
Minds Turned to Ash: Burnout is more than working too hard - xhrpost
https://www.1843magazine.com/features/minds-turned-to-ash
======
sverige
This reminded me of a couple of very bad times in my life where I was caught
in that awful loop of being unable to meet all the demands on my life and
feeling that it would be impossible to not continue to try to go on anyway.

It's strange in retrospect how liberating divorce, unemployment, bankruptcy,
and foreclosure can be. Don't get me wrong: going through all that absolutely
sucked, and I wouldn't want to do it again. There were a few times when I
genuinely went hungry and had no place to stay.

But having survived it, I no longer feel any need to keep up appearances or
have the latest gadget or have a lot of stuff at all. A lot of the pressure I
used to feel is simply gone because I don't give a shit what other people
think about my life any more. (Well, I care about what my wife (same one, we
are back together) and daughter think, but that's it.)

I especially liked the references to ancient descriptions of the condition.
It's nothing new.

~~~
aswanson
Been through similiar experiences, with same outcome. You just learn not to
give a fuck about bullshit. You don't have enough energy for it.

~~~
mlvljr
If you make it. If it effs you up, then things go a much scarier way.

~~~
tripzilch
Yup if I had lived in the US, I'd probably be dead.

"Crazy" > homeless > addiction > burning bridges > dead.

I probably wouldn't have been part of the survivor bias on the streets.

------
cyberferret
Having skirted around the edge, and been through burnout several times, I urge
especially solo entrepreneurs to set up a support group with other colleagues,
friends or family to keep watch on their mood and performance.

It is all too easy too rationalise some of the symptoms of burnout as @eliboy
stated in this thread as being 'other things' and ignoring the bigger picture.
For example, if you are feeling tired and sad, is it depression or early onset
burnout, or are you just suffering lack of sleep? Or just dehydration? Or is
it because you had a late night out a couple of days ago?

Left to your own devices (especially when you are already burning out), it is
all too easy to diagnose it as the latter causes, especially as your reasoning
ability will be diminished.

Many times I have felt overwhelmed to the point of paralysis, thinking that it
was because I couldn't say "No" to new projects, but it ended up being pure
burnout.

Oh, and the frequent 'cure' for burnout from many of my colleagues is to force
me to take a break and do nothing for a while. That actually makes it worse
for me. I find that my best solution for burnout is to actually WORK HARD at
another passion of mine - for example, If programming gets me down, I will go
off and learn a fiendishly difficult piece on classical guitar instead. Others
are horrified that I am putting my brain through more gruelling stress, but I
find that thinking about music rather than programming for a while tends to
help me feel creative and refreshed again.

~~~
curun1r
> ... Left to your own devices ...

I'm going to take one small phrase you wrote entirely out of context because I
think there's a point to make.

I'm suffering from burnout at the moment and trying to figure out a way past
it. I recently attended a 10-day silent meditation training and one of the
requirements was to surrender all my devices (phone, computer, etc) and any
other forms of distraction (books, pen and paper, playing cards). Basically, I
was alone with only my mind for 10 days, unable to speak or communicate with
others for the entire period. It was hell for the first couple days, but by
the third day I was really starting to enjoy it.

As I've re-integrated my devices again, the burnout and stress has returned
and I've lost a lot of the benefit I found at the meditation center. I'm
already planning to go back to try to refind it and be much more conscious
about reintegrating my devices afterwards. I'm starting to believe that, at
least for me, burnout is an overstimulation, and things that I didn't even
realize were forms of stimulation were contributing. But the biggest forms of
stimulation, Internet, computers, phones and television are all things that I
now realize I have to use incredibly judiciously.

I think we'll look back at this time, when we introduced all these devices
into our society without any concept of the damage they cause, very similarly
to the times when we used lead paint on our walls or asbestos in our ceilings.
It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but once we study the effect
it has on our health, we'll be horrified.

