Burnout

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/burnout/

by sant0sk1 • 17 years ago

131 23 17 years ago

swombat2• 17 years ago

I think there's one fallacy there... you can easily burn out while still engaged in your work. Or rather, you can be fully engaged in your work, happy about it, feeling great and on top of everything, and yet still get to a point where your body and mind just can't take anymore, and then you crash and burn for a few days (or longer, depending on the way your mind works), where you feel totally disengaged and don't do anything productive.

By the time you realise that you're not engaged in your work anymore, imho, you've already crashed.

ptn• 17 years ago

That wouldn't be burn out (the mind has a full tank, but can't start it's engine), that would be stress or fatigue (the mind is out of fuel).

megaduck• 17 years ago

Absolutely true. I hit that point earlier this year.

For a while, I was filling every waking moment with something "productive". Going to class during the day, working on the startup at night, listening to economics and political podcasts during my commute, and filling any spare minutes with writing or learning the guitar.

After a while, I just couldn't get anything done. My language learning slowed to a crawl, my coding output dropped, and I developed a wicked case of writer's block. My brain just... stopped. Thank God my wife's a patient woman, because I understand I became rather difficult to live with. The painful part was that I didn't feel "burned out". I loved everything I was doing, but I became frustrated because I just couldn't get things accomplished.

Sanity was regained only after I cut back. I canceled almost all my podcast subscriptions, reduced my startup work, and actively took some time off. "Noprocrast" helped too. :) After a while, productivity eventually came back.

Since then, I've been careful about tackling too much at once. I think the brain has a buffer that deals with all the stimulus that you deal with in your daily life. If you take on too much, the buffer gets full and performance drops to a crawl. Taking time to occasionally "clear the buffer" is critical to maintaining a healthy and sustainable lifestyle.

nostrademons• 17 years ago

That's burnout? I just take that as a normal work routine - I'll work really hard on something for a week or two, then do nothing for a couple days while I recharge. I figure it's more productive than an arbitrary 5-days-on-2-days-off schedule, and it lets me make better use of the downtime, since I'm more inclined to try something completely different when I really don't feel like doing anything productive than when I'd rather be working.

My cofounder was the same way, and our downtimes never seemed to be synchronized, which was a good thing because it meant there was always someone going full steam ahead.

swombat2• 17 years ago

It's burn-out if you don't realise that you need to sit back and relax for a few days to recharge, and keep ploughing on regardless. Once you learn how to manage this burnout cycle, it becomes a feature rather than a bug, as you describe. If you try to keep going, though, a couple of days of downtime can easily turn into weeks of morose can't-be-arsed-to-do-anything-ness.

gahahaha• 17 years ago

Love the "about the author" box:

"XXX as been designing on paper, wood, plastic, metal and that ‘ol web thing for around 15 years, most recently as principal at Wishingline, working with clients such as PayPal, Masterfile, and Toronto Life Magazine while somehow still finding time to write, take pictures, perform and release records and actually have a life away from the internet. "

wizard_2• 17 years ago

Why did you censor his name? He wrote it on the article. (Of course I'll leave it off until I know you reasons.)

pxlpshr• 17 years ago

This is a really good article that does a great job of outlining burnout in the design and development industry, and reiterates why I got out of the service side of it in favor of: startups. Service-oriented design/programming just doesn't do it for me on that level as very few companies are setup for trickle down benefits if the service-agency produces a big win for XXXXX client.

Artists (programmers & designers) are very much alike in that we tend to get very obsessive-compulsive about our work. That being said, I switched over to startups realizing that if I'm going to work this hard then I want to be on the end that receives the big reward if we knock it out of the park (mental, personal growth, fiscal, etc). And unless deep down you feel very passionate about it, working at that intensity can be short-lived.

tjic• 17 years ago

One step I used to help lower my stress level and fight burnout was this:

Never check statistics and analytics outside of the office.

I used to be a mouse slapping that cocaine-delivery-bar in my cage: I'd get up from my reading chair every 15 minutes in the evening to click "refresh" in my browser.

Good stats? On top of the world!

Bad stats? Obsess, dwell, worry, calculate.

There's time for that - do it in the office.

If I'm already putting in a 10-12 hour day, there's no need to take that crap home.

cracki• 17 years ago

stats of what?

eru• 17 years ago

Perhaps stats of his business? I guess of his website.

charlesju• 17 years ago

I take it a step further. Do not open up a computer when you're at home, or even watch TV. I have found that starring at a screen for all hours of the day is incredibly draining.

asciilifeform5• 17 years ago

Is it "burnout" when you come to realize that your entire field has the intellectual depth of Saturday morning cartoons?

abossy• 17 years ago

No, it's time for a career change.

asciilifeform5• 17 years ago

Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to find intellectually deep, non-interpersonal-communication work which does not involve programming in some way, without extensive re-credentialing. I'm working on it, though.

Rob15283• 17 years ago

I'd recommend reading Thoreau's "Walden Pond." That dude really knew how to chill out.

Burnout

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