
How to Recognize Burnout Before You’re Burned Out - SREinSF
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/smarter-living/workplace-burnout-symptoms.html?sl_l=1&sl_rec=editorial&contentCollection=smarter-living&mData=articles%255B%255D%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2017%252F09%252F05%252Fsmarter-living%252Fworkplace-burnout-symptoms.html%253Fsl_l%253D1%2526sl_rec%253Deditorial%26articles%255B%255D%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2017%252F08%252F21%252Fwell%252Flive%252Ffat-bias-starts-early-and-takes-a-serious-toll.html%253Fsl_rec%253Deditorial&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=smarterLiving-promo-region&region=smarterLiving-promo-region&WT.nav=smarterLiving-promo-region
======
deepakkarki
I was planning to write under a throwaway, but I guess I don't care anymore.

When most people talk of burn out, they usually have spent years in the
industry or probably have been probably working 12 hour days for a long period
of time. For me on the other hand, I kind of managed to get burnt out
(depressed) two years in the industry. I loved CS back in college, but my job
felt like a punishment. The worst thing was I couldn't get myself to figure
out what was wrong. The lack of a support structure for "emotionally
exhausted" developers is surprising. But anyway once it got worse enough I
just decided to quit, wasn't worth the toll on my health. Got back to the
basics - started learning some ML and webdev. Built and shipped a side
project. [https://discoverdev.io](https://discoverdev.io) \- A daily list of
interesting engineering blog posts.

Even now I have anxiety pangs, but at least I'm not depressed :) I realised I
liked learning and building stuff in a collaborative atmosphere - it's
something that just makes me happy. Currently I'm working on creating a
platform for people like me - who just want to get together and make things.

~~~
vog
_> Currently I'm working on creating a platform for people like me - who just
want to get together and make things._

Isn't this what hackerspaces are all about? Maybe it helps to visit (or found)
one nearby you.

~~~
myself248
> (or found) one

That can lead to its own kind of burnout! ;)

~~~
loansindi
Having been on the board of directors of a decently-sized hackerspace, I do
not recommend it to folks looking to avoid burnout.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Still being on the board of a relatively small (sub-50 regulars) hackerspace,
I second this comment. The perspective of spending all of your free time on
paperwork and management tasks and no time whatsoever on actual hacking is
_not_ helping with burnout.

~~~
loansindi
Not to mention being seen as responsible for interpersonal problems among the
membership.

------
thriftwy
My whole life I was a boredom-driven person.

This means that, for every productive action I'm taking, I have to "roll a
morale check" and I fail that one more often than not, and stop doing whatever
I wanted to accomplish. I consider myself talented but my output thus is
inherently constrained.

It was very shocking for me to discover that many many people don't work like
that: instead they need to roll a check to ever stop working, otherwise they
don't, eventually burning out (but in process, earning e.g. good grades which
was always unreachable to me).

~~~
acrynx
It's the same with me and this might be the first time I notice someone else
actually talking about it and assessing their situation so well, so thanks for
that.

Do you think that it's just a normal degree of variation found in different
people?

In the past I've occasionally been wondering if there is something wrong with
my health that drains my motivation, or if actually I'm just lazy, or care too
little about what i can give to other people, or whatever.

At that time it has also caused problems at work for me and kept my self-
esteem low for quite some time.

Since then I have been a lot better and I'd say it's fine now. But I still
wonder about what causes such wildly differing forms of motivation in
different people.

~~~
nolok
Did/do you by any chance have what I can only describe as a "fear of failure /
of being ashamed of your result" ? I infer that from your "low self esteem"
remark.

I used to be very very similar, and with some help I identified that it was a
combination of people around me expecting me to succeed a lot more than
others, which lead to a fear of failing. Which then slowly creeped into a lot
of aspect of my life. I really caught on it and decided to do something about
it when it started going against what I actually wanted, making me decline
events I wanted to get into and had the motivation but my brain just wouldn't
let me hop in.

~~~
thriftwy
I, for one, never have fear of failure.

What I have is the opposite. In seconds I can think of this grandiose
accomplishment in all its beauty if it was finished, and then I'm confronted
with a white slate and tedium of doing even first steps in that direction.

What discourages me from smaller tasks is impossibility of failure. Why do a
barely challenging exercise if i'm not the first to do it and not the best at
that?

