
Burnout and the Brain (2016) - akeck
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/burnout-and-the-brain
======
skizm
I’m burnt out, not from stress, but from being “forced” to do a bunch of stuff
that I don’t care about with a bunch of other people I don’t really care about
for a company I don’t care about, but if I stop at any time the money stops
coming into my bank account so I just have to keep pretending I care for years
just to keep the game going. The actual work itself varies from stupid easy to
relatively challenging, but again, I just can’t bring myself to care beyond
ensuring my team doesn’t think I suck at my job so I can keep collecting my
paycheck. All I’m doing is running out the clock every single day.

That’s why I’m burnt out.

~~~
nestorherre
You're ahead of a lot of people in a similar situation as yours, and that's
because you have identified what's the problem that is affecting you.

Now, will you b1tch about it for the rest of your life or are you going to
find a solution and work to achieve it?

~~~
pault
That's not a very nice thing to say. I am in the position where I could take
your advice but for many folks there is no plausible solution. Sure, anyone
could fuck off to the woods, open a fruit stand, and tell their spouse and
children to suck it up and college is overrated anyway. But what if your
spouse doesn't want to live behind a fruit stand in the woods? What if you
have to support a family and the pay ceiling for your profession doesn't allow
you to save enough money to retire early? What if you're already closing in on
50? It's easy to tell people they just need a plan, but everybody has their
own unique problems and it's a bit rude to imply that it's their own fault
because they didn't work hard enough. GP could have made a plan to retire at
35 and sail around the world, pinched their pennies, and saved up a million
bucks, then their child got cancer or something else equally horrible. Or
maybe you're right and they spent all of their discretionary income on magic
the gathering cards. Point is, we don't know and it's not nice to tell random
strangers on the internet to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

~~~
bin0
Everything I'm hearing sounds like a choice. Married? That's a choice. Kids?
Choice. MtG cards? Choice. Fruit stand? Choice.

America is a place where you have more chpices, but also bear the consequenses
thereof.

Let me take the opposite: should you be able to live behind a fruit stand in
the woods and have your wife taken care of and kid put through college? Who
should pay for that?

I don't think it's "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" as "make your chouces
and deal with/don't whine about the consequences".

~~~
kranner
Is cancer a choice? What about other debilitating, chronic, expensive-to-treat
illnesses?

------
yarg
For me, burn out was not a consequence of the demands of the job, but a belief
that nothing I did could possibly have any impact, that nothing I said would
ever be listened to, that every moment I spent in that fucking place was an
absolute waste of time.

This wasn't how it started, I took a vital yet buggy and unmaintainable piece
of software and got it to a point where new features could be cleanly added
and new bugs were a very rare event.

And yet, every time I tried to make any significant change - generally
intended to further improve the maintainability of the project - I got shat on
by an architect who otherwise had nothing to do with the project and a boss
who never listened to any one else.

~~~
durnygbur
> I got shat on by an architect who otherwise had nothing to do with the
> project and a boss who never listened to any one else.

Sole aim of some people is just to have power over others, force subordinates
to commit their mistakes, and to replace subordinates with others who are
increasingly zealot, obedient, and desperate. I have no idea how to defend
myself in such situations, usually I just quit.

"Professional managers" (persons being managers and leads from the beginning
of their career), and overeducated people joining the workforce late in their
lives and straight from or shortly after the academia are the two profiles
from whom I observed such behaviour.

~~~
xiaolingxiao
in your opinion why do people joining workforce late in their career from
academia behave this way?

~~~
celticmusic
I would imagine it's a combination of the natural power dynamics of school,
and a need to be the smartest person in the room.

------
leonroy
One thing I'd love to know is how leaders who have faced incredibly stressful
situations for sustained periods manage to push through.

Hannibal the Carthaginian general for example spent nearly 20 years fighting
the Romans on their own turf in Italy. He had a string of victories and also
suffered incredible losses including the loss of an eye to infection.

Despite that he led his men and was incredibly popular. After laying waste to
the Italian countryside for two decades he was reluctantly recalled back to
Carthage where he served as a statesman for several more years.

He was then exiled and a price put on his head and he made plans to ally
himself with other leaders of the day - honestly his life goes on and on. The
guy's resiliency is incredible and he isn't the only one of his age. There are
numerous examples of similar people from the history of the time.

I suppose your modern day cases like Musk or Jobs are what we'd think of
today. The former's challenges are well documented but the latter had just
months to turnaround a sinking Apple and restructure the company before it ran
out of money. He'd been through many ups and downs and again displayed a
resiliency which is pretty remarkable.

I think that everyone's ability to handle stress varies. What I'd love to know
is why some people can suffer incredibly and not only survive but thrive and
if there is some way in which we can learn how to suffer the everyday arrows
slung our way and bear our burdens better.

