Hey Mate,
This is the sort of discussion I come to HN for. I've loved reading through the comments. Thanks for creating this thread. Lots of good stuff here.
ADHD is relevant to burnout fatigue.
For me, burnout is easy to spot coming. Energy in... there has to be more satisfaction coming out.
When I can't just build the one little thing I set about building, I get frustrated with work.
For me, ADHD means that I worry about all the little shit that's going on that I can't control. I want to care about all of it, but it's so disappointing to have to continue to compromise and pivot throughout a project. You build something aligned with the original spec, and someone new comes in and says, "Bolt in some more crap." And my head instantly goes to, "But that'll fuck up our ability to do XYZ / work with ABC down the road..."
One of the things I've had long discussions with people over is, "How is it you can just care about one day at a time or one small thing you're building? How is it you don't have 200 ideas from the backlog running through your head all day? How is it you can go through the day without worrying about the 15 peripheral projects that your features impact? How can you not care about how this will work in the future?"
The last one is the big one. So many times in tech projects, we have to make compromises. "Oh well we don't have time to build it right, just slop something together... someone can manually run a script daily to keep it working until there's time to do it right." Fuck that sort of stuff, no matter how much I logically get the need for pushing things that aren't "perfect" (things will never be perfect)... they can't help but gnaw at me.
And all that shit gets heavy. Ghosts and tech debt just rattling around in my head all day. The longer I work on a project, the worse it gets. If the pace of build, and pace of wins, don't keep ahead of the distraction garbage then my satisfaction levels go into the shitter. And this is such a subjective thing.
A company could be crushing it, growing, product sales off the charts... but if my idea wasn't used, or I had to add more tuna-fish to the PB&J I thought we set out to make... y'know, if I can't control the dumb scope creep that costs us stuff I do care about... it's hard to balance it all. "But if we do this then our clean and nice and well-thought-through API has to be re-written to account for this idiot request from that idiot VP in the corner over there..." It's hard to keep happy. Burnout ensues.
Wish I had a solution for you. Exercise. Sure. Friends. Sure. Travel. Sure. For me... switching jobs every year or three helps gives me a reset. ADHD meds... if they work for you, keep monitoring them. The dosages shift over time. Figure out a good routine, and a good diet that lets your meds be most effective. I had to give up drinking and drugs. And man... I fucking loved tying one on after a project launch. But booze / drugs can make it easier to let yourself get down.
A change of scenery helps me. Fortunately, it's not hard to change jobs in the industry we're in. Getting to do things "my way" helps... most of the time. I hate jobs at big companies where I'm told "we have a process" -- if I want to feel any satisfaction, I need to be free to find a good solution, not just run a playbook someone else created.
Ways to work this in at work? Stay data-focused. It's OK to disagree with people, especially if you have data to back up your claims. Trust your gut, but sanity check yourself. Have a friend you trust who can sanity check you. "Hey, my gut says this is a bad idea... but I can't tell if it's a bad idea because I didn't come up with it, or it's a bad idea."
Realize that... this is the hard one for me... nothing will ever be perfect. Most things are shit, barely passable shit duct-taped together into something that sort of works somewhat but barely. Everything is silly fragile and written sloppy, and has a ton of garbage bolted onto it. But imperfect things still have value.
I try and focus on what people say about the work, not my own judgment of it. If I listened to my own judgment, man... I'd burn every last project down to the ground instead of launching it. But objectively, most of them were what the clients / business stakeholders needed at the time.
None of them ever gave me the full satisfaction I sought. I've learned that I have to get that other places.
Personal goals... just losing some weight, being able to run a mile in a certain amount of time, picking up X bags of garbage at the park, collecting all the Garbage Pail Kids cards... Who knows, who cares, just define some for yourself. You won't get paid. You won't get recognition. But you have these personal metrics to help you keep from getting down. Deep down, I know I'm a good person because of ABC. I know I have value because of XYZ. Finding these things is what life is all about. (=
I wish someone had told 20-something me, "Hey, work can in rare occurrences give you some thrills, but in the long run it'll never make you happy." Just treat it like a paycheck. You've gotta have your own performance metrics, and find purpose in your life that isn't a 9-to-5 job. What are we here for? That's up to you to define for yourself, but you won't get much satisfaction out of life until you find / define your own path.