Burnout

[knave]

A really interesting article on the phenomenon of burnout, with which I'm closely familiar:

Where Work Is a Religion, Work Burnout Is Its Crisis of Faith -- New York Magazine

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Maslach’s research is that burnout isn’t necessarily a result of overwork. It can be, certainly. Michael Leiter, a lovely Canadian fellow and frequent collaborator of Maslach’s, has elegantly called burnout a “crisis in self-efficacy,” which to me suggests that head-banging feeling of struggling mightily for too little or (worse) nothing in return. Ayala Pines, a researcher in Israel who’s looked at burnout in all sorts of inspired contexts (including marriage), rather heartbreakingly sums up the problem as “the failure of the existential quest”—that moment when we wake up one morning and realize that what we’re doing has appallingly little value. She studied the insurance business, for example, a profession often associated with the ultimate cubicle tedium. Yet she noticed something very interesting. “The ones who had some traumatic experience related to insurance when they were children—their house burned down or whatever—they can work for a long time without burning out,” she says. “Because they came to the profession with a calling. They feel their work is significant.”

[Baltar]

Thanks for posting this, knave. I'm actually going through a serious burnout phase right now. I've been working on a software product for over two years now. I'm the only programmer, this is my own product, and I've been doing this fulltime. It's very close to being done finally but I've lost most of the motivation to work on it.. I used to be very passionate about software development and now I feel really empty about it. The problem is that I decided to make something on my own that normally like 3-4 programmers would be handling. Now, I'm no average programmer and I can handle quite a bit more (and I do mean a LOT more) but it turns out there's still a limit to how much endless work I can take (I did actually think I'm superman to some extent, heh).

Has anyone been in this situation before? Most of the PD advice seems to be targeted to get people doing something they're passionate about in the first place, but what about people who've overworked themselves? How do we get back to being passionate again after completely exhausting ourselves? In fact I'm going to suggest this as a topic for a blog entry for Steve since I don't think he has ever talked about this.

[mattsonn]

Knave, I think that last quote really hit it home.

Baltar, I don't program for a living, nor do I major in it, but I got into it when I was really young. I got inspired into making BASIC games after playing some really cool old games on our computer.

I haven't made a computer game since middle school. However, as an engineering student, a lot of what I do requires programming. At my internship last summer, I was given the task of making an enitre application using Excel and Visual Basic. I had absolutely zero guidance from others on how to make it, and as I'm sure you know, Visual Basic has some serious roadblocks in it.

However, where I would have failed in most other things (cough, math), I was able to push on and finish the program. What separated programming from everything else is that there are certain aspects of it that I do get a kick out of: having almost complete control how to accomplish your task, and watching things fall into place. I enjoy organizing things, and writing a good code is all about organization.

So when my motivation was low, I would take a break, come back to it later, and then just stare at the code. If the code didn't immediately seem crystal clear to me (as in if I couldn't explain it to a nonprogrammer), then the chances were that the code could be organized in a better way. I'd stare, stare, and then that 'way' occures to me. Eureka, I reorganize the code, appreciate it's beauty, and then resume what I was supposed to be doing (actually finishing it).

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by mattsonn

So when my motivation was low, I would take a break, come back to it later, and then just stare at the code. If the code didn't immediately seem crystal clear to me (as in if I couldn't explain it to a nonprogrammer), then the chances were that the code could be organized in a better way. I'd stare, stare, and then that 'way' occures to me. Eureka, I reorganize the code, appreciate it's beauty, and then resume what I was supposed to be doing (actually finishing it).

Thanks for the response mattsonn. My problem isn't that I'm stuck and can't solve a problem. I've gotten good enough at this point that I can overcome all the programming problems I come up against. The problem is that I feel completely exhausted and empty of energy. Exercise used to help me with this, but now even that doesn't help much. I used to experience mini-burnouts where I'd have to stop working for a few days to a week to recover, but now it seems to be more serious. I really hope I'll be able to recover though, because I would really hate to leave this industry after investing so much energy and work into it.

[mattsonn]

Wow, good luck then. That's a good idea e-mailing Steve Pavolina then. He should know a little something about burnout after taking 30-40 credits a semester.

[dorothy hanna]

Try Upping your vitamins. Esspecially the B vitamins, and go think of something else for awhile, at the same time. Take some long walks, and reflect, on some things that make you feel good.

Enjoy just that, feeling good while thinking, and remembering those things that brought you juy, and happines. Take yourself back to those times.