~~~
p0nce
Because Hannibal did not have the six factors of burn-out: lack of control,
insufficient reward, lack of community, absence fo fairness, conflict in
values, work overload.

Arguably Hannibal:

\- is in control (he's leading),

\- he's probably rewarded through pillaging, (I feel that reward is absolutely
key to continue pushing through)

\- there is probably a sense of community while they are laying waste,

\- as a leader he probably get "fair" shares of reward for himself (cf. the
Iliad, opening list of treasures)

\- the work he's doing is probably aligned with his own values (unlike Xenopho
who was hired as mercenary in terrible conditions), as we can see he didn't
want to stop campaigning

\- work overload is probably there, as campaigning men have little sleep and
work a lot (cf. Cesar)

Conclusion: Hannibal is less at risk of burn-out than men serving under
Hannibal.

~~~
viceroyalbean
At risk of being nitpicky, Hannibal's reward was probably more in terms of
defeating/killing Romans, as his entire life was more or less focused on
hatred for Rome and a wish to destroy it.

I only bring this up because rewards can be (and in my opinion the best ones
are) immaterial, the type of things that would fit into the self-actualization
part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I think this type of reward is much more
critical than material ones for being able to endure those conditions for a
long time.

~~~
p0nce
Absolutely, but we can also see that such needs are more likely to be met at
the top of the hierarchy.

------
stareatgoats
> At its core, burnout emerges when the demands of a job outstrip a person’s
> ability to cope with the stress.

Having witnessed multiple burnouts first-hand I'd say this description is only
half-way helpful. In my lay-man experience a burnout occurs when the
aforementioned precedes _several days without sleep_. Lack of sleep over a
prolonged stressful period must be avoided, especially from ages 30-40,
otherwise damage will highly likely occur, similar to blown fuses in the
brain, which takes many years to recover from (if ever, completely).

Many people that reach this stage of stress unfortunately acquire a tunnel
vision that convinces them they are invincible and can do anything (except
take care of themselves and their loved ones). It is one of the scourges of
modern life, and a tragedy that people are not properly prepared for this in
school, especially in industries that are susceptible to it, like ours.

~~~
GorgeRonde
I have no problem working twice as much as normal. What I want is to be paid
twice as much (at least).

~~~
newshorts
I’m surprised at the number of comments saying they don’t work 60/80+ hours a
week.

I thought this was just the industry norm now and was going to factor it into
my salary when I start looking for a new job

Honestly, isn’t it safe To assume the company is underreporting the workload
and instead calculate Salary at an average of 60 hours/week?

~~~
rleigh
Depends which specific part of the industry you work in, perhaps.

The company I work for has set working hours, with some flexibility in start
and finish times. But it's basically 8 hours per day, 40 per week.

What surprises me most, is that companies aren't limiting work hours to 40.
And that people put up with working stupid hours. 80 hours would be utterly
insane. Even 60 is ridiculous. The evidence shows that people don't get more
done if the hours are increased further. But people do need a life outside
work, and any more than that and you have zero time to yourself or your
family, and that's going to be detrimental to your health and happiness. Why
isn't there more pushback against it?

------
mettamage
Another thing I would like to know is: how is stress associated with damage
vs. relaxation?

Is it: 1 day stress means you need 1 day of relaxation and 40 days of stress
means you need 40 days of relaxation? Or is the relationship quadratic or some
square root or log?

e.g.

stress_in_days = days_of_recovery^2 or

stress_in_days = days_of_recovery or

stress_in_days = ln(days_of_recovery)

Related: I find it interesting that they write about the HPA-axis as I've
learned that the HPA-axis was a biological explanation for depression. To be
fair, the way burnout was described in the article, it didn't seem to be all
that different from depression.

Edit: seems I was right, depression and burnout don't seem to be all that
different [1]. I do think the name burnout describes more accurately what
depression is than the name depression.

(I secretly hope we have a medical professional reading this)

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30087493](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30087493)

~~~
gillesjacobs
In Western Europe, general practitioners are instructed to prescribe
relaxation and not working starting with 3 months up to 6 or 7 months. Six
months of non-activity seems to be the average recovery period prescribed
after burnout.

