Are we all burned out?

Too be honestly, I feel like society at large causes burnout.

I read a very complete account of my grandfathers early life (before he joined the military during WW2) and the kinda shit he did living of a farm is stuff of fairytales.

When someone in the 20 mile radius needed a barn built, LITERALLY EVERYONE came to help. When you were off work for the night, you would sit with your whole family and read the newspaper or play cards, or travel to your grandmas house 3 blocks away.

Now the whole world is split up. My nearest family is over 600 miles away. My friends would rather play video games on discord than go and play cards in person. Work is a 9-5 and then you forget about it.

It seems like there is no community anymore outside of online spaces, and that just isn’t the same. In my opinion, burnout is synonymous with lack of real world, in person community.

When we wake up every morning, this is a wide range of options available to us, and we only see a tiny sliver of them.

When we do the same thing we did yesterday, we will see that option more clearly tomorrow, and other options less clearly. Our agency narrows.

When our options have narrowed too much, it can be hard to get unstuck. Hard to get out of the rut. Wake up, go to work, consume content, go to bed. Every day. Sometimes we might dream of other options, but they don't seem attainable, they're just too distant.

I think the only way to expand your options is to actually do new things. The new thing becomes more salient, and the next day you might see more than one option. Build up more ways to be.

Some activities are worse than others about further narrowing your options, and some can help expand your options beyond just becoming more salient themselves.

Scrolling endless content never lets me get bored, never lets me think of something else to do, and doing something else is always a bit harder than continuing to scroll. There's a clear similarity to drug addiction, where options narrow until to just doing that drug all the time, and being wasted on the drug doesn't do anything to expand your options.

Going for a run expands my options. I get a bit bored on the run, and my mind can wander. I can reflect, and may choose to do something new tomorrow. Journaling expands my options. Practicing gratitude can expand my options. Meditating can expand my options. Talking to a therapist can expand my options. All that mental health stuff shares something in common here, it lets me break the cycle of narrowing options and narrowing agency, and instead widen my options a little.

Nostalgia distorts reality a bit. 2001-2007 you're looking at 9/11, war on terror, and the plunge into the Great Recession. Not exactly good times in the US, but probably better if you're living in Ukraine or Russia. Covid has been draining for everyone I think and having a kid understandably will drain your energy. I'm not burned out, but I also don't have a kid. Add in some routines to help manage your burn out like meditation and unplugging yourself from negative news feeds/your phone content.

I just wanna talk about the irony of a HN thread, where a large portion of people probably make money by making things people use or look at on their phone, that is mostly people saying "the problem is your phone, get off it".

What are we all doing?

To flip it around, if we're all spending our time making things we believe contribute to harming people, yeah I think that would burn you out.

You are not alone my friend.

The best I can recommend you would be to start dealing with handcrafting chores.

Try to avoid social media and news, reduce your internet usage in general and pay close attention to little things that you let go unnoticed in the past.

You know, things like how wind blows through trees and leaves, observe the sky, the birds, anything that can let your mind go free without thinking pretty much anything negative.

I have been doing this for a while now and have noticed tremendous difference; it could work with you too, why not?

Just hold on tight, you are not alone in this mess.

I'm having the time of my life. No joke!

What I've learned in the several decades of life I've lived so far is that your mood day to day is almost entirely dependent on how you interpret the narrative of your life, not what is actually happening.

You mention "having a kid, covid, war, etc."

But what else is happening in your life? It's impossible that every waking moment is 100% consumed by kids/wars/disease/economic collapse/etc. That's the narrative you are telling yourself. So change it! Tell yourself how lovely that flower is on the path over there. Tell yourself how nice the breeze is that wafts over your face. Tell yourself the color of the painting that hangs in your room is a lovely shade of orange. Tell yourself the smell of the soda in your cup is amazing and nourishing.

You may think I sound rather bananas right now, but this is all part of mindfulness training. I had to learn this, because years ago I was falling into a deep depression and consumed by panic attacks. I had gone on and off to therapy in the past, but this time I ended up reading a bunch of materials about mindfulness including the book Mindsight. It changed my life.

