- Doubled down on focus. Went back to using a single monitor, cut down notifications on my phone and carved out time in my diary to do focused deep work. Constant task switching has always been bad for burnout for me.
- Was much more intentional about how I presented my work to others. I used to think that if I needed to focus on how I communicated my work upwards, that was somehow a reflection on the quality of the work itself. Instead I learned that taking time out to focus on how you present your ideas acts as a force multiplier on them.
- Get out of toxic environments. Often I’ve found that the cause of burnout is not hard work, I am capable of hard work for sustained periods, but hard work with an expectation or repeated experience of failure in forms of projects being scrapped or canceled. Success isn’t always its own reward, but it does seem to help ward off against burnout.
- I also spend a couple of hours in the gym nearly every day. It’s a high end gym and this is my splurge for myself. For other people, their release may be family.
> Doubled down on focus. Went back to using a single monitor
For me it's the opposite. Working on a single monitor means hundreds of alt-tab a day. That's a lot of distraction that is avoidable by using multiple monitors.
Recently switched from a two to a triple monitors setup (mainly for IDE/terminal/browser). I feel like it reduced how much tired I am at the end of the day.
Agreed, it’s impossible to do my job on a single window — or a single screen’s worth of windows — and I can’t imagine how constant alt-tabbing helps prevent burnout/fatigue.
Having multiple monitors means being able to switch between windows without constantly changing what’s on my screens.
I currently have three that I use for IDE, browser, terminal(s), Slack, and SQL. Often one or more of these aren’t needed often, and/or I can share two on a single monitor. But I am able to carry out most of my day without having to change windows around.
I occasionally have two browsers that I will be working in simultaneously so will split those across monitors, but that’s rare.
I'm curious how you find alt-tab is distracting. I use one monitor and switch between windows using keyboard shortcuts, like alt-tab, and don't even notice. Does your alt-tab do something visually fancy that is distracting (animations, thumbnails, etc), instead of just switching to the other window?
I am currently trying to learn how best to present my ideas and reach people who don't necessarily see problems as a large network of pictures and concepts in their heads.
It's a process that I struggle with, but I truly want to improve. Do you have any suggestions or resources?
One problem I see people make is to present the solution before the problem.
Nerds often have a tendency to be hyper focused on the details of the solution because that's the most fun part and the part they have directly thought about intensely.
Many people "up the chain", or in general who don't have intimate details of the problem space may not grasp why such a solution is needed. So starting off with it doesn't resonate with them.
I've found its better to first tell the story of "what got us here", that led to this solution. If you do it right, you'll see the "a ha" moment go off in people's faces and they're right with you.
Thank you for asking. I’ve had success using the Challenger Sale model, otherwise known as Insight Selling.
This gives a logical framework for presenting people with new information - starting with a 10,000 foot view of how ‘the world has changed’ and gradually going into more detail about how this change will impact them before providing a solution. [1]
Where it really excels is enabling you to ‘bundle’ ideas into a larger trend, which others may not have seen as connected in the past. Depending on your background, using a sales framework may seem ‘icky’ but it’s a fairly tried and true method of presenting information.
In terms of books, other than Challenger Sale and Challenger Customer I can recommend To Sell is Human by Dan Pink, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and How to Deliver a Ted Talk.
An area where you can get a huge leg up over others is in use of PowerPoint / Google Slides. Most people are terrible at it, so if you can deliver a presentation which is 15% better than most you will be at a huge advantage also. The key here is not to see PowerPoint as a tool for conveying information, but as a tool for creating pitches. If you treat every new idea you present as a ‘pitch’ it will transform your effectiveness.
In the same way as gift wrapping a gift ‘elevates’ the gift, wrapping an idea or proposal in a presentation means it’s automatically taken more seriously.
I think it also depends on toxicity of the organization. My untested hardware was sent to production line in the factory elsewhere. I was telling to every manager I could, not to do this. So “no” does not work. I was told, there will be second developer one day, but it didn’t happen. Manager of other group sees me declining and invites to go for lunch together. But he can’t help since my manager and division manager are more buddies than professionals working together. I was trying to make longer breaks to recharge working only 4 days a week, but this was canceled a day after I send proposal how to test hardware. I also got new table - a door place in open space office where I got distracted every 3 minutes. Basically my all time gets wasted sitting there. Last but not least, there will be committee next year to review everything I did in the project and do the great blaming fest. It is believed, that this will help to find the bugs I made due to my incompetence.
I read this and it does not sound real. To avoid burnout I simply need a new job. I also packed my all personal belongings and am ready to hand in my notice anytime I see it’s too much. Better unemployed for some time than mentally broken.
