
Burnout Comes in Three Varieties - gmays
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/minds-business/burnout-comes-in-three-varieties.html
======
jmzbond
A year ago, I would have thought that the antidote to burnout was start-up
culture. I'm a little less naive about it now.

The reality is that you can burnout in any of these ways whether or not you're
a corporate monkey or a start-up monkey. Substitute vending machines and water
coolers for fancy free-for-all-cafes and foosball tables, and many start-ups
have similar WORK demands of their employees. In other words, no matter how
fun the culture, it can't forever mask the fact that you're working toward
someone else's vision and mission.

I once thought this would be very different in a company of 50 vs 50,000. But
even in start-ups, we suffer from an over-emphasis on specialized activities
(for efficiency and scale). This creates jobs that lack ownership of the big
picture, and therefore may create short term excitement (if the work or team
is interesting), but does not equate to long term passion and fulfillment.

As a founder with an idea, part of the reason that I don't want to join an
existing effort is because I want to build an organization that challenges
this model. Is there a way to better distribute ownership of the vision to
everyone in the company so that instead of having a bunch of employees working
toward your vision, you have a bunch of entrepreneurs collaborating to define
that vision? That in my mind is a major part of avoiding burnout.

The secondary piece is helping people realize that work/life balance is always
necessary. As a founder, I spent one month subscribing to the Valley norm that
I should just work constantly. Mentally I was fine, but physically I pinched a
nerve (or something) and all kinds of horror happened. Yet this cultural
attitude of fast fast fast is so prevalent, I think we should also do more to
encourage people to adopt some "slow" principles.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
I would say that start-up culture is the perfect breeding ground for burnout.

#1 cause: lack of a mature organization. No clarity, no process, no structure,
constant uncertainty and bosses that clearly have no idea what the fuck they
are doing.

Collective ownership, treating employees like entrepreneurs even though they
are very different people with a different mindset and different coping
mechanisms is not just misguided, it's downright destructive.

Employees are not entrepreneurs, they have a different mindset and different
coping mechanisms. They can handle the uncertainty of a starting company that
may very well fail, they can handle long hours, but they need certainty about
the nature of their job, what is expected of them and their coworkers. Not
having that structure makes them extremely vulnerable to any kind of stress,
stress that a startup job is guaranteed to have.

It frankly pisses me off how badly employees at startups are treated by not
recognizing their needs as _employees_. No amount of toys, free snacks and
other gimmicks will compensate for that.

~~~
mgkimsal
You typically don't see that big picture when you're 20 - it's hard _not_ to
see it at 40. Probably another reason the stereotypical "startup" employee
skews younger.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
To be explicit: younger workers are much easier to exploit.

If all younger workers realized this and acted collectively, the impact would
be immense. Instead, SV is overrun with temporarily-embarrassed entrepreneurs.

------
dropit_sphere
I have a much more succinct description of burnout:

Burnout is a broken narrative.

Everyone has ups and downs, and everyone expects that. We persevere, however,
because we believe, however irrationally, that it will work out in the end.

Burnout is believing that no, it probably won't.

The way that someone stops believing this is very reasonable---they take risks
with the assurance that it will work out ("low salary, but look at the equity!
Keep working!"), and then it doesn't (company shuts down). Or perhaps "we
promise this is the last crunch" \--- and it never is.

Don't confuse this with a lack of trust. Healthy people who don't trust their
employers leave and start a company/work for someone else. Burnout is when you
don't see a happy ending _anywhere_.

~~~
chmike
Sounds like a depression.

~~~
neohaven
Which is why burnout is mostly work-induced depression.

~~~
flipcoder
how would someone know if it's work-induced? Depression is commonly attributed
to things that weren't actually the cause.

------
TeMPOraL
I feel like being stuck between the second and the third type of burnout.
Honestly, even though coding was my passion since being 13 years old, I had
serious troubles at every single programming job I took. My productivity
always seems to be at 10% of what I expect from myself; every time I have to
_think_ about something I start feeling sleepy (and I _need_ to sleep 8h/day
just to be able to get anytthing done), and I procrastinate like you wouldn't
believe.