~~~
vijay_nair
_Why do a barely challenging exercise if i 'm not the first to do it and not
the best at that?_

Exactly! My motivation primarily stems from the self-esteem boost I get from
doing meaningful work that’s _exclusive_ to me. But to do the experiments and
research required to get to the exclusive domain I need to pass through the
tedium of mundane jobs to pay the bills, learn the technology etc. I can find
the motivation to do the tedium for minutes, but not for hours like others
seem to be able to.

~~~
ddnb
Incredible, your post and the one you responded to describe perfectly how I
feel. I also noticed a new environment gives me an overall boost of
motivation. Changing jobs makes me super exited the first few months but after
that the enthousiasm start to die off.

A result of all this is that now after 5 years of being web developer I'm
already bored of the job because the small mundane tasks outnumber the
challenging projects by a lot. Already switched of employer twice... Looking
to do freelance work now hoping the constant switching helps keeping my
motivation up.

~~~
kvgr
I have the same thing... we should start a support group.

~~~
TeMPOraL
So do I. I'd gladly join the group.

------
hackermailman
The Rock method of waking up 6 days a week, doing 30 mins of heavy cardio and
then lifting weights and pull ups is the only way I've found where you can
keep an insane schedule without burning out. As soon as I hit a pillow I sleep
no matter what I'm thinking/worrying about, and I wake up without any back
pain or other problems where before I started this routine I always woke up
with little pains and stiffness. I have energy all day, and the cardio seems
to help with focus.

Something else I do for sanity is on Saturdays I work in a medical lab at a
local university for a few hours designing and testing algorithms. It pays a
joke salary, but it's intellectually satisfying work and you get access to
PhDs to leech their knowledge. This can get stressful as mistakes can blow the
results and ruin their research grant but it's something I look forward to
doing every week outside my usual job of just adding features and putting out
fires. If you can I highly recommend looking at your local university research
position pages and seeing if there are any open on the weekend or in the
evenings. For some reason local students here never take these.

~~~
aj_g
> Something else I do for sanity is on Saturdays I work in a medical lab at a
> local university for a few hours designing and testing algorithms.

Interesting. What is your main job and how did you get into doing this work
for the university on the side?

~~~
hackermailman
Reading TAOCP and CMUs Parallel Algorithms book in my spare time.
[http://www.parallel-algorithms-book.com](http://www.parallel-algorithms-
book.com)

Stack exchange jobs listed the research grant position. I have 2 main jobs,
one is a unionized labor shop I've had since high school from 10:30-5pm (can't
give up that indexed pension) and I remotely add features to a dbms before it
starts which I also learned from a free CMU resource
[http://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2017/](http://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2017/)
but before that I did a variety of things like contract framework feature
writing, writing simple kernel mods, QA testing ect.

------
Aeolun
But even given that I'm burned out. What am I going to do about it? I can't
just up and quit my job. There's no other jobs that won't have me just as
burned out in a few months, and the idea of searching for one is tiresome
already.

How do you get out of that funk?

~~~
gt2
Live for something else. Music, startup, reading, whatever you like. Pay
yourself first (work on that thing first thing in the morning), or whenever
you can give it attention. Work to get your paycheck. You can still do a great
job -- this doesn't mean you need to slog through it. Just make your own life
your priority.

~~~
expertentipp
> Pay yourself first (work on that thing first thing in the morning)

What if there is obligatory daily standup early in the morning eating up the
entire morning energy? Well obviously it's not explicitly obligatory but the
"we are the second family", "be a good team player" stuff.

~~~
flachsechs
get up earlier, or do it in the evenings. if you can't do one of these things,
you may want to consider what it actually means to own your own company.

~~~
expertentipp
I would gladly own an outsourcing hegemon charging the clients tens or
hundreds of millions of USD/EUR and paying the employees anually 20-40k USD...
but getting up earlier or rescheduling my hobbies for the evenings will not be
enough I'm afraid.

~~~
flachsechs
yeah, the biggest problem with a starting a company is you actually have to
start it. it totally sucks.

~~~
expertentipp
These kind of businesses are not just casually started by some random guy.