We tend to spend most of our lives on autopilot, nearly oblivious to the world around us and instead living in a fantasy we've constructed in our heads—sometimes a very dark fantasy. The way out of that is to become mindful: mindful of breathing, walking on a street, talking to a friend, writing a comment on Hacker News. =) It's not just about "living in the moment" — we're always living in the moment. The question is, do we notice that moment is even there? Are we able to slow/quiet down our inner cross-talk in order to perceive the world right in front of us?

Our powers of observation can be an incredible tool of rejuvenation and inspiration. We just need to focus on the right stuff. Needless to say, scrolling through social media is probably not the best destination for mindfulness. Informative, sometimes, entertaining, sometimes…but most certainly not where we should derive any real sense of meaning or purpose.

Anyway, apologies for the lengthy soapbox—this is just a topic I've thought long and hard about over many moons. Hope you are feeling better soon. :)

> All I want to do is look at my phone and consume more content

This will contribute to and/or perpetuate your burnout.

If you're overwhelmed and burned out, the last thing you need is to spend more time in front of screens and more time consuming endless streams of content. News content and outrage bait is especially bad at burning people out. It's easy to spend 30 minutes on Reddit or Twitter and feel like the world is collapsing around you.

Put down the phone. Do literally anything else. Meditate with your eyes closed in a quiet room, or go outside and go for a walk. The more often you do this, the better you'll feel.

And to answer your question: No, we're not all burned out. I have noticed that burnout-prone people tend to cluster together in bubbles where everyone amplifies each others' cynicism and pessimism. The rest of us prefer to build some distance between the chronically cynical people so we don't get brought down, too. Make a point to break out of your bubble and find people who are more like how you want to be.

> All I want to do is look at my phone and consume more content.

I found myself in a slump recently. One day I noticed I'd spent a few hours just gawping at Stories, Shorts, Reels, etc. And I'd done it for days in a row, staying up later and later as my mood disintegrated.

As I got more tired, I noticed my interactions with people suffered. I consider myself an introvert, but actual hermitage eats at your soul. It's much easier to feel happiness with someone.

I have willpower issues, and I have the same problems as everyone else, but I think bottomless pits of meaningless "content" are an absolute negative in my life. They seem omnipresent now but I try to avoid them.

Yes, there's plenty of burnout & low-grade depression/ennui, and yes, it's especially overrepresented in a place like HN that offers an endless variety of bite-sized distractions.

But no, it's not everyone.

Get outside. Exercise. Do activities that require focus for tens-of-minutes or hours, rather than batches-of-seconds or minutes.

Look away from things you have no direct control over, no matter how much (synthetic) social-proof that some manipulative media presents suggesting "everyone" or "most people" or "good people" or "with-it people" obsess over such events.

The person who is most sullen over "the world" is not at all the most virtuous, even though large assemblages of depressive people tend to unconsciously advance that idea, and wind up in a destructive competition over who is most (fake-)caring.

Having kids during COVID has been super rough. All the talk about putting down your phone, looking away from the news, etc. doesn’t feel like a sufficient solution to me since, as a parent, my life went by in 5 to 10 minute snippets as I dealt with random issues from work, life, kids, and various crises that popped up inevitably. Taking what time I could get either laying down, or reading something on the Internet was pretty much all I got for a while.

I don’t know about you, but for me it is very slowly starting to lift. My kids are at school (sometimes), and I’m able to focus on things a little bit longer than I used to be able to. Maybe it’s just returning back to a non-chaotic rhythm that will get us out of this burnout.

You’ve taken on the world’s problems by mistake.

- Covid has a nearly 100% survival rate. Have you or someone close to you been mortally affected? Most people I know have not been affected at all.

- The war in Ukraine is happening in Ukraine. Are you near Ukraine?

- Employment rates are very high and the job market is still hot. Are you actually affected by the macroeconomic factors?

Focus on your kid. Focus on yourself. Don’t worry about the world.

