I burned out but I don't want to let my team down

What works for me: Take a minimum of 2 weeks vacation in one block (3 or 4 is amazing if you can negotiate it - don’t be afraid to ask if you are at $bigcorp). If possible don’t use a computer in that period, don’t check work mail/slack on a phone. Don’t do side projects if they are computer based. You need to try to do something (or nothing is ok too) as long as it is different physically/mentally. You need to get out of your current mindset and environment. That likely means getting away from your current location to avoid the temptation to just sit around at home and watch Netflix (which is not a big enough change).

Let your team know you’ll be offline for the vacation period, the world will continue while you take a break.

See how you feel on your return.

I think, whatever you should do strongly depends on yourself and your circumstances. Burnout is mainly a stress response, but the way to find your balance again will really have to be your own way. It is great, that you discuss this already with some proper guidance. Whether your team and job can help you here, also depends. If that should be the case, it needs to happen in a way that reduces your stress. If you think so, why not try, but don't expect outsiders to give that final recommendation.

On that Netflix topic... You'd be much certainly better of simply trying to sleep or do relaxation exercises. Also trying to code during that time does not help relaxation. Try to establish clear boundaries between these different modes in your life.

I've been burned out before. If I were you, I'd take the vacation first, and relax as much as possible. Also, don't do side projects, that's more of the same thing that's burning you out. See how you feel after vacation, and then go from there. That's just my humble advice. Overwork / burnout is real, you have my sympathy.

For many years I was known as a workaholic, but I really enjoyed the work and sometimes I wrote code for 14 hours a day simply because I was having so much fun. But then I suffered an episode of burnout. I tried many things to cure it: I took a long vacation, but that did not help. I got really into jogging, and started running 20k comfortably, but that did not help. I tried antidepressants, but that did not help. My friends kept suggesting herbs to me, so I think I tried something like 20 different herbs, none of which help. On the theory that I'd been sleep deprived, I started sleeping 10 hours everyday, but that did not help. I read some good books, watched some good movies, and tried to let myself relax a bit, but that did not help. Nothing helped until I saw a sports doctor who suggested I take testosterone to help me stay in shape. So I took testosterone and the burnout was cured within 2 weeks. Suddenly I could write code for 12 straight hours and really enjoy it again. My ability to concentrate was incredible. In retrospect, it seems clear, the burnout was because my brain wasn't getting enough testosterone, which apparently kept me from feeling excited about work.

First of all, I commend you for recognizing what you're going through and reaching out for help. The HN community often has very good feedback related to mental health and burnout so I'm looking forward to keeping up with this thread.

It sounds like you're taking other very good steps (exercise, eating well, social life).

That feeling of not wanting to get out of bed/watching Netflix can also be associated with depression. Most of us experience some form of depression throughout life (brief or chronic). Have you considered seeing a doctor about this?

"Should I just take a couple of weeks' vacation?" My sense is that two weeks would be bare minimum. Can you take 3 or 4 weeks off? And as others have recommended here, resist the urge to do side-projects and spend as little time online as possible.

Regarding your team, in my experience people respond really well to honesty about what's going on. "Hi team, my energy and motivation are not where they usually are and I'm experience what I think might be burnout or a small bought of depression. I've decided to take X weeks off of work so I can recharge. This might mean that you need to step up and do XYZ while I'm away but I know you're more than capable of it. I look forward to seeing what you've all accomplished when I'm back and feeling better." This helps others understand that it's OK to not always feel 100% and that they too should prioritize their health (mental & physical). You're giving your team permission to be a healthy version of themselves in a world where that often isn't a priority.

This is a journey. You got this.

I know my burnout rate and it's almost every 3-4 months, this is because I usually push myself to do so, and because I really like to work. I usually need to take a week off, but when I can't, I do try to do a couple of things during a week or two tops:

1. Heads up to my boss: good communication releases the pressure of keeping the same pace and support from the company assuming it's a good one.