Some jobs just rely on attracting and retaining people with no boundaries and no ability to set them. Startups are great at this. They foster a sense of community between the workers and then understaff/overbook the team. When the invariable crisis rolls in no one even has to tell people to work until 5 am. They just do it because no one wants to "let down the team".
My last job I was at least the fourth or fifth person to break down and cry at work. Plenty of those happened in meetings where the boss man was present. They just quietly get replaced and that's that. Burn em and churn em. Never shows up on the ledger and everyone writes it off as a crazy one-off situation.
Then oh gosh a big deadline hits and we're down a person, better show off what a team player we are and make sure we hit the deadline.
it's a deeply wired need, and it would be interesting to discuss that. I found it easier to wake up in the morning when I felt part of team rather than going to a company be a nameless cog. Surely being a cog may avoid being overworked by never ending night shifts .. hence the debate.
> They just quietly get replaced and that's that. Burn em and churn em. Never shows up on the ledger and everyone writes it off as a crazy one-off situation.
Man, it’s killing me how true this is. It’s never “we treated them so poorly they needed to quit to preserve their sanity”, it’s always “they just weren’t a great fit. Oh well.”
YMMV, but here's what worked for me (or what I wish I did in the past, but didn't).
Writing a resignation letter, even if you're not planning to hand it in immediately, might help you clear your head and make a better decision. Handing in your notice straigh after another fire/argument/nuissance, i.e. in a direct response to a single event, might turn out to be worse than doing it when things slow down a bit—purely because you'll have more control over the situation and will be able to approach it with less emotions.
I still have hope, I’ll find another job soon. So I am waiting and developing more marketable skills. For example I used C++ only for embedded development, but learning to use C++ for application development might open me more job opportunities. I am also creating GitHub portfolio and already have 2 followers:-) Everything is happening extremely slow, but I keep doing. Looking for a job from unemployment in Germany is very tough, better use big name of current employer during application process.
This resonates very deeply with me. Looking for another job is something you definitely should do. Apply to everything that sounds remotely interesting. Since you have a job, you don't have to take the first job they offer you, you can take your time to find something that suits you.
Regarding your workplace: I had a similar problem and I kept searching and changing desks whenever possible. I bought noise cancelling headphones and occupied empty meeting spaces. I also managed to show that I was able to deliver better solutions when I worked from home, because it was easier for me to focus. Now I use a standing desk for 50% of my time in he office. It's placed next to the window where I have a great view and nobody is moving through my peripheral vision.
I still struggle with burnout - a lot of times because of context switching - but I learn to say "no". A lot of people don't even try to debug their problems or google for errors, they just like to ask someone else. I just say: "I need to type this email first" or "there is a meeting in a few minutes, but I'll come to you right after" and when I check back with them they often solved their own problem.
Regarding your review: I think this is a chance for you. Just come prepared with a list of known problems. Software devs need to take shortcuts in order to meet clients timeline plans, but we also need to pay back the technical debt. It's not incompetence, it's prioritizing time-to-market over quality / robustness / security / maintainability.
> - Remove most, if not all notifications from your phone. Not just work-related, anything that will stimulate your brain for no good reason
My phone slipped into water and is not working. I liked it, huge screen, great battery life. So I took some old one I had at home. Smaller. Terrible battery. Old Android, so many apps don't work. I can only use it for calling and texting a couple of times a day. I need to save the battery. I cannot read in bed, as it's too small to be comfortable. It's small, so it fits into all my pockets.
Oh, it's so great that I'm not going to buy a new one. I feel like I don't have phone at all. I didn't know how it was slowly changing (destroying?) my life.
Before having a phone I was reading a lot of books.
Now, I read HN too much.
Is it better, is it worse?
Certainly not bad, if, the addictive, time wasting aspects are muted / avoided.
I think not using a smartphone in 2020 is actually a massive evolution step back. Used wisely, at the right time and for the right tasks, it's a killer device.
But used for everything, all the time, it's just another form of crack.
Get your phone back, get on top of it, you'll be as happy, I'm sure.
(also, running an old Android version is quite risky on top of being annoying)
On my Mac, I turned off the clock in the task bar. So to see the time I have to type “date” in terminal or look at my phone’s clock. My calendar notifies me of upcoming meetings, so I can stay focused longer. That little bit of intentional change makes my coding quality of life so much better.
A lot of this becomes fairly obvious if you start from the assumptions that:
1. Work exists only to support your lifestyle. If your work doesn't allow you to live a lifestyle you are happy with, it's not serving its purpose. This is obvious to most people when their work doesn't pay them enough, but it's not as obvious when their work doesn't give them enough time.
2. You are a person of worth who deserves to have proper boundaries around your work.
3. Your job is a transaction where they need you just as much as you need them.
I'be been struggling with burnout myself during this year. In the darkest times it got bad enough that I considered to abandon software development altogether.