P.S. On the doing nothing front, having spent 10 days being forced to do
nothing but think in between the meditation sessions, it's really underrated
and I wonder whether you've given it a fair shot. You really have to go days
of doing literally nothing but thinking before it starts to give you any
benefit. But once you do, you can just feel the stress melting away. The hard
part is making it through the initial stage and then maintaining that benefit
once you start to reintegrate with the rest of society.

~~~
Naomarik
Funny was thinking something similarly. As much as I enjoy working when I want
to, deadlines and avoidance of failure is killing me. I would never give up
programming but for the past week it's a struggle to bring myself to spend
even a half hour of writing code. The need to get things done has blocked me
from getting into other things but the frustration I feel from a single
problem when I sit down is causing me to get nothing done.

A shepherd's flock is essentially his passive sustenance. A lifestyle where
you're physically active every day and don't have to answer to anyone all the
time is my idea of freedom. We've all succumbed to tech and toys and while I
can simulate reality on my phone I don't think I'm living a better life than
people 200 years ago. I think there is a boredom that sometimes arises if we
cannot exert our intellect to create something, but life costs too much to
work at a leisure pace.

[http://modernfarmer.com/2013/12/10-things-learned-
lambs/](http://modernfarmer.com/2013/12/10-things-learned-lambs/) Look
liberating that looks.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Grew up on a farm. Before all these gadgets existed. Definitely a low-stress
time in my life. Nothing to do all day but some physical chores, and wander or
read. I got very comfortable being alone in my head with my thoughts. I think
many modern gadgets are about avoiding that very thing - how many folks have
ever been alone with their thoughts for more than an hour in a dentist waiting
room? And how painful folks find that to be. Speaks volumes for the modern
psychological condition.

~~~
jdubs
People don't know how to handle boredom anymore and it's taken a huge toll on
society.

------
freetime
Whenever I hear stories about people regularly putting in 80+ hour weeks it
just blows my mind. I could never do that, and the mere thought of it is
almost enough to send me into a spiral of depression.

For anyone who currently finds themselves in that situation: if you are in
love with your work and happy with your lifestyle, then good for you. The
world needs smart, dedicated people. But if you're feeling burnt out or
otherwise unhappy with the hours: know that there tons of interesting and well
paying jobs out there that don't demand such crazy hours.

\- SF Bay Area Software Engineer working 40 hrs a week... often less.

~~~
lobotryas
Not all people work long hours because that's the role they ended up with or
they feel they "have to". I work more than 40 hours a week as an escape from
other tasks and problems in life (similar to how people use alcohol, food or
gaming for that purpose).

~~~
cgriswald
My ex-wife worked long hours because she always wanted the acceptance of
everyone. It cost her a marriage, a job, and ultimately, I think it will cost
her the respect of our child. Anyone who is motivated to work long hours for
the wrong reasons is doomed to pay a heavy cost.

------
eliboy
I'd recommend the book "The Truth About Burnout" [0]. It talks about 6 sources
of burnout: work overload, lack of control, insufficient reward, breakdown of
community, absence of fairness and conflicting values.

For a long time I had burnout (or only a beginning). After a while, I
suspected I might be burned out and it might be because of hard work, I work
part-time and go to school too. It don't think it helped now that summer has
come and I don't go to school, so I read the book. I think it's because lack
of control, absence of fairness, conflicting values and insufficient reward.
Note that it doesn't have to be true, it's enough for you to feel unpaid, that
you don't have control, etc.

[0] - [https://amzn.com/1118692136](https://amzn.com/1118692136)

~~~
microcolonel
Fitting 100% of those contributing factors; I feel suitably burnt out.

~~~
visarga
I read the list of burnout symptoms and that makes me think: maybe this
problem could also be considered from the perspective of Reinforcement
Learning, as it is applied in AI. In RL, there has to be a balance between
exploration and exploitation. Burnout seems to be a condition where
exploitation is prioritized too much over exploration.