If, in your contemplation period, you find that you are really wanting to "move on" to something else, then just finish up what you've been doing, tie up the loose ends, stand back, and say, "There now, mission accomplished", and look to what's next.

Perhaps also, you've been working too long, alone, and want to take on a partner that may bring in some new eyes to the project. You may be at a point where you want to share what you've been doing. Sharing in itself, brings new motivation.

[John Wesley]

Baltar,

It sounds like you really need a vacation. If possible you should take a big chunk of time of and come back with more energy and a fresh perspective. I'd also suggest talking to some coworkers about the project. They might have some fresh perspectives that could re-energize you.

Good luck, its really hard to avoid burn out working really hard on the same thing for a long time.

[Christian223]

For a couple of years, i have been trying to push myself to learn many things, music, programming, guitar playing, drawing, painting, video-game design (i want to be an independet video game developer ), graphic design, and i did all those things, the only thing i did all day was study, eat and sleep, if i was tired of studying too much programming then i went to rest by studying paintings, and if i got tired of that then i switched to playing the guitar, i kept doing that for many months, the result was that i needed to sleep more hours than normal (i felt so tired!) until one day i just couldnt pay any more attention to what i wanted to study, i wasted many months by doing nothing but surf the web and watch videos instead of doing something productive. I guess i reached a phase where my mind just couldnt take it anymore, like if my mind automaticaly shuted-down, it turned off, and i couldnt concentrate anymore.

So i learned my lesson, now i dont push myself so hard, now i study some, i have fun doing something entirelly different, i also just do nothing and empty my mind to rest, i think that in the end this will be more productive, and more healthy and will make my day more enjoyable.

Baltar, i know exactly what you mean, i also got involved on making projects for too long, projects completelly out of my range, maybe you have choosen a bad project not suitable for you?, and i mean it in both senses, it may be an un realistic goal with extremelly large amount of work for one human beign (superman, please get back to earth, put your feet on the ground...) and it also may be a project wich you are really not passionate about, and by experience i can tell you that if you dont absollutelly get crazy about your project, if you dont think how your project can change the world, if you dont think that it will be really appreciated by others, if you have doubts about it, then it will be a burden to work on, i would suggest you to first choose/build/plan a project that will really be something ground-breaking to you, something that you can call your "dream project", then with any line of code you make you will be exited, its not enough to be working on a "good" project, it must be the best thing you can think of working on.

Good luck.

[Baltar]

Thanks guys! That's a lot of great advice. You've actually raised a whole bunch of issues I have been subconsciously ignoring. I need some major changes in my lifestyle. For the last two years my life has basically been like this: work, eat, sleep. That's only sustainable for so long though.. The project is not out of range of my capabilities in terms of complexity, but it is larger in scope than what one person would normally try to accomplish. It actually started out very manageable, but grew in complexity over time as I realized that the original plan wouldn't be good enough. Although I am going to finish the project (it's very close to being done at this point), there's no way I could ever do something like this by myself again. I already decided a while ago that in the future I'll only work on projects with other people.

I've been thinking about this for a while and I don't think I want to switch careers just because I've overworked myself on one project. There's so much I still want to create. I just won't ever be working by myself anymore; working alone is probably the main reason for my burnout. I've actually learned a tremendous amount from doing this, and built up a huge tolerance for hard work and discipline of staying with a project no matter what walls I hit. So it's not just bad things certainly, by far. I just need to create some balance in my life. Thanks again to all of you! Seeing so many different perspectives on this situation is very helpful and refreshing.

[Minsc]

How many hours a day do you code(if it's around two to four, you shouldn't have much burnout)?

And you should break it up into one or two hour cycles.

I drink a lot of tea before coding(black tea, not very strong, cold usually, with one heaping teaspoon per cup)...

It'd be two liters with two teabags and two minutes of exposure, divided into five cups and with one heaping teaspoon of sugar per cup.

I leave them on my table and drink them throughout the day...

A heaping tablespoon would work better but would be a lot of sugar(400 calories, not sure about heaping teaspoons).

[John Hill]

A change is as good as a holiday. As easy as it seems to avoid the issue, if you feel burnt out and it becomes a chronic problem, you should at least consider the possibility that perhaps you need to start heading in a new direction. No matter what age or education level you are at there are always other options.

Look outside the box and daydream of your ideal life, if you can imagine it, you can eventually work towards it and make the daydream your reality.

Your work is not your life, you don't invest time in your work, you invest time in your life. Work is just something you do along the journey, why not try at least a few different jobs or more while you're on the journey. The more you see and the more you experience the more you will learn on this journey.

John