Thanks to a three months time off I'm through it now.
I've been writing about my experiences and my recovery, maybe they can be of help to anyone else in a similar situation:
I had the same experience as you, years ago. I was severely burnt out (to the point where I didn't want to do anything computer-related). Taking time off fixed it, but I probably need to do that again now.
That was interesting. How long did it take you to get so burnt out? I feel like I might be lately, i haven't done any interesting personal coding or learning in probably around a year and a half now. I used to really enjoy hacking on stuff and learning how it all works. Lately I just don't care much. Ive only been working for maybe 4 or 5 years, my third year of professional work was particularly shitty.
You don't have to code every hour that god sends to be good at your job. Most of the good people I know have hobbies and outside interests that are tech related but are significantly different to the day job, perhaps producing music, or making short films, or home automation or something.
Personal coding and learning, in the same sort of area you work, would accelerate burnout for me.
Perhaps it does make sense to condense it to a few simple tips to watch out for, but honestly this posts feels a lot like: "tips i use to avoid obesity; eat less! do exercise!"
I wish this post Included something actionable. I know I shouldn’t overcommit not just professionally but in my personal life too, but I do anyways. So how do I stop? I know I should be asking for help more, but I’m prideful. How do I get over that? And so forth with all of the points..
Sleep is great but I don't think it's ever been a factor for me when it comes to burnout. When I've been burned out, I was still getting a good night's sleep. After changing industries, I've worked some exceptionally long days and weeks (far longer than before), and it makes me physically exhausted but never burned out.
Readit News
- Doubled down on focus. Went back to using a single monitor, cut down notifications on my phone and carved out time in my diary to do focused deep work. Constant task switching has always been bad for burnout for me.
- Was much more intentional about how I presented my work to others. I used to think that if I needed to focus on how I communicated my work upwards, that was somehow a reflection on the quality of the work itself. Instead I learned that taking time out to focus on how you present your ideas acts as a force multiplier on them.
- Get out of toxic environments. Often I’ve found that the cause of burnout is not hard work, I am capable of hard work for sustained periods, but hard work with an expectation or repeated experience of failure in forms of projects being scrapped or canceled. Success isn’t always its own reward, but it does seem to help ward off against burnout.
- I also spend a couple of hours in the gym nearly every day. It’s a high end gym and this is my splurge for myself. For other people, their release may be family.
For me it's the opposite. Working on a single monitor means hundreds of alt-tab a day. That's a lot of distraction that is avoidable by using multiple monitors.
Recently switched from a two to a triple monitors setup (mainly for IDE/terminal/browser). I feel like it reduced how much tired I am at the end of the day.
Having multiple monitors means being able to switch between windows without constantly changing what’s on my screens.
I currently have three that I use for IDE, browser, terminal(s), Slack, and SQL. Often one or more of these aren’t needed often, and/or I can share two on a single monitor. But I am able to carry out most of my day without having to change windows around.
I occasionally have two browsers that I will be working in simultaneously so will split those across monitors, but that’s rare.
It's a process that I struggle with, but I truly want to improve. Do you have any suggestions or resources?
Nerds often have a tendency to be hyper focused on the details of the solution because that's the most fun part and the part they have directly thought about intensely.
Many people "up the chain", or in general who don't have intimate details of the problem space may not grasp why such a solution is needed. So starting off with it doesn't resonate with them.
I've found its better to first tell the story of "what got us here", that led to this solution. If you do it right, you'll see the "a ha" moment go off in people's faces and they're right with you.
This gives a logical framework for presenting people with new information - starting with a 10,000 foot view of how ‘the world has changed’ and gradually going into more detail about how this change will impact them before providing a solution. [1]
Where it really excels is enabling you to ‘bundle’ ideas into a larger trend, which others may not have seen as connected in the past. Depending on your background, using a sales framework may seem ‘icky’ but it’s a fairly tried and true method of presenting information.
In terms of books, other than Challenger Sale and Challenger Customer I can recommend To Sell is Human by Dan Pink, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and How to Deliver a Ted Talk.
An area where you can get a huge leg up over others is in use of PowerPoint / Google Slides. Most people are terrible at it, so if you can deliver a presentation which is 15% better than most you will be at a huge advantage also. The key here is not to see PowerPoint as a tool for conveying information, but as a tool for creating pitches. If you treat every new idea you present as a ‘pitch’ it will transform your effectiveness.
In the same way as gift wrapping a gift ‘elevates’ the gift, wrapping an idea or proposal in a presentation means it’s automatically taken more seriously.
[1] https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/insight-selling-better-pitch
- What is the problem?
- Why is it a problem? (Eg, Business impact, impact on customers, etc.)
- What are we doing about it?