2. Start delegation to my "right hand": This is important because you need someone to take care of your team.

3. Get into maintenance mode: This is for me the most important bit, when you are burned out, you can't be productive. Trying will burn you out more, and it's going to be harder to recover. I usually try to have as little meetings as possible and just focus on the things I can do; small tasks if I need to code, documentation, among other stuff.

4. Enjoy the things: I usually game, but I also find myself watching Netflix in bed. Enjoy it, there's no shame on doing so. Guilt is dangerous, and reminding yourself you're not being productive is not good. So just enjoy yourself.

Hope this advice help!

Burning out is like having a swelling injury. You need to relieve the pressure. I work in a high stress environment, coding and managing people and the way I've learned to cope with it does not lie in having a healthy routine or anything, it just isn't enough. You need to stop doing whatever causes the swelling, regularly, before you can do it again. When you have tendinitis, you stop using whatever sport causes it.

So, every year, I take two weeks off in a remote location where there is no electricity, let alone reception. I am going off the grid. That comes in addition to regular holidays, like a week every three to four months. On weekends I turn off all notifications.

We are not machines, your body and your mind need to have different activities, apart from your regular schedule. You need to have time to think, to do nothing. I think we need to come to terms with the fact that our time does not have to be productive 24/7. Life should be messier than the optimized version of it we try to will into being.

Tell your team about the situation and that you need to disconnect immediately to help with your mental health. They will need to understand. You'll feel guilty but treat it as an emergency. I would take a vacation of 2-3 weeks, now. Get away and make sure you don't deal with anything work related, no coding, no email and even contact with the team. This applies to any personal projects. Basically, take a vacation to a Club Med type of resort with your suitcases and that's it. No electronics. Don't let your work know your contact info. Keep in mind that nothing bad will happen just because you decided to take a vacation.

Once you come back, reduce your hours to just working hours. Close your mind to anything coding after the day is over. This is a must. Otherwise you'll fall into the same situation. If your work won't support you then you'll have to start looking for a new job.

For the time after work look for a hobby that you can do where you can have fun and disconnect. Your goal is to use the hobby as away for your mind to disconnect from work. Do not obsess over it since then you'll fall into the same mindset that will lead to burn out.

All this will only help the situation but only time will heal you but you need to reduce your obsession over work. Otherwise you'll be in the situation again, relatively soon.

You can continue without doing anything and in 2 years from now you'll be in the same situation. The best thing you can do now is start the process of healing.

Start talking to your team/management and plan for a longer break asap. Try to be required as less as possible.

Do nothing work-related for a while ( as much as possible), so you don't feel stressed.

Counter point of view: if one of your devs had this, what would you want them to do? Is your position to that transferable to your upper management?

Good luck man. Had it too and kept working.

What happened to me: After work i went straight to bed and back up to work ( i seriously reduced after work requirements, which was okayish to do since i mostly plan for being able to take a break). Took 2-3 months since i didn't want to go off my full-time work, as the overload happened in combination after hours...

Fyi, going straight to bed was the first 2 weeks and then it slowly improved. "Broke" after deadlines and where the 2 words went in serious overdrive for a while due to unforeseen circumstances ( 19 hours/day for 4-5 months).

Breathe in. Voice-call your manager. Tell them "Bad news, listen, I'm burned out."

Breathe out. Let them ask their questions. Respond with "I'm unable to do that right now" to anything that sounds too hard to do right now. Even if that means everything.

Let them take care of the rest. Only answer their work calls.

Call your parents/siblings.

Traditional highly intense low-pay professional jobs (university teacher, social worker, clergy, for example) have, at least in some cases, sabbaticals as part of the career and compensation scheme. Sabbaticals have the express purpose of letting people avoid and recover from burnout.

Highly intense high-pay professional jobs (oncologist, software developer, bond trader) don't have the sabbaticals baked in. Those of us with that kind of job have to cope with burnout on our own. There's no well-meaning dean or bishop saying, "go take a sabbatical. I want to see a five-paragraph paper describing the insides of your eyelids. It's due in three months. Getouddahere! Go! Now!"

