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I've noticed a similar discrepancy in my life: Mental burnout wasn't present in my early, physical-labor jobs. It also wasn't present in my early coding jobs. It only started to appear later in my career when my pay was highest and my actual time spent producing tangible output (whether physical labor or code) was lowest.

One theory is that I became less physically active over time. Exercise is well known to have a protective effect against burnout, and physical labor jobs are a lot of exercise all day. I was also going to the gym much more when I was younger.

Another theory is that my later career burnout came from what studies would call "social defeat stress". I was most burnt out when I spent most of my job time trying to navigate dysfunctional companies, deal with incompetent bosses, and fight against dirty office politics.

Changing to a job where my boss was more demanding but also more competent unexpectedly reduced my burnout symptoms rather than worsening them. Something about being in a socially consistent environment makes everything easier to stomach. On the contrary, being in weird office politics situations where Bob in management gets to insult your work and upend your priorities every week just because he's got a certain title leads to burnout. It's like the burnout is a response to dampen your expectations and efforts in response to situations where more engagement will only produce more stress and frustration.

Physical labor jobs, on the other hand, have a property that more input will usually result in at least some tangible forward progress.

> Another theory is that my later career burnout came from what studies would call "social defeat stress". I was most burnt out when I spent most of my job time trying to navigate dysfunctional companies, deal with incompetent bosses, and fight against dirty office politics.

> Changing to a job where my boss was more demanding but also more competent unexpectedly reduced my burnout symptoms rather than worsening them.

This coincides with my experience. If the job. is meaningless, then burnout is highest.

And the amount of peolle who say they job. is bullshit is increasing

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/articles-reports/2015/08...

I strongly agree with this:

"In contrast, I have felt very burned out in relatively nice jobs - thoroughly pleasant environments with minor workloads."

For me, I feel the most intense burnout when I see stupidly wasted opportunities. For instance, if a startup has a great idea and plenty of funding, but the leadership is hopelessly stupid and engages in self-sabotage (and perhaps I try to save the situation but I'm ignored) and millions of dollars are wasted, then I get burnout. I felt burnout in 2016, after witnessing the insanely self-destructive leadership at "Celelot" destroy a brilliant idea, which I wrote about here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0998997617?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_...

> I'm talking 100+ hour weeks on an ice cold production line working under complete psychopaths.

<s>Testosterone</s>

I’ve worked cutting trees under a literal psychopath (just out of jail for murder), a guy had died of dehydration on that job the previous year. It was strenuous and I mourned/cried the loss of my girlfriend while sawing branches like a madman.

It was also the best time of my life.

See, using my body, requiring agility, quick varied microdecisions and physical strength, it makes use of the body I was given by mother nature. Compare that to working in front of a computer all day, using only the logical part of my brain, no emotions, gray screens everywhere: As much as I love being an entrepreneur and I love using my IQ 136, well, it uses 8% of the body’s capabilities - the brain and the fingers, period. It’s unnatural.

So I suspect hard physical work with actual people and emotions, triggers hormones (testosterone being the caricature of it) that regulates everything including motivation, a clean mind, and happiness. Of course I wouldn’t wish to work on a field all my life, but programming or Excel spreadsheeting may have a negative impact on the mind.

I do BJJ and once you get into it, it is extremely fun and rewarding. Strenuous physically. Mentally, extremely deep, popular with tech folks because although you have to be in shape skill development dominates. Strength will always be an asset. So will cardio, but skill dominates. Plus close human contact releases oxytocin and other hormones. And the physical activity does the equivalent of a runners high. And the mental activity gives you intrinsic learning rewards. I suppose you can burn out on it, it can be very frustrating at times, but once you get past the first humps it is golden.

I loved judo for this reason, although BJJ might be less dangerous. Exhausting; You take hits (unvoluntarily… maybe); You learn gestures. And more importantly: You learn with your body. I think our bodies demand to be used ;)

Socrates was right! There’s no mind without a strong body! (for a man at least).

Test is definitely a factor in working out and feeling good for all men, but especially young men. Plenty of women enjoy BJJ for many of the same reasons men do though. BJJ is relatively safe. You will end up with injuries, but it is worth it for me as a desk jockey. :)

Now try doing that job for 20 to 30 years, your entire body will be totally broken and riddled with arthritis.

For somebody proudly touting their Mensa membership, you seem to have fallen into the same transcendalist trap that everyone does who waxes poetic for natural and "Mother Earth".

Natural is one in three women dying in childbirth, natural is contracting rabies by being bitten by a rabid animal and having 100% mortality rate, natural is dying at age 50 to 60.