~~~
flachsechs
yeah they are. i've worked for 2 of them.

the problem is you think there's "special" people and "special" businesses...
there aren't. there's just successful, and not, and you can't determine a
priori which it's going to be.

furthermore, the number of $10 million - $100 million businesses (including
consulting firms) operating today that you've never heard of is probably in
the tens of thousands.

------
yosito
> five-minute breaks for every 20 minutes spent on a single task, or sitting
> at your desk

As a software developer, yeah right! In 20 minutes, I've barely even gotten a
problem into my head, and a five minute break would mean starting over.

Also, working remotely is not necessarily a cure for burnout. I've been burned
out while working remotely and it had a lot to do with the additional stress
of having to be self disciplined, the lack of boundaries between leisure and
work, and the lack of emotional support from co-workers.

Other than those two points, there was some good stuff in this article.

~~~
archagon
I've seen this mentioned quite a bit around these parts and I just don't get
it. What kind of problem takes 20 minutes to wrap your head around? Can you
give me a working example?

I'm asking honestly, by the way! I've never personally encountered a problem
in my professional career that takes half an hour just to internalize, and
I've always wondered what one might look like.

~~~
LouisSayers
You probably won't get someone posting an example, because they're often in
closed enterprise type source code.

One example is spaghetti type code that you have to untangle and see if you
can simplify (or simply understand). Imagine that you have a Rails controller
where there are several modules being pulled into it. There is a before filter
that calls a private method. The private methods makes a call to another
method, but it's not clear where that method is. It turns out that it's in one
of the modules. The module method makes calls to other methods in other
modules - of which you have to hunt down and figure out where they are. One of
the methods in such modules has some dynamic code where it calls a class based
on a value that comes from the DB...

There's some funky stuff that goes on in production apps sometimes - add in a
bit of tricky logic to trace, and maybe you can see how it could take a bit to
get your head around what's going on.

Hopefully this is the exception to the rule, but if you're a consultant who's
job it is to clean up other's messes then I guess it wouldn't be so surprising
to see some pretty gnarly code.

~~~
archagon
Thanks! That's kind of what I figured, which makes me a little glad I haven't
had to do that kind of work yet.

------
mettamage
I have a story for young HNers: if you want to learn about burnout, I propose
to you a dangerous thing to try out (note: I did warn you). I did it myself
(note: I did warn you twice).

What I tried out was studying as much as possible for the longest period of
time on university. Do this as long until you either (1) cry yourself to sleep
at night from exhaustion or (2) start to feel emotionally numb. This has to be
combined with the condition that you see yourself having a reduced
output/productivity.

I expected to get (1) but instead I got (2). I then went to the wikipedia page
on burnout and looked at the checklist [1] and saw I had almost all of them,
except for the most severe ones. I took on half the amount of study work
(which was still more than most students would do) and since it was the end of
the second semester, the summer holidays arrived. The next academic year I was
fine.

Why did I do this? Simple: I recognize that I am a person who wants to work
hard. So I knew I'd get a burnout sooner or later in my life. It's better then
to be acquainted with it, so that I can see the warning signals. Also, it's
easier to experiment with this on university than in a working environment,
since it's easier to take uni a bit less seriously than work -- for me at
least. Also, I prefer to make deliberate mistakes as young as possible when I
know there's a high likelihood I'll make them down the line anyway.

Note: I did warn you thrice. It is a dangerous experiment, but so is any
experiment where you want to look up your limits. Knowing your limits,
however, can be very beneficial.

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150413145539/http://en.wikiped...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150413145539/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_%28psychology%29)

~~~
neolefty
That sounds both systematic and disciplined! I rarely got close to my limits
simply because I couldn't focus that long without getting distracted.

(Result: Quit after undergraduate, got a job, was happier with that than
academia, but I admire the discipline it takes to get through proper PhD
research and even more, a career in research.)

(Other result: I learned that I'm much more socially motivated than
internally, so group projects and collaborative environments are much more my
style than most of the work I found in school. If research had been more
collaborative and had more hackathons, maybe I would have stuck with it
longer.)

------
Swizec
One of the earliest signs usually goes like this:

Hmmm I wonder if I’m burned out. I should Google about it.

By the time you’re thinking you might be across the line, you’re already past
it. Your subconscious is trying to tell you things.

