t work then lower the daily time limit until things start improving, and spend the rest of your time away from the keyboard. Walking, reading, playing, listening to music, with friends etc.

There's the saying that if you don't have time to meditate for 5 minutes, then you need an hour.

This is sometimes BS - meditation doesn't cure all problems. But the idea is that if you don't have any time, the reason is because you're not spending enough time to clear your head. I think remote work makes it especially likely to never have any free time.

Agree. Remote work requires you to be more disciplined about separating work from non-work.

I think that depends on how severe the burnout is.

You can try to stave off burnout just by optimizing your general physical health. (So, making sure you're getting enough sleep -- and exercising, and eating right.) And you can try taking a break from work -- taking a walk outside, getting fresh air/a change of scenery/exercise.

Basically, getting a real break from the pressure is the surest way to recharge. Talking to another human being, or maybe an old friend of some kind, etc.

I take a vacation, or if thats not poissble, i close the laptop and take a long walk with nature.

You don't... that's what an actual burnout is, the point you can't continue on.

I've found when I am near burnout, sleeping for 10-11 hours a day for a few weeks puts the burnout off indefinitely.

Not sure what to do when I actually have one.

Take a nap. Once you wake, commit to a time to start work and follow through. Have a plan of what you want to accomplish every 25 minutes. Take a 5 minute breaks after each 25 minute work session. Trying to find an accountability partner to report on what you what you got done after each 25 minute session.

This doesn't work through typical fatigue, much less burnout.

If you're actually burned out, you'll be staring at it for the whole 25 minutes, then getting extra stressed out at reporting it to the accountability partner, which results in a downwards spiral. Heck, you'd be lucky to even finish writing the plan.

You are being absolute in what people are capable of when they are burned out, which I think is foolish because the feeling and level of burnout is subjective.

Overcoming burnout is looking at your situation from the outside in. What you described is clearly a downward spiral. Logically, wouldn’t it be better to write some words for a plan than no words? If you can procrastinate for 25 minutes while you are burned out, you can spend 25 minutes writing a plan, even if it’s one word a minute or one word every 5 minutes.

The key is to break down what you need to accomplish and how you will accomplish it in the smallest incremental steps possible. Once you have that list, it becomes less overwhelming to make progress. Don’t focus on completion, focus on making tiny incremental progress.

It's not subjective. There's a medical definition of burnout - the Maslach Burnout Inventory. A part of it is cynicism, feeling hopeless and useless, depersonalisation. This is not the mental state to be writing plans and being held accountable to them.

I think internet health advice can be harmful because not everyone has an equal definition of the same terms. Society tends to use the same terms for fatigue, burnout, and plain laziness. It's like trying to apply aloe vera to a third degree burn.

I think you're on to something with trying to regain control in small incremental steps. But it's probably another approach.

this is a actually nice advice. burnout sometimes is lack of inspiration from being unable to concentrate. Once you get your concentration going you might feel productive and inspired.

There is needs to be app of some sort for accountability buddy.

Nothing is worth trying.

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