For the last two years I thought that maybe, just maybe, it was because I suck
at coding and my work troubles are a symptom of me not being really into
programming. And then, few months ago, I stared a completely pointless side
project. Back came to me the passion and productivity. I can get more done in
1h for my side project that in 8h at my job. Through the last few months I
gradually regained the faith in my own programming skills. I realized that I
do indeed know how to code; it's that I just can't force myself to work on
stuff I don't give a fuck about.

I'd love to know what to do about this. I understand that it's easier to work
on your own idea than on someone else's. But having like order of magnitude
differences in productivity between my job and hobby project... this just
feels wrong.

</mind-dump> </drunk-posting>

~~~
andreyvit
Sounds very much like myself (except that I'm a freelancer, so can
procrastinate much easier). I'm still trying to solve it, but I found that
some things help:

1\. A cardio workout. (Came highly recommended by a dear client of mine, and
indeed significantly increases the amount of energy I feel during the day.
Does not solve procrastination by itself, but helps with that sleepiness.)

2\. Pair programming. (This is a true deal breaker. Maybe we're just not
created for solo work, and that's it?)

3\. Eating less, and less carbs in particular. (I've been diagnosed with
insulin insensibility, and it really shows; I usually get very sleepy after
eating.)

4\. Doing work you can be proud of, way before the deadline. Not always
possible, but when it is, it can keep me going for a bit. Relax, take those
extra few hours to make the code clean, polished and well-documented.

In my case (and perhaps in yours as well), it's not really about work being
boring or not. I had a very exciting side-project of mine, which is now
selling on the Mac App Store for great profit, but I started to procrastinate
on it after a few months as well.

Feel free to email me to talk some more.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Thank you for your tips and advice :).

AD 1. I recently went through a physical therapy after a knee accident and I
noticed a difference in my energy levels and mood in that period of time,
during which I had about 1h of exercise every day. So I think it might be a
good idea for me to try and include some workout into daily schedule.

AD 2. Could you elaborate a bit more? I tried it once or twice, and I don't
really feel it. I usually think out the things before coding them, and I'm
having a hard time coordinating that with other person for anything that's
even slightly complex.

AD 3. Been on ketogenic diet last year, didn't notice much of a difference in
terms of productivity (but I did lose the weight I wanted).

------
lafar6502
I certainly feel some symptoms of burnout - quality of my work went down,
development is no longer interesting, all projects look the same to me. But
this is not something sudden, it's been there for years, slowly changing my
life. Sorry for such an useless comment, but I'm realizing it will be
difficult to recover from this creeping apathy.

~~~
joedrew
That sounds like depression, to be honest. As someone who has depression, and
is trying to get better, my best advice is to start by at least mentioning it
to my GP. Doctors can help!

~~~
lafar6502
I think burnout is a kind of depression, but a work-related one. I don't
suffer from apathy in my private life, still have some interests and hobbies,
but at work i feel i'm going backwards.

BTW thanks, I really hope this is not a depression. And good luck.

~~~
jecxjo
That is why its such a difficult situation. when you have depression you may
not want help, due to the negative affects of depression controlling your
actions. Burn out still allows you to want to get better. The up side of
depression is that typically with medication and or therapy you can get
better. Burn out really only has two cures: changing jobs which is a pain or
your work changing which is usually out of your control.