That’s how this subconscious health stuff usually works. If you think you
might need a break, you do. If you think you might be tired, you are. If
you’re thinking whether your job is a drudge, it is. If you’re thinking about
food, you’re hungry.

~~~
simongray
I think I would call that one of the latest signs. The signs mentioned in the
article are much earlier indicators of chronic stress conditions, since they
also work on someone who is somewhat in denial about their condition. Speaking
from personal experience, the biggest problem is that you really don't want to
admit to yourself or to others that you're suffering from chronic stress.

Indigestion, lack of sleep, headaches, frequent colds, etc. are all symptoms,
but people will get several these and still treat them as if they were
separate issues, rather than being caused by a continuous release of cortisol
and other stress hormones: "Oh I can't sleep, better start using melatonin!"
"Oh I'm constipated, better eat more fibre and start the day with yoghurt!"
"Oh I have a headache again, better take some paracetamol and drink lots of
water!"

------
blowski
If only managers could understand that putting the screws on workers leads to
worse results. More bugs, more staff turnover, more absences, more arguments.

~~~
OscarTheGrinch
Yes. In agile development we have one "sprint" cycle followed by another. When
do we stop sprinting?

~~~
UK-AL
If your using sprints to put pressure on people, tell your manager he's doing
it wrong.

Work out your velocity at which you can do work at consistent pace without
pressuring people.

I think one of biggest mistakes in scrum was calling sprints, sprints.

The goal out of scrum is being able to release at predictable and sane pace.
Not to maximise output

~~~
avian
Every pitch I've heard for Scrum promised increased productivity. I've seen
consultants come in and show slides like "10x increase in output per employee"
(and then refuse to answer what exactly that means in terms of code produced).

Maybe it's not some philosophical goal, but it's definitely something that's
advertised a lot in practice. I've come to treat the fact that they use Scrum
as a minus in potential employers.

~~~
UK-AL
The biggest issue with pushing for pure productivity is that it makes your
team unpredictable and inconsistent.

One sprint, yes you may get more out of them if you pressure them.

But on the next sprint? Your team has mentally clocked out.

In practise going for consistent and sane pace increases productivity over the
long term than trying to pressure your team.

So yes, it can increase productivity but not in a naïve way.

------
GoToRO
If you are stressed at work just leave. No amount of tricks will make you feel
better in a toxic enviroment. Also, why would you help a toxic company by
staying, when you could help another company that respects people. Because
people stay at toxic companies it why there are so many of them and not
enought of sane companies. People don't respect themselves first.

~~~
Clubber
That's good advise, but most companies are toxic, and they don't even
understand why.

I personally think scrum has a lot to do with it, but there are many other
things like cube farms and open workspaces.

A very dear friend of mine who is a high level manager (and used to be a
developer) was extolling the virtues of open office and how it improves
collaboration. He didn't understand that we collaborate maybe 1% of the time
and code 99% of the time. Though open offices help that 1%, it greatly harms
the 99%.

------
gerbilly
My mother has a saying: "No is a complete sentence."

In North America, we live in a "default yes" sort of work culture.

We say "yes" to every request at work until we're overcommitted and then we
burn out.

Why do we say "yes"? Here are some reasons I detected in myself:

* Afraid to rock the boat, to appear uncooperative.

* My own ego. Sometimes I think I have a a super clever way to solve a problem and I say "yes" so I can show off.

* Not thinking it through. Sometimes I say "yes" before thinking the problem through, and the problem ends up being way bigger than it first seemed.

~~~
zimpenfish
> Sometimes I say "yes" before thinking the problem through, and the problem
> ends up being way bigger than it first seemed.

My stance at work is that my default answer is "No. But..."[1]

I've seen too many developers wanting to show how clever they are saying an
immediate "yes" to things (because obviously anything is doable when you're a
clever developer!) and then spending months bitching about the sales people /
managers / customers who asked for the thing THEY AGREED TO DO.

Easier to start with "No." and then pivot into "But" with the angle of finding
out exactly what's involved, what alternatives would work, etc.

[1] I should point out that this does not make me a popular employee but it
does make me productive in that I always deliver what I say I will.