Therapy is a good exercise no matter what situation. It's a low risk/low cost way to get signal on how to adapt and maybe even improve your thinking/behavior.

lack of decent and affordable housing is the greatest source of stress in my life, so i wonder what the housing situation is for those in this thread saying everything is fine. i too make a “good” tech salary of ~$200k/yr, but still can’t afford a house in the modest neighborhood in southern california where i grew up, let alone any safe neighborhood within commuting distance of my employer in the bay area. i suspect those saying everything is fine and ignore the news are just being boiled slowly with the rest of us and/or enjoy affordable housing.

also, lack of community is perhaps equally important to housing. seems like meaningful social relationships are much harder to cultivate than a decade ago. but if i ever happen to be fortunate enough to live in a space that can accommodate, you all are welcome to come over and kick it.

Back in the 80's we had the Cold War, high inflation and an energy crunch. It ended with the 1987 stock market crash, which was the largest crash up to that time. Then we had to endure the Great Recession that came along with Bush's administration. The 90's were better, but the party ended September 11, 2001. I was a consultant at the time and I along with hundreds of thousands of others were soon to be unemployed. That was stressful because my wife was pregnant at the time.

We muddled through all that and got to the financial crash of 2008. Again many people lost their jobs, lost their homes and pretty much lost hope. Then things went well for quite a while and now here we are again.

Notice a pattern? You can bank on things going tits up every 10-15 years or so. The maddening thing is people overall seem content with this situation.

Do you need therapy? It never hurts. Really. Even if you're A-OK it never hurts to have some therapy. Think of your therapist as being your wingman to help you deal with the shit of modern life. Group therapy is even better because you get to hear other people struggling with the same things you are. I know they say misery loves company but it's really more than that - it's the realization you're not alone and you're not the only one feeling like this and struggling with these issues. It's actually very uplifting.

Good luck!

Not saying that there aren't real issues, but remember, news makes money off of getting you to constantly engage, so they are financially motivated to sensationalize.

Consuming more content isn't going to have an impact on layoffs, Ukraine, recession, etc.

What it will have an impact on is your mental health, as you are experiencing now.

Things that have worked for me:

- Get out into nature as often as possible. Trees and streams have been shown to reduce stress.

- Meditate

- Do physical activities, like lifting weights, yoga, and hiking.

- Pick up a hobby.

- Have dedicated blocks of times to not checking work messages, news, etc.

No, I don’t want to sound cold but I’m sorry to say… this is called “life.”

Our parents had tough times, and their parents had tough times, and so on throughout history.

People have dealt with famines, wars, oppression, economic struggles, disease and death for thousands of years.

I’m not suggesting the feelings of burnout aren’t real. I’m just saying that every generation experiences some level of hardship and it’s OK.

That’s not burnout. It’s just life.

I have a theory that the present seems worse than the past because of anxiety - the fear of what might happen in the future. In most cases, what we fear does not happen and so when we look back, the past almost always seems happier than the present. We don't feel anxiety about the past.

I think about this regularly to remind myself that at the current moment, life is pretty good.

You don't. A succinct lyric that helped me eliminate the stigma in my mind around not "being into it" all the time:

> It's oh so sad to be happy all the time.

> Autolux - Selectallcopy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vth-n34LK8E)

Society, in general, is a mirage. Most people are insane and insanity is contagious. After 2.5 years of non-stop insanity and some variant of psychological abuse, it's not only okay to feel how you do, but should be expected.

A short read that helped me to realize and accept this is Awareness by Anthony DeMello [1]

FWIW: Don't let the world get you down. Look at your desire to consume content as a phase that needs to pass like a thunderstorm and enjoy the rain.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Awareness-Opportunities-Reality-Antho...

Similar feeling here, minus the kid(s). Thing is I’m actually spending more time in front of my computer compared to pre-covid, but it feels like I’m doing 10 times fewer things. Walking my dog helps with “less time in front of the computer”, not so much with “doing things” stuff.

I’ve been doing renovation projects and building things around the house nearly nonstop. I am having a hard time focusing on my actual work though. I am greatly concerned about the prospect of nuclear war.

Get off your phone. Get off the news. They're doing nothing for you. Jump in some cold water. Feel reality for what it is. Don't use any products that simulate dopamine (phone, tv, video games, junk food), they're killing you from the inside.