------
kenrikm
I did not read the full paper so I can't comment on details that are not
present, however from the article it seems as if they are attributing the
burnout to the individual's own psychology when in fact it's usually a mixture
of failures within the organization and the individual combined. I.E an
individual may burnout in one company and not another and in reverse an
organization is unlikely to burn out 100% of its employees.

~~~
theothermkn
Yeah. This was striking to me, too. The article delegitimizes burnout as being
only the result of dysfunctional coping strategies. There is no exploitation
of labor? There are no dysfunctional organizations? Any job is potentially
fulfilling?

For better or for worse, capitalism is alienating; It disregards human value
and replaces it with the economic value of labor. Pretending that that isn't
the case, that labor in service of another for wages is the proper and normal
condition of human beings, will help no one either adapt to this unnatural set
of conditions or understand how to work at a societal level to ameliorate it.

------
NAFV_P
I burned out around six years ago, due to constant insults, being shouted at,
sworn at, criticisms (not constructive or analytical in any shape or form),
taking the blame for other people's mistakes, threats of being "blacklisted",
threats of violence, being treated like a retard, developing an awful cough
due to the amount of dust on the premises and the disgusting hypocrisy and
double standards practised by many of my co-workers. After eight months of
work, I could count the number of positive remarks about my work that I had
received on one hand with fingers to spare. The number of "incidents" would
require roughly 80 or more pairs of hands to tally.

I don't think I fall under any category mentioned in the article, I will
furnish myself with a new category: "burnout by feeling terrorised".

From my experience reporting these incidents to an outside authority is
pointless, the usual response is "well everyone has problems at work". Do not
give them a soundbite of what insults/threats you have endured, you might
spend the night in a prison cell.

From the article:

> _Treatments that include emotion regulation, increased cognitive
> flexibility, and mindfulness may help ward off burnout in susceptible
> individuals, suggests the research team led by Jesus Montero Marin of the
> University of Zaragoza in Spain._

After being released from this job, the only thing I diagnosed about myself
was: "I try too hard to be understanding and sympathetic of others". If you
find yourself in this situation, my treatment would be: if the tactics of your
enemy are more effective than yours, copy and adapt them to make your swords
sharper.

~~~
vorg
> if the tactics of your enemy are more effective than yours, copy and adapt
> them to make your swords sharper