~~~
gerbilly
> [...] and then spending months bitching about the sales people / managers /
> customers who asked for the thing THEY AGREED TO DO.

This is a legitimate critique of the worker, but some workplaces have this
culture where PMs stalk the office looking for 'resources' to work on projects
to promote their career.

In cases like that, they may mislead you while selling you on the idea in
order to get you on board.

~~~
zimpenfish
> In cases like that, they may mislead you while selling you on the idea

Of course, that's always possible but a perfect example of why the "No.
But..." protects you from landing yourself in a nightmare.

------
nnd
The article appears to point out that work-related stress is the main reason
for burnout, which might be the case for some, but personally, I found that
the lack of challenge and meaningfulness in my work were the main predictors
for burnout. In short, be more selective in the projects/jobs you take, and
focus on the ones you actually care about. I do realize that it's easier being
said than done of course.

~~~
whipoodle
Great point, I'm unfortunately living on the wrong side of that right now. Not
too much work, not too little pay, but too little to be proud of.

------
sclangdon
I guess burnout means different things to all of us, and is probably caused by
different things, too. What I'm about to describe probably wasn't the start of
burnout, but I ended up there all the same.

I'm currently looking to get out of programming after 17 years because I'm
tired of politics and bureaucracy. But anyway, on to your question...

I can't tell if these were signs of an on-coming burnout, or if I was already
gone by then and just didn't realise what it was. But for me, I started to get
angry and frustrated, quicker and easier. Sprint meetings annoyed me, daily
stand-ups seemed pointless, interruptions always came at the wrong moment. I
started to believe my own hype and went days without doing any work what-so-
ever because I knew I could still do more work than my colleagues if I wanted
to. I used to moan about my employer all the time and would often find myself
saying things like "this fucking company...".

All of those symptoms probably have nothing to do with burnout per-se, and
were almost certainly a result of a complicated relationship with a co-worker
and a lack of credit and respect by my employer. Nevertheless, I believe that
period changed something fundamental in regards to my thinking about
programming, the industry, and perhaps life in general, which has led me to
want to get out (of the industry, not life) as soon as I can.

I think what I'm trying to say - and having some trouble conveying - is
burnout can come as a result of some other thing that starts you on the road
of questioning if this industry is really what it's cracked up to be. So
perhaps instead of looking out for potential signs of burnout, look instead
for changes in your attitude. If your attitude is becoming more negative, you
need to change something quickly or you’ll probably end up “burned out”.

Or maybe I’m just rambling about something that most people wouldn’t describe
as burnout…

~~~
gerbilly
I usually think a bad attitude or cynicism as a symptom of burnout.

Everyone knows that sleep deprivation can make you cranky and put your nerves
on edge.

Burnout reduces your sleep quality and you might not notice it except that you
feel cranky in the early stages.

------
expertentipp
> A trusted mentor at work with whom you can discuss and strategize other ways
> to deal with work-related issues.

Sorry but this _never_ works. Once one starts "sharing the concerns" one have
couple of months left in the workplace.

~~~
freddie_mercury
It has worked fine for me, so I guess that disproves your sweeping claim?

I had mentors (at various times) who were the VP of Engineering, the GM of a
$300 million product line, and the CFO of a $6 billion company. I was able to
share concerns and still get promoted, get raises, get extra equity, and so
on.

Just because your experiences have been different doesn't make your
experiences universal.

~~~
expertentipp
It never works in outsourcing centers, doesn't have to be a sweatshop -
includes product development centers i.e. places where decisions and
strategies are simply "broadcast downward". Basically most of southern Asia,
most of EU which is not Germany/UK/France/Scandinavia, Russia, etc.

~~~
user5994461
Don't work more than your 40h a week in an outsourcing centers. They have a
different economy than software companies, noone should do overtime.

------
annon23
I am burn out ... sleeping 3 hours a day... if I stop working I lose my visa

~~~
wusatiuk
Stop it, now! You'll always have a second chance but please don't destroy your
body.

~~~
expertentipp
Wish more emphasis was on this. The posture, back, legs, sight, digestion...
these all deteriorate from extended sitting in front of the monitor and a bad
diet.

------
harryf
Ah the two malaises of our age...

\- "OMG! I'm so busy. Stressed. Burnout!"