The two best things I did for my mental health was leave Facebook (years ago) and stop watching the news. Hacker News is my news source (along with Ars Technica), I don't look at anything more political or world-eventy than these two sources, and I am selective about links even here. I can't even stomach NPR anymore.

More recently on the mental health front, I've been drawing more. I'm not great at it, but it is relaxing and distracting.

Also ambient or jazz--opinion-free, story-free music.

So I am still feeling burnt out, but it is a slower burn.

For me, my mental state feels less like burnout, and more like recovering from a traumatic physiological event, like a major surgery. My ability to be creative was suddenly cut off by the social effects of the response to the pandemic. I limped through the interceding years, but when I review work from just before the pandemic, I find that it is more nuanced, better developed, and more meaningful than the work I do at present. My creative powers were weakened, and I have to take a long view on recuperation.

“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”- Viktor Frankl

Find someone or some cause/purpose and fully surrender to this person and/or cause. Then you won't think about burnout and you will experience happiness as a side-effect of your surrender.

I think we can all slow down a bit more. I have seen more companies move from an “innovation” stance to one of “perseverance”. Who knows when we will hit bottom.

I wrote a book about this feeling of ennui. I thought it was linked with technology addiction given my consumption habits. I think we’re desperately looking for community but the facade of always being connected plays these tricks on us. I think talking about these things openly will do just as much as therapy will.

I definitely feel burned out. It's not just recession, war, etc., it's also the depressing state of the software industry, particularly the niche I work in. It's the feeling that there is a better job out there but it's somehow out of reach. Also, inflation makes my way above average salary actually mediocre when it comes to buying things. I hate saving massive amounts of cash to buy some small property.

Well, I'm feeling the same, but I have an excuse. My father died, and I am his executor, and I got slammed with months of extra work, which I'm trying to do while still doing my regular job 40 hours a week. It's burning me out.

But about having a kid: Yes, it's a ton of work. Yes, it's mentally draining. Yes, it cuts into your "me" time. (My estimate was that it cut four times as hard as being married did.)

But you didn't just lose. You also won. One of my biggest failures (and regrets) was looking too much at what I was losing and not noticing what I was gaining. It was unpleasant for me, and not fair to my kids and my wife.

One thing that helped me was, on my way home from work, to just stop for maybe 5 minutes as I came into my suburb, to just stop for a moment. (And pray, because that's how I roll.)

Your kid needs you to not disappear into your phone. Put it down, and take the kid for a walk. There's a real world out there that's pretty nice sometimes. As a side bonus (presuming that you're married or live with your partner) you'll be a hero to your SO, who is probably desperate for a break from the kid.

I got my Twitter account permanently banned by talking about “Russians who send their kids to die in Ukraine.” (They refused my appeal and moderation at scale is hard). I’ve never been happier in years.

I find so much more time in the day for activities and I have to witness ridiculous American politics, Elon, Zuckerberg, and world events far less.

I just, gasp read the CBC and NPR once a day like I’m my dad or something.

I really fell this right now. I'm totally burnt out. I accepted a fully remote role a year and some ago and I realize that it was a mistake. I really need the time with people face to face, not for my work efficiency, but for my happiness.

I'm looking for a new opportunity that has a hybrid or in-person aspect and I'm hoping the change would start to spin that positive fly-wheel.

Sounds like you need to lay off the phone bro. Your phone is the source of a bunch of negative, ill stuff.

That's not to say there's not a war nor layoffs coming. But your phone just fills you with bad vibes 24/7. You need to lay off it to re-energize.

You don't need a therapist to charge you hundreds of $$$ to tell you that.

But yeah, some therapy couldn't hurt.

Life is not a pony farm. Get used to it. As long kids and you are healthy and there is some food on your table it’s alright. Turn off your damn phone. It’s draining your mental health. Leave all your social networks. Leave all your friends and coworkers. There is no reason to be burned out. Find some positive people. A bit is sadness is far from burn out. Recessions come and go. At some age you will attend funeral of friends or family members every year. That’s natural cycle. I started with some shitty job in 2011 because nobody was hiring. Now I have huge mortgage and big corp might close our lame division. Take a walk, take vacation, go to gym and start lifting weights. Spend more time with family. Don’t panic about future, it will come anyway. War will be over and West will continue loosing significance in the world. There are too many things in life one can’t change.