Nobody's going to do it for us. We have to do it for ourselves.

You say you don't want to let your team down. That's great. Keep in mind that they don't want to let you down either. So trust your team members to keep doing what they do, but without your presence for a few weeks. Talk to some of them about it.

Then talk to your managment / front office about it. Come to that conversation with a tentative plan. Say something like this.

"I am fried. I propose to take six weeks off and go snorkeling in the tropics / cut my grass with scissors / build a bicycle of bamboo and ride it to Taos NM / whatever.

"Joey and Anne know what needs to be done in the farkle and framis modules, and they're well-respected by the rest of the team. I know this team; I'm confident they'll continue to do great things while I take the break I need to take.

"What do you think of this plan, boss? Is it workable? Would any changes make it workable for you?"

That opens the conversation in a respectful way. Good managers will probably see how the company benefits ... give responsibility to more people ... keep you "in the socket" even if you're powered down for a while ... build a reputation as an employer with respect and compassion.

If your proposal angers your boss or starts a riot in the executive washroom, well, then you know that about your company as you consider your next options.

A blunter way of putting this is "Always work yourself out of any job you hold. It's the only way you'll be able to do anything new."

I suspect you may be focusing on work because it's the most urgent symptom, but this really sounds like depression. I apologize if I'm making unwarranted assumptions, but if I'm not this, perspective could be pretty useful.

I have ADHD which makes engaging in tasks you're unenthusiastic about excruciatingly difficult, and my position recently changed so my strengths are no longer utilized and my weak spots are where I need to produce most consistently. It all seems to be based on a dopamine deficiency, and 80% of people with ADHD have comorbid anxiety and depression, so I deal with depression a lot. But I'm one of those people who always seems calm, upbeat and together interpersonally even when I'm struggling with absolute basic tasks. That's convenient in some ways, but it's tough when you really need the help because you need to explicitly ask at a time where it's most difficult to do that.

And work is ALWAYS the place that suffers first/most. I love my long-time coworkers and they love having me there. I hate letting them down and I'm sure I can be incredibly frustrating to work with... which of course makes the whole thing worse. These things tend to operate in feedback loops.

The lists of signs or red flags you tend to see on the net aren't definitions for depression or lists of prerequisites— they're annoyingly nebulous, incomplete collections of hints. For example— you won't always see smoke pouring out of a window if a building is on fire, and smoke pouring out of a window doesn't automatically mean the building is on fire, what you see might not even be smoke, but it's a pretty strong hint. You won't always see fire trucks outside, and they might be there because someone is having a medical emergency, but it's a pretty good hint. Like that. Also, therapists are only human and can miss the forest for trees— you should plainly ask them for help evaluating yourself for depression.

It could be that you just need a solid break, but if you burn through two weeks of vacation and return to work with the same emotional block, you'll be adding some new toxic emotional patterns to your existing ones. Taking several more reputable online questionnaires for these sorts of things can actually prove quite useful. They led me to enlist a neuropsychologist to evaluate me for ADHD and that's really helped me out.

I've started to be able to sense it, when i feel that burnout creeping up, and i know i need to just stop and take a vacation asap. I can try to push it a couple more weeks, but then those couple of weeks will basically be at like half productivity.

So from a cold hard company numbers standpoint, they'd rather i took my vacation right away, be off for 2 weeks, and then be back to full productivity when i get back. Rather than, say, work at half productivity for a month, and then take a 2 week vacation, which adds up to having "lost" ~4 weeks of productivity.

From your team perspective, you need to take vacations yourself to set the standard for others, that it's ok for them to take vacation regularly, otherwise they'll start forcing themselves and burn out and feel miserable the same way you are.

You can also think of it from the extreme ends, would your company be happier if you pushed yourself for a couple more months until you completely burned out and quit, or would they rather you took vacation for multiple months and then continued working at the company afterwards. I would imagine most companies would choose the later, unless you worked at, say, a triple-A gaming studio, and then they wanted you to burn yourself out until the shipping deadline, and then they want you to quit so they don't need to pay you a severance package.