It is true that in exploration there is no guarantee that a better reward will
be found, but unless we explore, it's much harder to get to learn anything new
and cut our future options. Our sorely missing downtime is exploration time,
random choice time, free of expectations, liberated from the need to always
make the greedy choice. We need more of that in order to explore the space of
possibilities that exist beyond our experience. When we cut ourselves from
randomness we box ourselves into the small space of known strategies, and
burnout is just a negative reward signal to let us know we are being
suboptimal even as we strive so much to excel.

~~~
agumonkey
Can't too much exploration results in exhaustion too ? A drownout...

~~~
visarga
That's why it is called "tradeoff between exploration and exploitation".
Exploration costs resources too, and has a lower chance of generating rewards
in the short term. But without it agents can be stuck in a local minima
without being able to "jump" to a better local minima.

------
rrecuero
I definitely experienced this at the last stages of my first startup. In my
opinion, your own psychology is probably the hardest thing to manage.

Ben Horowitz refers to this stage as The Struggle. He talks about how when you
start your company you do it with a clear vision of how success looks like.
You are going to create an amazing company with the smartest people, build a
great product and make the world a bit better. After working day and night,
you realize things are not going as planned. The market isn't quite what you
thought it would be. Your employees are losing confidence, some are quitting.
You are running low on cash. You lose a loyal customer and walls start closing
in and you find yourself in the struggle. The struggle is when you wonder why
you started the company in the first place.

When you are in the struggle nothing is easy and nothing feels right.

------
paulvs
> limitless choice debilitates far more than it liberates

This, is one of the main sources of time waste and stress in everyday life.
Take choosing a car insurance policy, each insurer will provide many options
with only minor or irrelevant differences, making comparing competing offers
hard.

Look at foodstuffs in supermarkets, many times, packaging will come in a many
different sizes in many different brands, leaving comparison a challenge.

I admire what some supermarkets in Australia did when they introduced info on
price per 100g for all weighable items.

~~~
Sharlin
Wow, culture shock. Everything has unit prices marked in your typical chain
supermarket in Finland (and elsewhere in Western Europe?) I never thought of
it as something special, but I guess it's mandated by some regulation or
other.

~~~
cgriswald
It's common in the United States as well, though far from universal.

~~~
smadge
I've found that the units are often different even for very similar products.
For instance, one container of black tea might be $X per pint, while the other
is $Y per fluid ounce.

------
bpchaps
My experience with burnout is that it's almost identical to worry, with a
sense of not feeling "good enough". I've had the feeling of burnout from being
the sole sysadmin and devops at an HFT firm. An identical feeling happened
during a streak of rational paranoia (I discussed it with my doc who agreed
that it was rational, fwiw) during the final and post stages of a lawsuit for
Chicago's mayor's phone records. The not-feeling-good enough there came from
having to constantly convince others that the work was worth it.

Burnout sucks, but the more near-overwhelming work I get into, the more I
realize how complicated it really is. That comes with learning to avoid it,
though.

------
SFJulie
Burn out also looks like the effect of a constant bullying.

I mean, I have a wife, I work 9~16h paid 8 for 70$ I can't enjoy her on week
end, nor the sun. It was the same when I was a coder except I was earning more
money.

In society it has become common to forget about punch clocks. The limit
between a safe haven you can protect yourself and mend your mind has been
constantly shrinking: commutation, seminar, social events, excessive work
hours, extra load (like being a sysadmin when you code or repairing unsafe
truck when you are a mover) ...

I dare say: «burn out» is just the medicalisation of a social problem. In the
worst of European glory and exploitation scheme USA used to abhor but are now
embracing there used to be something called «professional fatigue».

This «fatigue» disappeared after the social struggle and the imposition of
effective decent work hours.

Burn-out is just a pitiful way for employers to blame workers for the result
of their actions on which they don't want to take responsibilities.

It is a counter productive management harming globally the society as much as
jails are breaking humans.

Have you tried to ask at your job a strict workhours compensation? Your job
will laugh at you.

Oh, I already can guess there are some exceptions out there that will answer I
live in a world they don't see. But, how much of you when counting commuting,
extra activities work related (like reading news to stay up to date, going to
user groups), reading mails do actually have less than 48hr/week that are work
related?

------
thinkloop
There's a weird pride in working long hours. I see it a lot in nyc, and when I
hear it I always wonder what combination of stimulus were able to generate
that willful want of it. I prefer to calculate and maximize dollars per hour.
If you're working a lot, then at least have it be at a high hourly rate.