The feeling of collective hopelessness we all to some extent feel are no doubt backed by reality of stagnating wages, tougher economic future, questions about homeownership, retirement worries, our kids growing in a hyper-woke world, climate change, wars...

While we're all prone to "rosy retrospection" as indicated by one of the comments, I feel that we indeed live in tougher world than our parents (maybe others don't share this feeling).

One thing that has helped me is to take up sports. Specifically I play a racquet sport at a club. After doing my daily work, chores and Dad duties, I drive the club around 8:30 PM and play until 10:30. For those two hours, my mind is fixed on the ball. I don't check my phone or kids, regret the past or worry about the future. I look forward to these two hours.

If you play a sport, or want to take something up, it might help you get over the burnout.

It is important to remember that we have a bias towards painting the past with "rosy retrospection". Life can just be hard and we tend to forget that about past events. It's quite possible you were just as worried about other stuff then.

That being said, yes, there certainly are some particularly hard things going on right now. However, I wouldn't use external factors as an excuse to not address the legitimate feeling of burnout that you are experiencing. [I think it is a dangerous trap people fall in to say "I feel bad because of X external factor" rather than taking control of what they can control to make themselves feel better].

Personally, I think arming yourself with tools to better cope with that life stuff in general is useful no matter what. CBT therapy, in particular, I find can be helpful.

You are addicted to content like a coke bitch is to her dealer. Also you are not burnt out, you are living the lack of meaning consequential to the lack of direction you ever gave to your existence after followiing the comfortable path. Solve both.

We’re all sort of complicit in building a network of networks that only really “succeeds”(driving clicks, generating ad revenue) by getting as much attention from you as possible. The best way to do that is to scare you and make you as worried as possible.

Putting our lives on the internet will either bring some crazy socio-economic change that makes everything better or it will go down in history as one of the dumbest things we’ve ever done.

Do your best to take back the short time you have on this planet away from this weird worry network we have all built and spend time with people, do things that make you happy and healthy, ignore the ad revenue machine and it can’t fuck with you.

There are inputs and outputs to life. Many, many, many things try to consume our ability to consume inputs. By consuming these inputs there is less time to create an output. These outputs are super important and can be anything: sports, 3d printing, art, woodworking, musical instrument, gardening, other hobbies or projects, etc.

The phone is an easy input to pickup. Make it easy to pickup something else to occupy that time to create something tangible (an output). Other comments mention "real world" and it is so true. Do something that rewards yourself in the real world. It'll be great for your kid too.

I read this article the other day https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/mille...

I found it to be pretty relatable, no answers though

Im taking time off work, just doing what i want to for the most part and attempting to recover from work and life burn out

I see a lot of suggestions about therapy, in theory it sounds nice. in practice im skeptical. to hard to find a good one ime

Maybe it's time to take a new approach. Have you given building in the public domain a try?

We're just getting started. Shoot me an email anytime you want to chat -> breck7@gmail.com. Also I can send you a promo code for a free #BuildPublicDomain t-shirt from Cotton Bureau(actually really comfortable) - https://cottonbureau.com/p/DH38R3.

The key mistake many people make in trying to handle the depression/burn out thing is the attitude.

They go about it just like about another purchase to make — just give me a solution, be it a pill, therapist, magic technique, enlightened guru or teaching to follow...

And it doesn't work this way in the realm of one's deepest mind and soul mechanisms.

I noticed one thing — people with genuine faith tend to overcome such major global downtimes much better.

It seems like it sometimes. Therapy is good. If you can't make it or want to try something self-paced -- I like "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life" by Steven Hayes. The one with the workbook. It's ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). CBT is good as well.

If you have a mountain or hill nearby, go bike, walk, hike, run, climb up it. Just you (or and some friends), some good feeling pain, and nature.

You are definitely not alone, but it is also dangerous to think of it as an "everyone" problem and not get help for yourself. I can't remember any time in history when there weren't wars, recessions, layoffs or other global or local problems. It helps to not worry too much about things outside of your control and focus on your own life, family, health and happiness.