I generally will hit burnout about twice a year. I guess most folks in these comments don't struggle with it all that often, which I'm happy to see. When I hit burnout here's some things I do (and some things to keep in mind to avoid burnout):

- I train other engineers. It takes up a lot of time, it's fairly monotonous, and low risk. It has the added benefit of opening up the opportunity to spread load some of your work, which could be adding to your burnout.

- I take time off. I do this twice a year in two week blocks, generally in spring and fall. Those times are perfect because there's already a lot of people out in December and January, so I have one red-hot period in the middle of the year where the bulk of my work is done.

- Stop coding. This may be personal to me; enterprise software has really ruined the passion I have for software. When I'm off, I don't code. I go hangout with my girlfriend and play video games.

- Limit time spent doing work things. In software, we let companies leak into our lives in many ways. Shut these signals down completely with good boundaries: don't let your phone ring at night unless you're being paid to answer it, don't buy into company "hackathon" events whereby a company gets free IP by removing the constraints of the backlog, etc...

- Don't intermingle "work friends" and real friends. Work friends like to talk shop, that's great over a beer after a stressful day, but if I'm trying to relax on the regular I limit my time spent with work friends. By virtue of our shared employment they will likely never know me beyond git clone --depth 1 until they leave the company or I do.

Hope this helps.

This has happened enough that I've come to identify a pattern. For me, it's a combination of a poor environment (bad configuration of team, project or workplace) and plain-old genetics (naturally prone to anxiety/depression necessitating medication).

The former (environment) can, with time, sometimes fix itself. Not everything has to be under your control for it to improve your conditions. For example, if a particularly intensive project concludes, or if you are transferred to another team with a fresh set of people and different problems to work on. This is kind of similar to getting a night's sleep. You didn't do anything (well ok, you slept), but the next day (i.e. your environment changed) suddenly you feel a bit fresher and the things that preyed on your mind the previous day seem farther away and less intrusive.

More superficial, simple things like reducing caffeine and exercise can help, and may even solve your problem if it's not too deep. But I've found these work better as enablers for the above-mentioned two-pronged solution rather than a treatment in themselves.

Hope this helps.

You should try not working consistently. Specifically having a rest day where you're not thinking about anything in particular.

Try an isolation tank.

I recommend this for two reasons. The high amounts of magnesium have the cool effect of calming you physically. I always feel like a wet noodle afterwards. It's very pleasant.

And second, because it's a deep restful state of sleep you sometimes fall into that energizes and motivates you.

> Should I just take a couple of weeks' vacation?

You probably need more than that to recover from burnout. But if you have not even tried that as Step 1 then by all means... do that. It might not be enough, but try it and see.

I don't have a ton of answers for you, but I will say that you are responsible for yourself first, and your team second. When you get on an airline flight and they tell you in case of emergency to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others... this is the same concept. You are not taking care of your team if you are not OK yourself.

Apart from what everyone else said (take time off and see a doctor) I’ve been following this advice: - work the absolute minimum you can get away with. No overtime. - treat sleep like it’s your job. Get 8 hours of sleep no matter what. - do not take any extra responsibilities at work. Just say no. That includes studying for certifications, personal projects etc.

If you’re in a bad way it will likely take a few months before you feel better but it does work. I now find it helpful to go into this mode whenever I get the slightest hint of burnout coming on.

Good luck!

When was the last time you had 10 days off in a row?

First, if you can, take a two week vacation (longer if you are able). If you can afford it, travel to someplace that you enjoy, turn off all notifications, don't check your email, hell don't turn your phone on if you don't have to. Don't even use a computer, don't surf the web, don't keep your usual routine. (two weeks here, because it takes some 7-10 days to really separate yourself from work) Also, don't spend all the time at home, laying in bed, watching tv.

Second, stop all the side tech related side projects. You are probably burned out from lighting both ends of the problem solving candle. You need to give your mind a break from problem technical solving. Have you considered picking up a hobby that isn't connected to technology. Learn to sew, read a book, pick up an instrument.