If you start copying the enemy's tactics, they have a way of making it look
like you started it. Ultimately they are hypocrites who manage their public
image to look good while they themselves do the exact opposite. If they're
putting bugs in the code to generate money-making after-hours calls, then
they'll accuse you of doing it. If they're bullying you, they'll very quickly
and loudly call you the bully if you reciprocate in any way. Although they're
monitoring you closely, they'll soon notice and single you out if you try it
on them. They'll then present the publicly visible aspects of their own
harassment as a proportional response to yours, hiding the full extent of
their own, the fact they started it, and how tolerant you were of them at
first. Because of the legal situation they made sure you were in, your only
choice was to walk away. You don't just _decide_ to copy and adapt their
tactics one day - the enemy have spent their entire lives honing their own
skills in hypocrisy, bullying, whitewashing, and fleecing you of money.

~~~
NAFV_P
> _If you start copying the enemy 's tactics, they have a way of making it
> look like you started it._

Not merely copy, copy then adapt. I think they were not aware of the
hypocrisy, merely highlighting it is often enough to stop people in their
tracks.

> _If they 're putting bugs in the code to generate money-making after-hours
> calls, then they'll accuse you of doing it._

It wasn't a software house, it was an optometrist. They were passing off
another optometrist's varifocals as their own. If they were caught, it would
be impossible to accuse me of doing it. I worked in the front office dealing
with paperwork, I am not optically trained (it's equivalent to studying
medicine) and I was not involved in purchases, only sales.

> _If they 're bullying you, they'll very quickly and loudly call you the
> bully if you reciprocate in any way. Although they're monitoring you
> closely, they'll soon notice and single you out if you try it on them._

Who said I was going to resort to bullying, I'm referring to _implicit
blackmail_ , level out the field. Suggest the possibility via suitable
questions and rhetoric, but never mention it directly. Regarding any kind of
monitoring, the higher ups weren't monitoring the workplace effectively, which
is partly why this kind of behaviour occurred. The surfacing section at the
back of the building was highly inefficient and the problem was rarely
discussed, let alone addressed. There were several people who didn't do any
work at all, that's mental inefficiency. I was once asked to keep quiet
regarding some of my co-workers drinking beer on site. The higher ups would
smoke cigarettes inside the building, again asked to keep quiet (smoking
indoors at work was banned in Britain the previous year, and the place was
stocked with gallons of methanol and white spirit, BOOM).

> _They 'll then present the publicly visible aspects of their own harassment
> as a proportional response to yours, hiding the full extent of their own,
> the fact they started it, and how tolerant you were of them at first._

One colleague used to shout "FUCK OFF" at me on average three to four times a
day, in front of a dozen witnesses. Not everybody at that place was a cunt,
some of them were cool. Sometimes the phone was left off the hook, so his bad
behaviour had been heard by the customers on several occasions. There is
simply too much evidence lying around.

> _You don 't just decide to copy and adapt their tactics one day - the enemy
> have spent their entire lives honing their own skills in hypocrisy,
> bullying, whitewashing, and fleecing you of money._

In this case, the enemy was incredibly retarded. Another colleague once asked
me to spell "claustrophobia" when she was sitting in front of a computer
connected to the internet. One of the delivery men thought that the computer
wasn't connected to the internet.

Oh, here's the best bit. I once saw a photograph of the marketing manager
sporting black face paint, a wig and a garish looking poncho (he was dressed
as a rasta, he looked fucking stupid), snorting cocaine. With hindsight, I
wish I had just grabbed it and run to one of their customers down the road.

------
tristan_juricek
It sure seems like most tech jobs would only need therapy as a means of last
resort. Keeping a mindful eye towards burnout and adjusting your response to
it based on the type seems like solid advice.

I see it as:

1\. The complainer: sit down and negotiate a way that person can make a bigger
impact that's measurable

2\. The avoider: simply try to get this person to do something they are
excited about

3\. The worn-out individual: this person probably just needs a bit of regular
recognition (and no overtime)

Personally, I find way more people in categories 1 and 2, though category 3
definitely happens in startup land where people work way too much and only see
the mountain in front of them is never getting smaller.

Of course I'm being a bit of an armchair manager, but it seems like a fairly
decent starting point.

------
vorg
> Organizations that want to keep their employees happy and productive may
> begin to invest in the fight against burnout by helping employees find
> accessible, affordable therapies for coping with stress.

Sounds like an advert peddling employee training sessions in stress management
to employers who want to cover their arses legally while continuing to require
their workers to, say, carry their mobile phones around at all times to field
calls at, say, 3 in the morning to fix problems that wouldn't have happened if
the bosses had invested more resources in making sure after-hours problems
didn't happen in the first place.

------
jsnk
As a developer, on top of 8 to 9 hours of work, I spend 1 to 2 hours reading
technical books and coding on a usual weekday. Weekends too are spent on
working on side projects. I can do this now as a twenty something, but in my
30s and 40s when there are wife and kids, I am not sure if this is viable.

Are there vocations that doesn't require constant deliberate self-improvement?
I can understand casually reading up on books and papers to catch up once in a
while, but the expectations imposed on developers to always solve problems,
learn completely new tools, frameworks and languages seems undoable for me in
the long run.

~~~
wahsd
It's not viable now, yet you still do it. What will change is that you realize
it's not viable. It an abuse inherent in our society and culture that the
naive are taken advantage of and exploited by society as a whole, driven by
the exponential advantages a few gain from the exploitation of 99% of the rest
of us. The only thing that trickles down is the fraud of a ponzi/pyramid
scheme. Many people don't realize that our whole society is far more like a
ponzi/pyramid scheme than not. Sure, you and I are at various levels of the
top tier of that ponzi/pyramid scheme, but even we don't realize the un-
realized gains due to us that are being pilfered by those above us on that
pyramid. We are just happy we get what we got, which is more than those below
us, so we feel good in spite of being defrauded, robbed, and stolen from.

If it wasn't about exploitation then our society would shift towards
"performance" based work and lower work hours per week with more free time for
family, life, and happiness; but all regular people get when they are
productive and efficient is more and more work because there is "always
someone willing to work harder"...as the wealthy who employ those people who
cause that dynamic tell us. The exploitation comes in the lack of limits and
boundaries, our wealthy dealers keep telling us we should do more and try a
different drug. It's a rather archetypal form of abuse, nothing is good enough
and the bar keeps moving higher and higher and is always just out of reach,
like that carrot leading a mule on a plow.

I suggest you might want to consider doing what most do, just enough not to
get fired and spend all that energy you have to develop your freedom and
liberty from the rat-race and maybe even do it in such a manner that allows
you to offer that opportunity to others you employ.