\- "Oh no! AI is taking our jobs"

There's a certain irony in that some of the most overworked people in the
world are those bringing AI to the market.

~~~
nnd
This whole situation will only get worse until a more efficient income
distribution system (i.e. not wage-based) would be implemented.

------
_pmf_
Thankfully, SV has solved the issue of having both a demanding job and little
children by offering egg freezing as a perk. (Phenomenally disruptive! Uber
for asynchronous human reproduction!)

~~~
TeMPOraL
The future is here! Except it's not a perk for interplanetary travel, but for
working on adtech...

~~~
dredmorbius
... it's just not evenly incubated.

------
jondubois
I feel desperately burned out every night when I go to sleep at 2am or 3am but
when I wake up the next morning at 7am, I feel completely refreshed and I want
to keep going.

I think that having an open source side project can be rewarding in that way.

Financially, I'm broke as a camel's back but open source work does give me a
sense of satisfaction. At least for now.

I think it's vitally important to have some social recognition for your work
otherwise it's very easy to feel burned out.

~~~
kbart
4-5 hours of sleep is definitely not enough. 6 hours is a recommended minimum
in nearly every related study I've ever seen. Even though it might not look
like a problem immediately, but it's a serious burden on your body (heart,
especially) and on the long it _will_ take it's toll (heart attacks in 30' are
common as never before). Get some sleep.

~~~
tamrix
Protip, he's actually trying to brag.

Anyone who actually has been burnt out will know it happens after many months
or even a year or more of tireless work.

If you're burning out and recovering ever next day. That's just being
exhausted after a hard day's work.

~~~
rl3
_> Protip, he's actually trying to brag._

No need to assume the worst in people.

> _Anyone who actually has been burnt out will know it happens after many
> months or even a year or more of tireless work._

Now it sounds like you're trying to brag. Granted, I tend to agree with
you—the only caveat being, it's very possible to burn out on shorter
timescales.

For example: last year I did 10 contiguous 20-hour workdays. Despite the fact
I've never been more productive in my life, my brain was largely mush by the
10th day. Ended up burned out for weeks after. (Now it sounds like I'm trying
to brag.)

~~~
graphitezepp
This trying to brag thing becomes a race to the bottom quickly. You should be
allowed to talk about things you did which may in fact be seen in a positive
light.

~~~
rl3
For sure—that's the punchline. Not to brag, but my humor is probably too dry
for its own good.

------
altotrees
For me: writing code is my job, writing code is my hobby, writing code is what
drives and comforts me. I hear about a great new tool or language, I just have
to try it out - usually on my own time.

Doing this has served me well in some cases, but there have been times I have
woken up in the morning not caring if I ever use a piece of tech again. This
has been a pattern throughout my life: to focus on something to the point
where I may be a bit obsessed, start to get really good at it and then burnout
hard and transition to a new focus.

Luckily with tech I have learned moderation to a point. I still almost hit
that wall sometimes, but recognize pretty quickly when I am about to and take
a short break from the tools or issue at hand.

------
jefe_
I write and distribute a 'weekend update' just about every week and send it to
my team on Sundays. It serves two purposes:

1\. Clearly communicate project progress and near-term goals to everyone
involved, including non-technical people. I outline the features / issues &
resolutions in fairly technical detail while tethering it to more accessible
concepts. If things were truly easy or exceptionally difficult, I note that.
This has helped Sales and Marketing better manage expectations. The times I'm
most stressed are when Sales and Marketing have underestimated the difficulty
of something they've promised a client. It's typically not frustrating because
it's hard or there are time constraints, it's frustrating because they're
prioritizing something that may not be aligned with technical or user
priorities. Pile several weeks of this and it can be exhausting. The 'weekly
update' has helped that.

2\. The process of writing the update offers reassurance that whether the week
felt productive or not, progress was achieved. This is the piece that makes
sitting down to write it feel like a fun activity rather than a chore. My mind
may be saying, this week wasn't productive, but by 15 minutes into composing
the update, I'm finding things I had already forgotten about. The week may
have been less productive than expected, but it's almost always more
productive than the mind gives credit, and writing the update forces the mind
to acknowledge these small achievements.