However, every person is different. External factors such as family, lifestyle
and responsibilities can aid or halt recovery. Same goes for personality and
internal factors. I know of cases of burnout turned depression where the
person took 2 years to start working.

There is no universal function for how long a person suffers from chronic
stress and the recovery duration.

Obtaining such a function entails fully understanding and measuring all
factors and dimensions involved in burnout. And that would merit a publication
in Nature.

~~~
dnautics
I find that the best thing to do is to reassociate labor and effort with
reward by doing lots of low-risk primary reward work after a high risk, high
effort push (doing refactorings, code cleanup, etc), and that resting after
high burnout risk made recurrence more likely due to rewarding not laboring; I
haven't burned out at my primary job as a result (can't say I haven't
periodically burned out in other pursuits like dating lol) in several years.

------
lionhearted
> For example, a comprehensive report on psychosocial stress in the workplace
> published by the World Health Organization identified consistent evidence
> that “high job demands, low control, and effort–reward imbalance are risk
> factors for mental and physical health problems.”

I think a key phrase in there is "effort–reward imbalance" — everything I've
found in both research and personal experience seems to show that burnout-type
effects are much more likely when you're not getting enough of what you want
and value.

As an example, think of two sports teams that both gave their all in a
championship game — the winning team is _much_ less exhausted, they're
jubilant and bouncing around and celebrating. Both teams presumably expended
similar levels of energy, stress, etc — but the winning team is full of
celebration and joie de vivre; the losing team is licking their wounds and
questioning everything.

There's still limits to the amount of physical and mental stressors we can
handle, but winning helps _a lot_ with processing and recovering quickly from
stress.

~~~
madaxe_again
I’m not sure if it helps so much as allows you to perpetuate a cycle by
providing occasional positive feedback.

I should have left my business years before I did, but it was the winning
(contracts, technical coups) that kept me on. You end up like an addict,
stumbling through the nightmarish days until the next dopamine rush (and
crash) comes along.

Stress and burnout don’t just have mental impacts - they can have severe
physiological impacts. I didn’t realise, acknowledge, or recognise this until
my third hospitalisation, and years of increasing illness, made it impossible
to continue writing off as “just food poisoning, again”.

It’s been nearly three years since I left, and while I’m physically better,
and no longer spending half my life puking and delirious (it took six months
for that to subside), I still have occasional anxiety attacks. My mother asked
me about what I plan on doing for a career over dinner a few weeks back and I
out and out fainted.