~~~
rwallace
It's past time this was said: we need to start shaming people who voluntarily
work long hours. Not those for whom the alternative is unemployment, of
course; they are victims to be pitied. But those who work long hours when they
could have chosen otherwise, are harming not only themselves and their
employers, but everyone who has to interact with the economy, which means
pretty much everyone. That behavior needs to stop being considered socially
acceptable.

~~~
dasmoth
I get what you're saying, but it seems pretty dictatorial. Would you apply it
to startup founds? Lone inventors tinkering in their basements? Musicians
practising to be the best?

It would seem to exclude trades like "work hard for 10 years with a reasonable
hope of stashing way enough to retire", which are probably rational for some
(60 hours/week of wage labour may be bad, but 40 isn't exactly wonderful
either).

~~~
rwallace
If you think a yes answer is unreasonable, bear in mind that you actually get
less done in a 60-hour week than a 40-hour one (maybe not in the first week,
but in the second and subsequent ones), so discouraging it in the three cases
you mention would still help the people involved. Of course, if you're working
alone in your basement, you're not obliged to tell anyone how many hours you
work, let alone take orders from anyone on the matter, but it still shouldn't
be considered socially acceptable to boast of long hours.

As for the last, the trade is only that way because employers with high-paying
jobs can get away with gratuitous abuse of their employees, and that's
precisely the state of affairs we need to put an end to.

~~~
dasmoth
>>> bear in mind that you actually get less done in a 60-hour week than a
40-hour one

On aggregate, sure (and for a lot of people in a lot of scenarios, the actual
threshold is probably lower still). But there are outliers here --
particularly when we're talking about highly-driven people doing things they
really want to do -- and I'd be nervous about legislating here.

~~~
rwallace
Well, I only advocate _legislating_ a maximum 40-hour (or better yet, 30-hour)
week for employees.

If you're self-employed and you think you're an outlier? You're probably
mistaken. Chronic fatigue is like being drunk; it impairs your judgment in
such a way that you can't judge the degree of impairment.

But if you still think you're an outlier? I won't lift a finger to stop you,
but please keep quiet about it and refrain from poisoning the noosphere for
everyone else.

~~~
graeme
I think it may depend on a few factors.

I don't think I can even manage a 40 hour week productively now, as my other
obligations have grown.

Whereas, in the early years I could work much longer without reurcussion. This
is fairly measurable, as I was writing educational materials and people say
the quality was good then.

One month I went to Cuba to write, and didn't have to cook, clean or do
errands. I also didn't socialize much, but had daily contact with people in my
house. I worked much longer weeks, but felt less stress. I also had daily sun,
exercise, and healthy food.

The second situation wasn't sustainable for more than 1.5 years, but did work
well enough. The 3rd situation also isn't sustainable long run, and can be
difficult to setup in most circumstances.

Just pointing that out to say that the 40 hour limit can be affected by other
factors. Right now I want to rearrange my non-work commitments to allow more
work time, and also reduce the most mundane work tasks.

Critically, when I was working longer, I was just writing. Almost no
administrative work.

------
b34r
Avoiding burnout is about setting boundaries for both yourself and your
coworkers to avoid unhealthy expectations. If your job _expects_ you to work
more than 50 hours a week max, you need to have a talk with the relevant
manager. It's a two way street though, because you must also be willing to
limit your own involvement and not go overboard working if you have a type A
personality.

------
kaitai
Tying together a few comments I'm seeing here (farms, meditation, electronic
device & information overload), I'll bring out the importance of nature. Some
ideas:

if you like running, try trail running

do find a friend with a farm or garden and spend some time working there

weekend camping is often possible, whether in desert or forest, and sometimes
it's easy to make it a 3-4 day trip.

if you really need something hard that's not programming, push your physical
boundaries a little on the hike. Nothing to clear and focus the mind like
"it's 5 pm, the sun sets in an hour, bad weather is coming in, we have 4
kilometers of canoeing until we get to the campsite and then we need to set up
the tent!" Maybe I shouldn't really "recommend" this as any good wilderness
type will have tried to avoid this situation.

I just took a long trip to the countryside and the lack of nature even in my
tree-filled neighborhood was a shock when returning. And you can learn a lot
from observing nature: trees just grow, animals do what they do; in their
environment they don't fight their own nature and try to do something else.

------
sklivvz1971
Can someone please summarize the 3000+ words down to a paragraph? Overly
prolix articles make my mind turn to ash too!