------
JepZ
I think there are two very helpful skills when it comes to preventing burnout:

1\. Being able to know where your limit is

2\. Being able to tell your boss were your limit is

Many of us try to be good at their job and are not afraid to give constantly
120% but while focussing on the task at hand we put aside our physical needs.
And telling your boss you have enough work for the next days and that any
additional tasks will have to wait, is something many people are afraid of.
Often they fear to give the impression that they are not enthusiastic about
their work.

In my opinion, everbody who tells his boss about his or her capacities cares
about the efficiency of the company.

------
minipci1321
I couldn't make sense out of the "Common Work Stressors" chapter -- who is the
target population which served as a base to establish this list? People
lifting heavy things usually have predictable schedules. Also, that, as well
as exposure to the weather, becomes more problematic with age, exactly when
interacting with people becomes easier... Etc.

If this is rather an open-ended list -- why not a word about how companies lay
off people based on age? Isn't that a common source of stress to many?

------
nzyg
Has anyone dealt with being burnt out while enjoying their job at the same
time?

I started a new job and although its very interesting (I like the technologies
used, the project domain and the competence of my teammates) lots of symptoms
mentioned in the article apply to me. I just feel so stressed out all the time
its affecting every aspect of my life.

Not really sure how to proceed right now. Honestly I don't feel like pushing
through will help but I don't want to quit my current job so soon.

------
pixelmonkey
I used to think I occasionally suffered from work burnout, but then my SO
became a medical resident, and I realized "oh, that's what burnout is."

What I used to "suffer" as a programmer was the ebb and flow of productivity.
As described by books like "Drive" and "Flow". This state-of-mind was perhaps
best described for me by my colleague (also a programmer) in this public
essay, "Find the right routine to surf productivity"[1].

What my SO suffers as a medical resident is _true_ work burnout. They work 6
days per week, nearly 80 hours per week, for weeks (or months) on end. Their
work is not only challenging intellectually, it's challenging physically and
emotionally. Their work also buckles under the weight of administrative
bureaucracy, which removes their sense of agency.

Recently, after my SO got off a 5-week "night float" block (where she worked 6
days per week on an inverted 6pm-6am night-time schedule), she finally got a
day off. It was really a day to re-adjust her schedule back to working
"normal" daytime 6am-6pm hours. During that day, she said to me, "Can we look
up Maslow's hierarchy of needs?"[2]

Looking over that diagram, we realized her work had her floating around in the
first couple levels of that pyramid, whereas in my work, I was very much at
the top. My "burnout" feelings were really "not feeling perfectly self-
actualized". Her "burnout" feelings were actually "not having access to basic
physical needs (e.g. sleep) and emotional support (e.g. daylight, friends,
family)."

I am very much in favor of Jason Fried style "Calm Companies"[3], and I think
in software/tech, we actually have the ability to "work hard" without burning
out, usually hovering around the "self-actualization" level in the pyramid.
One of the wonderful things about software engineering, in particular, is that
since it is the art of automation, we can actually save ourselves labor, and
think carefully about the notion of employee leverage. That is, one employee's
code can do the labor of hundreds or thousands.

It's really sad to me that the medical profession, at least during its
training period for new medical school graduates, there is an epic contrast:
the near-guarantee of burnout, with basically no recourse for residents except
to "suck it up and power through".

For those of you who feel your are in jobs in tech where managers "put the
screws on you", you should recognize that you have all the power in the world
to change job. Employers in tech should be fighting over you, ensuring you
feel fulfilled, productive, _and_ balanced. "All of the above" is possible;
this isn't a "pick two" engineering trade-off. If you don't feel that way,
it's bad management or bad culture -- period. In medical residency, it's "pick
zero", and even worse, there is no way for those folks to change jobs (at
least, not without derailing their entire career).

[1]: [http://lifehacker.com/5955115/find-the-right-routine-to-
surf...](http://lifehacker.com/5955115/find-the-right-routine-to-surf-
productivity)

[2]: [http://timvandevall.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/Maslows-H...](http://timvandevall.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/Maslows-Hierarchy-of-Needs.jpg)

[3]: [https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-calm-company-our-next-
book-d0...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-calm-company-our-next-
book-d0ed917cc457)

~~~
kerbalspacepro
How is it that medical residents have so much burn out? What are the economics
that force them to have such horrible, shitty lives?