Never used to have any of this. I was the resilient one, the one who could
carry the world on his shoulders - or thought he could. Broke me.

~~~
lionhearted
Whoa, condolences. Glad to hear you're getting better.

------
woowoowoo
We live in a time when it's more difficult to switch off than ever before. I
was burned out for a couple of years for sure until a major life threatening
illness forced me to take stock.

I've made some important and very useful changes:

\- I've started saying "no" to others including clients, business partners,
friends, family etc. Every time I do this, it is saying "yes" to myself

\- I've blocked all social media and news websites from my phone (both apps
and via Safari)

\- I've gotten rid of all work emails from my phone too

\- I have an alarm clock by my bed instead of my phone which sleeps in another
room

\- I start every day using the 5 minute journal method

\- I journal (almost) every day before I start my work

\- I no longer work weekends and evenings

\- I've made peace with the fact that my business isn't going to grow as
quickly as I want it to.

We do have choices at the end of the day. Check out the 5 balls for life
speech by Bryan Dyson, former CEO of Coca Cola; work is a rubber ball that you
can drop and it will bounce back, the rest of the balls that we juggle
(health, friendships, family etc) are all glass balls which may shatter if we
drop them.

------
mojuba
A bit tangential but this

> Maslach received an incredible outpouring of letters and phone calls from
> people who were grateful to find out that they were not alone in their
> experience of burnout.

got me thinking how important it is for us, humans, to compare and match our
own experiences with the societal "averages". It's usually a relief to learn
you are not alone in something that's happening to you, despite that it can be
truly worrisome. But at the end of the day it's all relative to the averages
and norms. And norms change over time, too.

Not saying burnout and depression can become a norm, just pointing out what it
means to be a "social animal". Something bad happens to you and suddenly it's
not as bad because you are not unique.

------
mettamage
What I would like to know is how psychosis and the brain works. I've heard
from sources who work in the field that an overdosis of chronic stress and
lack of sleep can also cause a cognitive decline that ultimately leads to an
irreperably psychotic state without any hope for recovery.

In such a state people are sincerely believing that, for example, aliens exist
and they are the only humans and everyone else is a robot.

I've heard that people who develop stress/sleep deprived related psychosis
over a period of two years are already sensitive towards developing it. The
same people also should not take drugs, for example, such as weed.

My question simply is: when would it become burnout and when would it become
psychosis?

(I secretly hope we have a medical professional reading this)

~~~
bananocurrency
I've heard that people who develop stress/sleep deprived related psychosis
over a period of two years are already sensitive towards developing it. The
same people also should not take drugs, for example, such as weed.

Citation...?

~~~
mettamage
Regarding weed [1], regarding stress/sleep deprivation. I've heard that from a
mental health professional. That's what he saw in the couple of patients he
had to treat.

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366\(19\)30086-0/fulltext)

~~~
bananocurrency
how nice of you to finally specify a drug instead of making a blanket claim.

~~~
dang
Please don't be a jerk on HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
s188
Airline pilots have a legal limit to the number of hours they can work per
month. I think this is mostly to avoid the consequences of mental exhaustion
(rather than emotional exhaustion) such as in the Colgan Air Disaster:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407)
An interesting quote in that article is: "NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman, while
concurring, made it clear that she considered fatigue to be a contributing
factor." I've often wondered if there should be a similar rule for software
developers. We're required to maintain high levels of concentration for
extended periods, day in, day out, month after month. I'm sure this leads to a
kind of burnout that goes undiagnosed and which must, at some level, be
detrimental to an employer. Is there value in limiting time spent on solving
difficult software problems? Say, 30 hours a week for problem solving and 10
for training?

~~~
dlphn___xyz
devs are treated as ‘burn and churn’ resources - work conditions are similar
to a sweatshop because there is a huge, inexpensive pool of applicants

~~~
s188
Yep. That's my experience too. But ‘burn and churn’ thrives in the absence of
decent human resource management. Is it possible to link 'problem complexity'
to 'concentration demands'? And from that, derive a metric that will enable
better management of the human resource?

~~~
krageon
It would help if you defined what is to you "decent human resource
management", as for most HR divisions I've seen this appears to mean "churn
and burn".

------
ElonsMosque
Not to downplay any serious issues of fatigue, overworking or burnout but I
personally found good air ventilation, strict rules of drinking water
regularly, meditation and exercise did immense things for me. To the point
where I have an excess of energy I never used to have previously at work.

------
mettamage
Final question I would like to know: how do certain high-stress work cultures
think about these type of issues? I have seen that the HN community has some
management/strategy consultants. I've also seen that if you work at an MBB
firm, you basically are guaranteed to work 60+ hours, especially in the first
3 years.

I might give this to a couple of MBB acquaintances I know and see how they
react, but I find it odd that these industries ignore this. From my (perhaps
naive perspective), it simply isn't profitable to ignore this and moreover
also unscientific (I had the impression that some finance-based industries
were pretty pin point accurate with things).