I was very unhappy until the day I dedicated my life to helping others.

Now I am the founder of a non-profit and despite taking a much lower salary, working many more hours and feeling much more stress, I have become a very happy and fulfilled person.

Once the center of your life revolves around helping others, rather than yourself, it becomes a lot easier to endure all the crap life throws at you.

>>All I want to do is look at my phone and consume more content.

I think I see the problem here ....

(and I am not being flippant - I gave up 99% of social media almost a year ago: no twitter, no facebook, no instagram, no tiktok etc - and I hardly read the news at all except for stories of local importance - my life is better for it, give it a try - you don't have anything to lose.

Nah. I’m good. Life is good. Work is good. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But if you need therapy, get it. No problem there, everyone could probably stand a tune up.

Yes. For me it's not so much distractions as how everything has become difficult. In the old days I had a PC and a Compiler. I would use an editor to write programs and compile them with the compiler. We shared source code and binaries via floppy disks. Then we got a LAN and we started using PVCS (an ancient version control system I can't really recommend) and life got slightly more complicated, but the benefits were well worth the increase in complexity. Fast forward to the 90s where we had better compilers, better version control and distributed software mostly over the intarwebs. We ran our software in our own data centers. There was a lot more complexity, but it was manageable. Everyone used programming languages that maintained reverse compatibility and operating systems whose interface between the kernel and the app code didn't change very often. Then we got Python. Programs I wrote in 2005 wouldn't run in 2007. So I had to update the code. Then in 2009 it stopped working again. And then in 2013 it stopped working again. Totally fine, management just added a couple weeks per year for language maintenance. Then we moved everything to AWS. It's fine, it wasn't too hard to figure it out. But then people started complaining about CloudFormation. Half our teams started using TerraForm. Then we made TerraForm our corporate standard, which meant corporate wouldn't pay for the CloudFormation training class. But only half of our projects had migrated to TerraForm, so every team had to teach incoming engineers "just enough" CloudFormation to get them moving forward. And then we decided JIRA was a useful tool. And then we decided Confluence was a useful tool. (The problem with Wikis isn't that it's hard to find information, it's that there's no way to figure out if the information you're looking at is current.) And then half of our projects started using Pulumi. Totally fine, but to understand my app stack, I now have to grok CF, TF & Pulumi. And it still doesn't do what we need it to do, so we wrote some scripts that call into the Cloud Development Kit. And then someone decided we should have a central DevOps group deploy new code, but the pipeline from release candidate in QA to production release takes 3 months. That's fine, I'll use that 3 months to rewrite / test third party packages that were EoL'd with their Python 3.6 release. And of course they don't run under 3.8 because it's Python. And my boss wants me to make accurate estimates for how long things will take.

I am of the opinion that if all techies just learned ansible and used postgres, we could take more time off and chill a bit.

Quit drinking, lift weights, do some cardio even just zone 2, get proper sleep, and above all stop looking at your phone and play with your kid!

When I'm feeling stuck with tech work, I go take a moderately brisk walk for 30-60 minutes while I think about the problem, sometimes with a buddy. It works very well for getting me unstuck.

Most of what you mentioned either doesn't apply to you or only ever applies to you relatively briefly. The answer there is to ignore those things. I would hope children aren't uniformly depressing, but if you feel they are you should probably get therapy - for their sake.

If you think you need therapy then get a therapist.

You might enjoy the book Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.

Accidentally I wrote this on taking breaks - https://lazydevstories.com/post/break/

I would say we all would burn out constantly and taking breaks is only way out

Same mate! I cope with legal herbel essences and the gym. Ironically both do a great job of keeping me sane. I tried not smoking herb and working out but that just brought out my perfectionist tendencies. Smoking before bed helps me roll with the punches .

Was burned out from working too many hours. Took a job with better WLB and doing better now.

I absolutely agree with you. it's hard to deal with bad thoughts now days.

every time I find myself in such a situation, I find the best way out in training and sports. physical activity best heals the mind. running, push-ups, swimming

https://hubermanlab.com/controlling-your-dopamine-for-motiva...

Therapy can absolutely help. Therapy won't magically make you not burned out, but it will help give you coping strategies and help you identify the warning signs in the future.