- What consequences do we expect (or do we already see)?
Depending on the medium, do a sentence, a paragraph, or a page for each.
I read this and it does not sound real. To avoid burnout I simply need a new job. I also packed my all personal belongings and am ready to hand in my notice anytime I see it’s too much. Better unemployed for some time than mentally broken.
My last job I was at least the fourth or fifth person to break down and cry at work. Plenty of those happened in meetings where the boss man was present. They just quietly get replaced and that's that. Burn em and churn em. Never shows up on the ledger and everyone writes it off as a crazy one-off situation.
Then oh gosh a big deadline hits and we're down a person, better show off what a team player we are and make sure we hit the deadline.
it's a deeply wired need, and it would be interesting to discuss that. I found it easier to wake up in the morning when I felt part of team rather than going to a company be a nameless cog. Surely being a cog may avoid being overworked by never ending night shifts .. hence the debate.
Man, it’s killing me how true this is. It’s never “we treated them so poorly they needed to quit to preserve their sanity”, it’s always “they just weren’t a great fit. Oh well.”
Writing a resignation letter, even if you're not planning to hand it in immediately, might help you clear your head and make a better decision. Handing in your notice straigh after another fire/argument/nuissance, i.e. in a direct response to a single event, might turn out to be worse than doing it when things slow down a bit—purely because you'll have more control over the situation and will be able to approach it with less emotions.
> anytime I see it’s too much
Honestly, why wait?
Regarding your workplace: I had a similar problem and I kept searching and changing desks whenever possible. I bought noise cancelling headphones and occupied empty meeting spaces. I also managed to show that I was able to deliver better solutions when I worked from home, because it was easier for me to focus. Now I use a standing desk for 50% of my time in he office. It's placed next to the window where I have a great view and nobody is moving through my peripheral vision.
I still struggle with burnout - a lot of times because of context switching - but I learn to say "no". A lot of people don't even try to debug their problems or google for errors, they just like to ask someone else. I just say: "I need to type this email first" or "there is a meeting in a few minutes, but I'll come to you right after" and when I check back with them they often solved their own problem.
Regarding your review: I think this is a chance for you. Just come prepared with a list of known problems. Software devs need to take shortcuts in order to meet clients timeline plans, but we also need to pay back the technical debt. It's not incompetence, it's prioritizing time-to-market over quality / robustness / security / maintainability.
- Remove most, if not all notifications from your phone. Not just work-related, anything that will stimulate your brain for no good reason
- Try to leave work on time to allow other activities after. Could be ranging from going to the gym to raising your kids.
- Monitor your smartphone usage and cut it down (use something like RescueTime).
- Go to places where there is no internet connection to have some you time (e.g., a steam room is perfect to relax, or yoga)
- Sleep the right amount of hours for you
- Eat, drink well
- Remember, in most jobs, no one dies if that thing is not done today.
- Remember, if you have to work too much it's probably not your fault, but poor planning / constraints in your org. that you cannot control
My phone slipped into water and is not working. I liked it, huge screen, great battery life. So I took some old one I had at home. Smaller. Terrible battery. Old Android, so many apps don't work. I can only use it for calling and texting a couple of times a day. I need to save the battery. I cannot read in bed, as it's too small to be comfortable. It's small, so it fits into all my pockets.
Oh, it's so great that I'm not going to buy a new one. I feel like I don't have phone at all. I didn't know how it was slowly changing (destroying?) my life.
Now, I read HN too much.
Is it better, is it worse?
Certainly not bad, if, the addictive, time wasting aspects are muted / avoided.
I think not using a smartphone in 2020 is actually a massive evolution step back. Used wisely, at the right time and for the right tasks, it's a killer device.
But used for everything, all the time, it's just another form of crack.
Get your phone back, get on top of it, you'll be as happy, I'm sure.
(also, running an old Android version is quite risky on top of being annoying)
1. Work exists only to support your lifestyle. If your work doesn't allow you to live a lifestyle you are happy with, it's not serving its purpose. This is obvious to most people when their work doesn't pay them enough, but it's not as obvious when their work doesn't give them enough time.
2. You are a person of worth who deserves to have proper boundaries around your work.
3. Your job is a transaction where they need you just as much as you need them.
Thanks to a three months time off I'm through it now.
I've been writing about my experiences and my recovery, maybe they can be of help to anyone else in a similar situation:
https://www.damienklinnert.de/a-passion-lost/
My one piece of advice for you if you're in a similar situation would be to take time off.
After the last time it took me about two months to recover.
Personal coding and learning, in the same sort of area you work, would accelerate burnout for me.
Make sure you get 8 hours/night, and (say) 10 hours in stressful periods. If you already think you have burnout, then sleep as much as you can.