Third, if it has been a while go see a doctor and get a physical. Gotta rule out anything physically wrong with your body.

> How can I manage responsibilities and deal with this at the same time? Should I delegate my work to someone else for a while? Should I just take a couple of weeks' vacation? I'm kind of lost at the moment.

You have to take care of yourself first. I'd make an appointment with your therapist to create a plan of action, a way to break this cycle. If you are close and feel safe with discussing this with your boss do so. You may have to delegate some of your load, you may even need to take a short leave of absence.

Finally, if you don't already, start taking daily walks outside and start journaling. Walks to help clear your mind, journaling to sort out your thoughts.

It might help if you considered the idea that you no longer enjoy coding. I and several people I've met just no longer enjoy coding, which is different than burnout.

I'd say burnout is when you have worked at a greater capacity than what you are capable of for so long that your mental, physical, spiritual, or social well-being becomes comprised. You can be overworked by your management or for self-imposed reasons. When one or more of these aspects of your life has become severely damaged, your performance decreases, and you feel negative emotions toward your job or aspects of your job duties.

No longer enjoying coding is much different. Like anything else, people change over time, and their preferences change. Some people stop enjoying coding because it's no longer challenging, or they are tired of repeatedly solving the same problems. Some people stop enjoying coding altogether just because that's how they are now.

I would suggest some introspection and soul searching. Ask yourself the question, who am I today? What do I care about today? Am I burnt out? Which aspects of my life have become damaged due to burnout?

Good luck. I hope everything turns out well.

There's a lot of burnout threads on HN but the common reason seems to be expending a lot of energy on something that led to nothing. It's a mechanism to keep you from going too far in the wrong direction.

It seems correlated to overwork, but that's probably not the reason. So I'm not sure if vacations help much. If you have a therapist, I'm sure they'd have good advice.

As for the team, many have gone through it and will understand. Speak to your manager. Bigger companies often have a procedure for it. It's why we have unlimited PTO, but some places might put it under sick leave.

If you're an athlete paid multimillions and you broke a foot, nobody would expect you to keep playing, nor would they fire you. You're not letting anyone down, it's more of a work hazard. But let the team know of your plans. It's likely they've figured out you were burned out.

Talk to your manager, If you are a team lead it is possible you are doing both your team lead work and individual contributor work. I found that was not possible when I took over my team because I am building the team, getting projects unblocked all the while trying to work on features - I realized I am in critical path and began blocking my teams progress. You have to let your "I can get this done faster than others" mentality as a team lead role and let others take charge of their work. Being a team lead does not mean more coding, in fact it should be a small part of your job because you have to focus on other problems such and mentoring your team, aligning the team with corporate goals and building out the team- These are extremely time consuming tasks.

I'm going through something similar and was able to negotiate some time off with my employer. In my experience, there's no way to push through burnout, and you're not going to be doing anyone you work with any favours by trying to "be there" through it.

Let someone else step up! Hopefully there's someone on your team looking for extra responsibility. Take advantage of that!

If you recover, you'll know you have a helping hand and it will either set you up for being able to take on higher level issues, or at least reset expectations for team velocity for those times when you're down. If you don't recover, at least this sets up the team to be able to continue without you, so you don't have to bear that guilt if you leave.

I recommend doing this before taking time off. Otherwise you would just come back to the exact same scenario and burn out again in a couple of days.

If you’re US based, get a diagnosis and take FMLA leave. It’s not going to get better by doing the same things you’re doing right now, so do something better for a bit.

Use the time to invest in yourself. Pick up a new hobby (sailing worked for me). Get therapy. Exercise and stop staring at a screen for 8-12 hours a day.

One of the best pieces of advice a friend gave me last year was “Right now forget about your $job. The only job you have right now is to get well. That’s your full time job. Go play video games and don’t feel guilty”

I had a severe burnout a few years ago. I haven't fully recovered yet, but while going through it, I had no energy/motivation to think about work, nor doing it either. As of now, I'm fine with working, thinking and having meetings, but I've limited myself to work from 9am to 6pm, with a 1-2h lunch break. I do some side projects on my spare time, but sometimes I get enough of it as well, so I just spend my days watching TV, playing with my dogs etc. You have all of my sympathy.