~~~
caseymarquis
Haiku:

People work too much.

Why. Underdeveloped self.

Know oneself or burn.

------
bernardlunn
I find small breaks throughout the day are best. Can be 5 mins or 30 mins.
Grab it when you can and return refreshed. Or just switch tasks. The idea of
recovering after all day - let alone months - is a big trap. Easier if you
love your work as I am fortunate enough to do.

------
brador
Is it possible that the solution to working hard is acquiring resources so you
can stop working hard and this is done by working hard? Hence, creating a
loop.

IMO Burnout is a loop spiralling out of control. Solution is a break out of
the loop. But how? Mass acquisition of resources?

~~~
sixtypoundhound
Preservation of agency.

Know why you are there, what you want to accomplish, and what you are willing
to do to accomplish it. And remember you have the option to walk away if your
goals aren't met.

The latter is key - making a reasonable CHOICE to be in the situation is a big
step towards making it bearable.

------
dnautics
Why do I find so few hypothesis driven experiments on this subject?

~~~
tedks
Burnout isn't interesting to organizational psychologists because it was
relatively well-understood in 90s. There's only so much you can study in this
space and all the low-hanging fruit is gone. It's still a popular topic for
some, but the reason you don't see the actual research is probably because you
expect it to be covered in blogs. Go to a university library, get on the wifi,
and download some proceedings of organizational and cognitive psychology
journals.

~~~
dnautics
using google scholar, I don't see any hypothesis-driven research, just
clinical accounts and non-hypothesis-based psychology.

This is probably the closest.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3796712/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3796712/)

~~~
tedks
Well, it isn't the 70's anymore, even if you had an IRB that would let you
induce burnout in a randomly assigned experiment you couldn't publish it.