> Now try doing that job for 20 to 30 years, your entire body will be totally broken and riddled with arthritis.

I see this a lot on HN, but never forget that sitting for eight hours a day has long term negative health consequences too, some that are very very serious.

I suspect decision fatigue is a real thing. Especially the harder should/should not decisions, rather than the clear quick chat to the group then no-brainers.

Perhaps more like... 'engagement fatigue'? When it's truly rote or mindless work your brain can disengage and be somewhere else. With knowledge work you don't have that luxury, even when the work itself isn't what we could consider 'engaging', you nevertheless are obliged to be engaged mentally to carry it out. Do that long enough without deriving any satisfaction, it seems a perfectly sane reaction to want to escape the situation, or just plain shut off. It makes sense for our brains to realize we're spending a lot of brain focus and time on something that isn't activating any reward centers, and insist we stop doing that. That really seems like a fundamentally sensible and healthy response from a brain functioning properly.

I personally think a lot of psychological stress is caused by white collar work that’s stressful mentally but physically sedentary. This mismatch messes up your eating habits and also causes stress you can’t resolve. It used to be that mental stress was usually accompanied by physical exertion, e.g. being in fight or hunting an animal. Now we get all that mental stress but no physical relief.

Last week I quit my job due to “burnout”. The company I worked for was amazing. I worked with excellent people who I enjoyed being around. Good codebase. Plenty of autonomy. Flexible and very reasonable working hours, flexible working arrangements. I was never under any pressure. Company provided all the support I could ever ask for. It was a dream job.

And yet when I sat down to write code, I couldn’t do it. It’s difficult to describe - I was completely paralysed. The simplest of tasks required insurmountable effort. And trying to deal with that, day in day out, is the “burnout”.

Burnout may be likely or common in bad environments, but it isn’t the sole cause. In my case I can’t blame the company or the environment. It was about as far away from toxic as you can get.

I’m planning to take about a year off work, because that’s what the internet says I should do. But I really don’t understand what caused this to happen, or what I could do in the future to prevent it.

For me also, there had been times I worked several weeks from 7am to 23pm and on weekends. This was no problem. The task was clear, it was possible to do (with much overtime) and it had an clear end. Later in my career, on a different job, different position I almost got a burnout, because I thought I could solve some problems with much work. But the problems there had been endless. So there was no chance ever for me to solve all the problems. I asked my boss for a different position in our company. I just realized later how close I was to a very bad burnout. I guess I had also a bit luck and good people around me.

[Edit] The job, where I almost got a burnout. The job was empty and they asked me for it, because the person before left with a bad burnout. The person now in this job is now also close to a burnout.

> And I specifically think it has to do with our capacity to either do continuous creative problem solving, or engage with large varieties of different people - both activities that humans have not historically had to engage in for extended periods of time in previous eras.

Perhaps oddly, I absolutely thrive on those challenges. Constant adaptation, analysis and overcoming, all forms of mental soldiering (even against the odds) feed my addiction to "dare and win". So long as I have agency.

There's something else going on. Seems to me there's a lot of people exhibiting a torpor/apathy that's at odds with their good physical fitness, high mental energy levels, and general enthusiasm. Something demoralising that saps our souls.

I think burnout is not about the amount of work, or conflicts at work. It is about lack of meaning in what you are doing that leads to burnout. We humans can do tremendous things if they are meaningful. In case the work is less, but its meaningless, can lead to burnout rather quickly. Doing meaningless work is basically not being mentally aligned with work.

I can relate to this. It might not have been the same level of intensity physically but I worked as wait staff for a couple years in my mid-twenties and despite my exhaustion at the end of shifts I always felt good. I have never once felt the same about my full-time programming job. On the contrary I have gone through what I can only describe as deep burnout twice in my 15 year career and those burnouts lasted agonizing months of time. It was brutal.

For me I think it is the level of perfection that is required to actually have development proceed smoothly. It is extreme particularly when coupled with peers who frequently break things or put together solutions that are overly complex or bug riddled.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a perfect programmer by any stretch of the imagination but it is my desire to reach perfection that causes severe emotional drain I think.

It might have a lot to do with expectations too: illusory ones. If one gains meaning from their work with the idea that they are "changing the world" in some Utopian sense they might be more prone to burnout.

It's nice when a job is just a way to make money and support yourself.

In my experience this cuts both ways. Becoming emotionally invested in a product you don't have a huge amount of control over is dangerous, but on the other hand, believe that your work is unimportant is depressing when you have to do it for a few decades.

For me the balance is finding some part of my work that I control, that I can also really care about. I can be proud of the quality of the code I wrote even if I don't care much about the product or the business.