~~~
pixelmonkey
It's a bunch of factors -- many of which I have been trying to understand at a
systemic level.

Here's what I know so far:

1\. Are medical residents students or workers? This was actually an open
question of law -- you can see a discussion of the issue in NEJM here[1].

2\. Regardless of your answer to #1 (or, even if your answer is "both"),
hospitals unambiguously treat residents as workers (labor). Quoting NEJM
again, "residents are clearly indispensable to the care provided at the
hospitals where they are employed, even if their work is reviewed by
supervising physicians."

3\. Having a position in a residency program is viewed as a privilege -- that
is, getting a spot is competitive, subject to The Match[2]. Since it's very
difficult to "match twice"; nearly impossible to transfer to a different
residency; and quite a leap of faith to quit the profession altogether
(throwing away 4+ years of med school and $200K of tuition payments); you end
up with something that feels more akin to indentured servitude than a normal
job.

4\. Residents are very wary about the possibility of being booted from their
program for incompetence. I think the risk of this is actually quite low --
after all, to make it through med school and The Match, you are probably quite
the high-achieving type. And for a program to lose a resident is a major
hassle, since they rely on them so much. But this fear is supported by a
strong sense of Imposter Syndrome[3] running rampant in the early years -- an
inevitability of the inherent difficulty and complexity of patient care. This
leads to a culture of deference to superiors, who seem to have a lot more
confidence (and thus, seemingly, competence) than you.

5\. Various economic and cultural factors combine to contribute to the
encouragement of long hours. Wikipedia has a good discussion here[4]. The
tl;dr is that hospital systems are themselves resource-constrained; residents
are cheap & guaranteed labor; residents are therefore "easy targets" to pick
up slack for an otherwise over-extended system. Since medicine has
historically had ridiculous hours for residents, the higher-up "attending
physicians" believe it's essential to medical training (survivor bias, etc.)
Further, residents save the attending physicians, themselves overworked, from
some of the scutwork of medicine (e.g. especially data entry and paperwork).
So, they have no incentive -- and, often, no power -- to fix things.

6\. Residency spots at hospitals are funded by the government and limited by
federal regulation. There are too few residents. Further, hospitals are under
no obligation to make sure their program can run without resident labor.
Therefore, hospitals behave as though residents are "free" labor.

7\. Residencies last 4+ years, and then these young doctors move on to other
programs, usually in other cities and states. This means there is built-in
turnover, which means hospitals don't have a strong incentive to invest in
their own staff -- at least, not this specific part of their staff.

8\. Medicine, on the whole, has long hours and difficult on-call expectations.
This for the simple reason that patients can become sick at anytime and
doctors feel a moral obligation to put in the most amount of effort possible
for their patients, even at the expense of their own health. I will say,
though, this strikes me as one of the weakest factors driving long hours for
medical residents. It is, however, often used as the justification for long
hours ("we care about patients", "we can't let them down", etc.). In reality,
I think the "medical factory system" exploits the built-in altruism most
doctors feel toward their patients in order to squeeze more revenue from them.
If hospitals really cared about patients _this_ much, they would hire some
secretaries to save their doctors valuable clinical time, rather than using
their younger/cheaper doctors as secretaries for the older/expensive ones.

[1]:
[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1100414](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1100414)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Resident_Matching_Pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Resident_Matching_Program)

[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome)

[4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours#Ca...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours#Causes_of_high_workloads)

------
fweespeech
> Feeling alienated by your colleagues and bosses, feeling constantly
> underappreciated, or feeling ostracized by them.

Lol. I find it funny I got attacked and censored for describing that and then
being told it isn't related to burnout lol.

------
thewhitetulip
When you are too busy to make time for doing something you love like readimg
or trekking

------
unixhero
I was close to being severely burned out.

Changed my role at work

Now everything is great.

------
container
As a side note, it should be "Ms. Seppälä". As a Finn, I always find it a
little weird how most media can't be bothered to handle Nordic characters.

~~~
Freak_NL
Could it be that this person of Finnish descent who works in the US uses an
anglicized version of her name on purpose?

I'm usually quite pedantic about diacritic character neglect, but in this case
this might be correct; the CCARE (her employer) website does this too.