Take time off. You can't help anyone until you've helped yourself.

Take a month at least. Go somewhere that's not connected. Don't do email. Don't do social media. Don't watch TV. It'll be hell for a week until your mind finally slows down. That's when the healing can begin, and 3 weeks is the bare minimum healing time.

Doing manual and physical, repetitive things can help, so long as they don't come with responsibility or commitments or require brain work.

I've been there.

What worked for me was talking to my manager, and arranging to unplug by taking a significant amount of time off. For me, this was two weeks initially, which I extended to three. IMO, three weeks is the minimum I would consider taking if I get into this state again.

If your manager is a good one, they will support you. If your organization is a healthy one, your team will understand and empathize.

Burnout is real, and, in my experience, it's unlikely to resolve by staying the course.

I'm not sure if the two-weeks of vacation will help. Maybe you may look at the root cause of your burn-out. Why do you think you've burned out, because the tasks were boring? Or you burned out because of some other factors in the team? Do you feel like you can make such a reasoning such as I've burned out because x happened or the y factors taking longer than I expect so I burn out, etc?

First of all, be honest with your teammates and boss. It's okay to tell you've burned out.

I'm sure they can relate and help you going through this and covering you while you're trying to recover from this.

This will also help them understand that they should avoid disturbing you during your healing vacation and make sure you will be on work-free mindset.

Take as much time as needed. Even unpaid leave if needed.

Wishing the best

I've been burned out before: it sucks. But it is good that you realized that you are lost.

The only thing that helped me with burnouts so far: taking a long break. For example I took 2 weeks off and just biked through the country. I didnt plan anything ahead, I made random decisions on the spot (where to eat, what to do). After a week I started to feel much better.

WOW, this thread exploded while I was away. Thank you all for your kind responses. I'll read every single comment.

I'm not the greatest source of information given my own issues, but I _can_ confidently say that burnout can be really debilitating if you don't take care of it. I strongly recommend you take 3+ weeks off, preferably not writing code. If you can't swing the vacation, you can try for medical leave.

You might get some insights from reading about the maslach burnout inventory test.

Some background / video and context here: https://itrevolution.com/understanding-job-burnout-christina...

Talk with your manager, and see if you can come up with a plan to take a long vacation (I'd recommend at least 2-3 weeks, if not longer depending on how you handle burnout historically & what the nature of the burnout is) - at worst, maybe consider unpaid leave as well if you can afford to.

I'm glad to see you highlighting that one can burn out while also having good work-life balance. Before it happened to me, I certainly was under the impression that burnout was simply a consequence of putting in too many work hours, but it's not quite that simple.

If feel like you have been experiencing great work life balance, perhaps its more of a framing issue? Do you feel like you value what you do at this job? Do you see yourself wanting to grow with this company? Does the company's vision align with that of your own?

I had burnout before and I took an entire year off. It definitely helped. That might sound extreme, and probably I could have taken less time off with similar results, but that's what happened.

So yeah, I recommend taking time off. Maybe a lot.

When I was younger (under 40) and have saved a bit, I took sabbaticals between engagements. 1 lasted two years, the other just over a year. Definitely liberating, and enabled me to find my why.

This sounds rough. I have a question... do you feel like you're growing at work? Are you learning new skills and gaining new experiences, and do you value these skills and experiences?

How good can you be for your team if you're burned out?

Can you afford to take a big break?

One thing that might work. Spend a year outside of programming with low stress.

But rather than listen to me maybe make a plan with your therapist?

Maybe you just need a new challenge? It seems you were finding some motivation in side projects. Also consider baking pizza

Not saying you should quit.

But you'd rather quit over ruin your work history, in current position and next ones.

Do most people agree that taking a long vacation?

You should quit.