(I secretly hope we have a 60+ hour working person reading this)

~~~
cannonedhamster
I worked 60-100 hours weeks for a year with constantly working over 40 a year
prior with numerous data above 20 hours. I ended up getting cancer, light
sensitivity, and my sleep schedule was difficult to get back into sync. I was
also trying to get my team to work less hours because my whole team was being
burned out however I wasn't getting support from my management team at the
time. I ended up with a new director, a new team as most of my prior team
left, a promotion, and proper time to recover from the burnout. It took a few
months but I was able to work my way back from it.

I'm now approaching a different kind of malaise as with numerous management
changes our work has appeared to become unimportant to our upper management
and I suspect they will be handing it over to a team openly hostile to what we
do and completely unequipped for the job. As much as I need healthcare to live
I'm not willing to spend what are most likely my final years in a place that I
don't think cares about our customers.

All this is to say that there are most definitely different kinds of burnout.
One is more physical, the other is emotional. Both impact your mental
facilities and ability to get work done. Both directly work on morale, which
is why the solution to burnout in employees is to discover what's crushing
their morale. If people are passionate and care personally about what they do
because they know they are performing important work as part of a unified
vision then extra work won't result in burnout. This isn't to say that you
should allow your employees to be constantly overworked, just that if
occasional extra work is needed, if you've done your job appropriately as a
manager the impact is severely less and the cancer if negative thinking
doesn't start to creep in. Once that does it's nearly impossible to rectify
unless you're very good at rebuilding empowerment.

------
p0nce
Great article.

There is this excellent talk by Maslach, "Understanding Burnout" which dispels
most misunderstandings:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kLPyV8lBbs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kLPyV8lBbs)

However, as with most conditions it's unlikely you will have any interest in
it until being affected.

------
unixhero
The trifecta of hell:

Burnout is caused by (1)increased workload not resulting in incremental
feeling of accomplishment, and also typically with (2) negativity from
external sources and a (3) high workload.

~~~
taneq
Those are definitely things which can cause burnout, but I guarantee you that
unsustainably high workload can absolutely cause burnout all on its own.

~~~
unixhero
Yes I agree. I will edit for clarity.

~~~
taneq
Ah right, I see how you meant it. Yeah, if all three of those are hitting you
at once then you're gonna have a bad time.

------
mothsonasloth
My formula for burnout:

* macro-environment (office, commute, noise etc.)

* diet

* away time from desk

* meeting creep

* lack of dialogue from management e.g. (HR edicts, performance management curves)

* bureacracy

* deadlines without any clear goals behind them i.e. for ticking boxes

* micro-environment (team, equipment, desk, apathetic colleagues)

* workload (give a busy man things to do)

* family, finances etc.

------
IMAYousaf
Forgive me if I’m being callous.

There’s an intersection in the Venn Diagram between burnout and mental health
issues, but also some distinctions.

I’ve viewed burnout to be one of two options.

1 - For creatives, a lack of creative fulfillment. Everyone has some
creativity but I’m specifically talking about “artists”.

2 - Not being paid enough. Everything is relative. For some people “hustling”
even if they’re making 1% salaries is too much. I think that the perspective
would be changed if one was a C-suite level or a founder of that same company.
We see this in Wall Street too, and nearly ever power law job. Most people,
particularly blue collar workers, work physically backbreaking hours doing
physically backbreaking work. They can’t afford the luxury of burnout. There’s
maybe a large middle class band where people can. For people beyond that,
maybe even on the higher end of upper middle class, they’re being compensated
enough so the psychological checks and balances compute well enough that
burnout doesn’t manifest like how it does for others.

I’d also argue that the optics of “success/growth at all costs” are falsely
blamed in SV in particular because SV has a “fail upwards” mechanism that
rewards failures.

Lastly, I think that stagnation is not the same thing as burnout.

------
andraaspar
Breathe in – breathe out. Breathe in – breathe out. Ever tired of breathing?
You will be.

I've seen all my favorite activities turn sour. Pleasure turned into pain.
Relief out of reach. Breathe in – breathe out.

The world is like this. Breathe in – breathe out. It does not go anywhere, it
just breathes. Breathe in – breathe out. Until it breaks. Breathe in – breathe
out. Find your peace.

------
sudoaza
"the loss of motivation, growing sense of emotional depletion, and cynicism"
Clearly identify with this, but is this burnout or just doing the same
boring/meaningless sh!t over and over again?

------
Arbalest
(2016)

