The Antidote to Burnout is Progress
tomtunguz.com
tomtunguz.com
I have been working without rest for a year on a project (http://www.stremor.com) that has had huge amounts of progress. It pays well enough, I like the people I work with, we have achieved great things, and we have gotten recognition. So by all these measures I should have no burn out.
I have been burned out several times. You can't do genius level work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks and not burn out. The Addiction to progress I have had me doing 80 and 100 hour weeks. I was burning my self out. Not because my needs weren't met, but because the brain just can't do that much work for that long.
I would sleep through an entire weekend after 2 weeks of 100 hours. But the addiction to progress and the excitement of the work meant that I didn't want to "go play".
What it really comes down to is people have limits. Those limits are additive. If you are at 40% of your financial stress limit, and 40% of your relationship stress limit, and 40% of your Micro-Manager driving you batty limit, then you are at 120% of your limits. And you can run for a while at over 100% but not indefinitely.
Even when all my Career, financial, physical, sexual, and other limits are at 5% if my Hours of intense concentration limit has been hit I will burn out. And so will employees.
The task of a good manager is to run an employee up to the point of the Mental limits and make sure all those other limits are at 5% so they can maximize the employee output. Every time you push the employee at 150% for 2 days, you need to let them recover at 75% for 4 days.
Burn out isn't a bad thing as long as you can refuel and keep going. It is about managing the sprints, and preventing the burn out from causing failures.
I find it ironic that you describe the very real negative effects of burnout, but then describe a recipe for inducing ... burnout.
May I suggest that you read Tom DeMarco's book Slack? It specifically addresses what I'll term "operational fallacies" like this regarding knowledge work, and covers making an organization more effective (doing the right work) vs. merely efficient (doing lots of work) by adjusting the character and pace of work.
It's a difficult balance between one's responsibility to his team members and to the bottom line of the company, but at least for me, a manager (I guess), I like to side with my team. Shareholders can expect a "reasonable return" (like it says in J&J's credo), not "maximum return".
"When we operate according to these principles, the stockholders should realize a fair return"
http://www.jnj.com/wps/wcm/connect/c7933f004f5563df9e22be1bb...
Sometimes you can't do 20 hours a week, or even 10.
A lot depends on the person, what their emotional state is, whether the work is stressful or not, how they deal with stress, how their coworkers, bosses, and customers behave, etc.
Sadly, most companies still treat their employees like robots, and expect them to put work first ahead of all other priorities (above physical and mental health, above sleep, above family, above having any sort of life outside of work).
Very sad, and there's really no indication that things are changing for the better for workers. In fact, with all the outsourcing, "free trade" agreements, and rabid opposition to unions in the tech sector, it's become a race to the bottom.
WTF? Not unless your definition of "good manager" includes "motivates employees to on a killing rampage and then commit suicide" or "has numerous employees keel over dead on the job from heart-attacks at an unusually early age".
Personally I find that some stresses multiply more than others. For me lots of areas of work stress are often better than the same amount of stress across your whole life. If there's going to be an amount of shit then I'd rather contain it in one area so I can get away from it from time to time. For me the worst thing is where you have no area where you can get away from it.
"Burnout is caused by working and failing". "Prevent burnout by clicking this list of TODO items". Please don't approach these complicated issues from a "this is a trend" angle.
I'm pretty sure there are other, better, and way more complicated reasons why you can feel miserable at your job. Burnout can be linked to a medical illness, malnutrition, depression, etc, etc...
For me, the opener captured the problem:
> Burnout is a motivation problem, a listlessness, a defeatist attitude, and perhaps even a hopelessness, triggered by the lack of progress.
Even a quick glance at wikipedia tells you that the major component in Burnout is Exhaustion. Making it about motivation sounds analogous to telling depressed people that they really need to cheer up more.
If your main focus in trying to deal with Burnout is to micro-manage yourself better and track your probably already obsessive introspection on work even closer, the only thing you end up doing is driving the car even faster against the next tree.
Motivation issues might coincide with burnout, they might play into the spiral of self loathing that feeds your burnout. But they are just one of the components that make you exhausted.
The main thing you need to do when you are exhausted is to stop and give yourself time to heal.
However:
The author isn't talking about Burnout, he is just accurate in using the term as it is broadly understood. It is reasonably accurate for the early stages of a Burnout. Even the title, citing 'antidote' is reasonably accurate since antidotes are mostly given quickly after a person was poisoned. Not when that person is already deathly ill.
I would agree with you, however, that this article probably does more harm than good. Particularly hand-wavy "...and exercise, diet, reading" in the last sentence do leave a stale aftertaste, making this more blog spam than content.
Funnily enough, it's blog spam around a HN Comment thread. Go figure. Meta article on Burnout articles should surface any day now.
The only downside is if these articles do more harm than good, by either trivializing the condition or offering harmful advice for the cases in which it doesn't fit.
For managers of highly creative and productive developers there are some very simple things you can do to help prevent burnout in your employees: [1] give them interesting stuff to work on, [2] give them freedom, and [3] don't be an asshole. Very simple in theory, but unfortunately most managers fail on at least 2 of the 3.
One of the sources of this energy can be excitement (adrenaline) because you intrinsically like what you are doing or because you get a sense of ffulfillment in completing things. Which brings us back to the antidote suggested by the post. The suggested actions are typical measures for improving one's self-esteem. When one's self-esteem is low one tends to suffer from the same symptoms as exhaustion.
The post suggests that burnout is caused by repeated failure of obtaining success after spending a serious amount of effort and commitment. This however is a classic example of something that induces low self-esteem.
So be sure that you are not primarily fueled by this need for success when working over your max. Because if that is what is giving you energy you will lose it once you have some failures.
Career
Financial
Personal Development
Physical
Relationships
Spiritual
Social
Each one feeds into each other, and I know after a particularly terrible day, I personally feel a hundred times better after a challenging CrossFit workout with friends.
it is easy said. but how can you have progress if you are burned out?
Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been demoted because he no longer gave a damn whether he missed or not.
He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.
If you can't do #1, you can do #2 and #3 and feel fulfilled! That's how people work -- all people -- so take my advice! If any part of this happens to work for you, by the way, it's because I am completely right, and not due to the fact that I'm wrapping obvious things in swaths of bullshit to sell or gain subscriptions so I can get more popular and sell more speaking engagements.
Sorry, this just smells like crap.
Can you suggest a better system?
If not, I like his way of thinking and I wanted to share.
Maybe instead of indignantly demanding "how dare this guy attempt to define me according to his own pop psychology metrics!?" or "this clearly does not work for everyone so it's utterly useless crap!", you could suspend judgement for a few microseconds and discuss the actual content.
Thank you for making me feel like my attempt at a positive message was worthwhile. +1 Upvote from me.
Gist: yes, progress is essential to feel good about your work.