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Comment by MrDresden | Hacker News Reader

I have recently progressed out of a burnout state, which started just before covid hit and continued until early this year.

I was lucky enough to be able to take all of last year off from work to focus on my mental and physical health.

It is probably dependant on people (and ofcourse their situation), but when I see someone talking about overcoming burnout by taking a month off I can't help wonder if they are diluting themselves into believing that everything is now fine, or if it was truly burnout to begin with.

If possible, make sure you give yourself enough time to deal with burnout. There is no shame in needing to take extended time away. Your health is more important than a career.

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Unfortunately money doesn't grow on trees and working in high paying industries - like tech - can warp your sense of reality.

The vast majority of people cannot afford to take such extended period of time off simply due to financial barriers.

Wondering if people are _actually_ burnt out simply because they have access to much less money than you is a rather arrogant viewpoint. Poor people get sick too.

I agree with everything you wrote.

However you misunderstood where I was coming from. I point out I was lucky enough to be able to take time off to focus on my health, and hint that that is sadly not something everyone can do.

I was able to do this not because of being employed in a high paying tech job, but because of strong union negotiated benefits.

I live in a European country with a sane perspective on work life balance and a strong social safety net.

I will also add that what was written questioned the public statements of individuals that write about dealing with burnout in a single month, not that the very probable situation where individuals have burnout and only have the ability to take a single month off exist.

Where are these messages of people dealing with burn out in a month. I haven’t seen them. Took me a year and more while working. You don’t need to be taking a break, just change of project/environment can be enough from experience.

Like all these articles say, burn out comes from a number of sources, removing these will end up fixing things over a period of time.

> Where are these messages of people dealing with burn out in a month.

Check this thread, you'll find at least one.

I'm 10 months into 'walked out of 'good' professional WFH job to go work retail and vibe' and I'm just at the point where I want to do things again. My periodic attempts to force it never worked.

Yeah. I'd classify a month as vacation. I was out of commission for three quarters when it happened to me and I'm not certain that was enough.

My timelines are basically the same as yours, which is reassuring because often articles talk about timelines that are measured in months rather than years

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