Unfortunately, that is rather diametrically opposed to the interests of the
YCombinator and VC symbiotic...parasitic???....relationship, but when you are
beholden to someone else who draws 20 ... 30 ... 40 ... 50% of your efforts,
gains, and profits.....you can never achieve freedom and liberty. There are
frequently warnings of schemes that require you to pay or buy into something,
what else are many ...most???... of these VC and incubator programs? Maybe
slightly better versions? But they still promise you connections and entry
into an otherwise closed community they helped build a fence around.

~~~
mgolawala
I think your view while mostly valid, is too simplistic in regards to the role
of VCs.

The relationship between a VC and an entrepreneur is symbiotic, not parasitic.
The VC has collected extra cash he wants to risk to produce good returns on.
The entrepreneur wants to build a business but does not have the funds to see
it through the growth phase on his/her own. The two of you can get together to
produce something that neither of you could have done individually. Each
getting a slice of a pie that would not have existed if you had not worked
together.

~~~
wahsd
I actually see it as being rather simplistic to assume it's a symbiotic
relationship instead of a parasitic one. Parasites can often implement methods
to make themselves attractive or initiate the parasitic relationship,
precisely, because it is mostly in their own main interest.

We just recently saw the owner of the Klippers expose that same relationship,
just because something is on a far larger scale, does not mean that it is any
less the same thing underlying it. Yes, _some_ founders get insanely wealthy,
but the VCs get even wealthier because they have fine-tuned a formula of
exploitation and manipulation. Yes, a lot of investments they make go bust,
but that's why they take an arm and a leg and a pound of flesh while they're
at it. They are essentially diversifying their investments, but they are also
profiteering from a huge arbitrage opportunity. They are essentially trading
in the inefficiencies of the market because that is risk they don't want to
burden and don't really actually want to do any work to do due diligence to
find the good investments. They are in the business of statistical
investment..... the more money you throw at it, the higher the likelihood of
hitting the bulls eye....simply based on statistical probability.

That is of course offset by various other revenue streams because the scale is
not frequent enough to base it purely on statistical probability, but that is
the core.

------
swalsh
Burnout for me was a self propelling entity. I'd work 12 hours a day, but not
get anything done. So i'd work 16 hours a day. Not get anything done. I was
depressed, unmotivated, unwashed, my personal life was falling apart, and my
professional life was falling apart. The worst part is I didn't actually
diagnose it as burn out until I got out of the company.

------
moron4hire
Fascinating. I must be worn out and bored. Huh, I think I already knew that.
But linking specific behaviors to it is good. Maybe if I take some time off
and find something new to do, I won't be worn out and bored.

------
a8da6b0c91d
Burnout is damage from prolonged stress. Stress happens when an organism faces
demands beyond its sustainable capabilities to meet. All stress implies a
recovery period, because the stress involves digging into reserves.

I don't think the exact varieties of stress really matter all that much. It's
all just a matter of too much stress over time.

I think stress levels can be measured pretty well via biomarkers. Waking body
temperature tracks cortisol and adrenalin (higher is better). Resting heart
rate (higher is better) and heart rate variability are useful to track. I find
when my waking temperature is below 97F it is clearly warning that I am
burning out. If possible I might spend a day or two without leaving the couch
or thinking about anything.

Athletes track this stuff and back off training accordingly to manage stress.
I don't think work/career stress is essentially different from athletic
training. It's just that so much white collar work stress is psychological and
not obviously quantifiable.

------
Swizec
You know what burnout feels like? It feels like dropping everything you're
doing, everything you were hoping to achieve, packing a small bag, and flying
away to a different continent for a few months.

Burnout is when working at a YC startup during YC feels like a vacation. When
waking up at 10am and coding until 10pm feels like _rest_. That's burnout.

You do not fuck with burnout.

~~~
ak39
No, this is not burnout. This is overworking. Burnout is when you have zero
_interest_ in touching your keyboard, let alone spending 12 hours coding.

~~~
Swizec
Well I wasn't really so much burned out from working as I was from
"startupping". So doing just coding was pretty relaxing in comparison.