I don't see how the study you linked is "hypothesis-based," exactly; it's just
an imaging study and thus is likely wrong because of the fMRI bug.

~~~
dnautics
that's why you would do a longitudinal study. Pick a cohort of individuals
that are entering a high-risk-of-burnout field, and the control will be the
pre-burnout individual and the experiment would be monitoring them over time.
Of course this doesn't really fit funding/research promotion cycles in
science.

------
tripzilch
_To anyone suffering from ACTUAL long-term burnout_ , in the sense that a
"Mind turned to ash" doesn't sound like hyperbole _at all_ , and trying to
recover:

Do NOT bother with this article. Save yourself the emotional drain (maybe go
outside for a bit ;) ) It contains NO actionable advice, just a few anonymised
stories, some academic and pop-psych ideas. Also conspicuously absent is any
mention of these patients' recovery or future.

Maybe this article does serve as a nice warning for those heading towards
burnout. I wrote the above, to help others already suffering. As a warning
it's way too long for the crowd that is too busy working too many hours. Now
trust me you can get it from working as little as 16h/wk! If that sounds like
you--best of luck.

Yes the stories are so recognizable. Especially when he contrasted the first
story with the second because the first one hit most of the main factors and
then got convoluted with a whole bunch of other psychodevelopmental factors
that the second story demonstrated have nothing to do with burnout.

The article could have been about 1/3rd it's length and I'm a bit bummed about
this. Normally I wouldn't complain about that but this guy is a psychiatrist
and I truly wonder what he was trying to achieve with this article, if it is
anything besides self-promotion he would have written a disclaimer like above
as a summary to help sufferers.

Myself, burnt out in 2007. Never got better. I don't actually want to read
anonymized burnout-stories. It's an emotional drain with no reward (I'll page
through a few in this thread, because this burnt-out husk of my former self is
compassionate). I read it on the off-chance that maybe it'd contain some info
or idea that I haven't tried in the past 9 years. So, that was my mental
energy for the day.

I don't have answers either, but maybe some ehrm, burnout pro-tips. The web is
full of stories to serve as warnings before burnout, but hardly anything for
after, especially for sufferers where a few months rest just does not cut it.
So here's a few things, maybe it'll help someone:

\- Meditation is _really_ nice. Maybe even more important was finding a group
to do it with[0], it adds a dimension, mine are the kindest people I know in
the world, and it helps motivate to do it daily . For mindfulness meditation,
I found I need at least 2-3 sessions/week, for the exercise to carry on
outside the actual moments of practising it. Apart from sitting, occasionally
try a walking meditation (look it up) just like with physical exercise,
changing up the practice helps if/when you get stuck. And don't forget there's
more kinds besides mindfulness. One that is quite orthogonal to mindfulness is
compassion meditation or "metta" meditation[1].

\- Physical exercise is also really nice. I like running. I only found out I'm
actually good at sports during the first half year of acute symptoms when I
literally couldn't use a computer for more than 10 minutes. I used to do
strength exercises too (various pullups mainly), liked the results but the
exercises carried that scary burning feel in it. Maybe you're different, try
it because I hear that stuff is really healthy :) Figure out what's nice for
you.

\- Something creative that gets you (even just sometimes) into flow. I like
drawing and singing. If you play a live instrument that's probably good too.
Unfortunately for me, computer programming doesn't quite fit this category any
more. Not even democoding :'-( I still do it anyway because I really really
want to and my creativity wants to get out and some things you can only
express in code.

\- Keeping a positive attitude is probably the hardest but it's also nice. I'm
not sure if the start of this post is a good example but that came from the
heart and I hope the tips make up for it :)

These are nice things to do when you can't do anything else.

I also do volunteer work and teaching kids my otherwise-wasted years of
studying computer science, but I don't know if that is for everyone. Other
people I know really enjoy working with elderly people, providing company and
hearing their stories etc. they love it but don't understand why I like
working with kids and vice versa. To each their own :)

[0] try [http://wkup.org](http://wkup.org) or
[http://reddit.com/r/meditation](http://reddit.com/r/meditation) (the sidebar)
to find a meditation group in your area (sometimes called "sangha")

[1] if you always practiced both you might think "what, no, they're two sides
of the same coin" and you'd be right--for _you_. because if you've only ever
practiced mindfulness, you're in for a treat! you're one of today's lucky
10,000 ;-) ([https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/))

[2] I like to end on a positive note so I'm hiding this bit in the
unreferenced footnote. _Ahem_. Seriously, _fuck_ this author. The link below
the linked article from the same author, "The way out of burnout" would
hopefully get flagged for misleading title on HN. I had to page through it
because I can't read more of this drivel in detail, but _again_ no actionable
advice; "less severe cases of burnout" are advised to take action to avoid
actual burnout (great) and actual cases of burnout are advised that this no
longer works for them (whoa, my mind is blown, like the ashes in the Lebowski
movie)

------
plg
what font is used for the main text?

~~~
avacariu
Milo Serif Pro