Delete the apps you keep looking at. Turn off notifications. Pick up ceramics. Read good books. And yes, therapy is such an easy and kind of fun solution. Try it for a while.

No more than the usual half a week at a time every now and again.

It probably helps that I got fed up with the low SNR on my Twitter and Facebook ages ago and stopped bothering to check them.

In this thread, everything except the actual cause of the burnout. I'm feeling great, btw. I'd tell you my secret, but I'd get flagged.

I’m surprised at the amount of dismissive comments. Would we say the same things to someone depressed - ah that’s just life, have you tried running a marathon?

I don’t feel the same way. Sure, there’s a lot of shit going on, but my personal life is going pretty great.

Crazy story maybe, but I had a dream where someone close to me died. After that day, I decided to focus on enjoying life more.

I started to think about what I would want to do when I only had a few months left, and just started doing these.

I also started focusing more on personal care and health, dieting, eating better, and doing a little bit of exercise.

Both changes, although minor in practice, had enormous effect on my mood in a positive way.

Of course me and the person close to me are perfectly healthy.

Most likely no, you don't need therapy. Not every problem requires therapieee...

Cut the news completely, avoiding social media is not a bad idea either.

Stay off the orange site.

Walk out side smell the fresh air.

Say hello to a stranger walking on the street.

Ask your elderly neighbors if they need help with groceries or an errand.

> Do I need therapy or is everyone feeling the same ?

Definitely not. Get off social/news sites for a bit.

Replace

> All I want to do is look at my phone and consume more content.

with

- Lift weights

- Run a marathon

- Bike a century

- Write a story

- Paint a picture

Change your relationship with the things you cannot control.

Hey there fellow human.

Here's my little bit of help I can offer. I haven't had a kid, yet, but I know what you are going through. I've been lucky enough to have been able to fall back on things like employment insurance here in Canada to be able to take some time to myself to let my inner angst out and deal with it constructively. You probably don't have that available, so here's my advice for in the meantime.

1. Find at least 3 hours in a day that you can dedicate to yourself, nothing else. This will not be easy since you have a kid now, but I believe everyone needs to have at least 10% of the day dedicated to themselves, otherwise burn out is very possible for anyone.

2. Ignore people saying this is 'just how life is'. It's not. There are plenty of people out there living perfectly content lives still having to deal with all the same things you are, and possibly more. My parents had to drop everything and move us kids (4 of us til 5th was born) out to the bush just to make ends meet once upon a time ago. There were hard days, and plenty of tough times, but I never heard my mother or father complain about burn out or anything like that. Not because they were tough as nails or anything like that, but because they were able to do what they needed to without interference from every joe dick jane and jerry. So my advice here is to just do what YOU think you need to do, provided its not going to harm anyone else or yourself. That's liberty. That's freedom. You're burning out because you are lacking these things (IMHO).

3. Find something you truly enjoy doing that isn't just consuming more content. The internet can sometimes lead to worse burn out for some, due to the nature of how we use it. If you must be on the internet for whatever it is you enjoy doing, just at least avoid social media. That will drain a person faster than a lot of anything else. (Again IMHO)

4. You don't need therapy via some specialist. You just need someone who will listen when you need to vent. Just remember to be there for that person too when its their turn to unleash their troubles. That's what we're here for, for each other.

5. In regards to learning something new. In the words of Shia Labeouf "Just Do IT". I know its hard, I struggle with it too. I have 3 books on different aspects of computer sciences just waiting to be used. Haven't touched them. Can't be damned to. Not because of burn out, but because there is always something else that I want to do instead. So I really should take my own advice here.

6. In tandem with avoiding social media... do the same with the news. We need to stay informed, but the informers aren't always really doing what they do to inform us, but to keep us scared of what we can do nothing about except worry.

So just do whatever it is you want/need to do instead of wasting time trying to stay informed. A large degree of it is pure unadulterated bullshit anyways.

7. Listen to Donkey Kong Music. Or whatever music you find enjoyable and relaxing. I find Donkey Kong tunes to be very much this.

8. Again, ignore the people who say "this is just how life is". It's not. It's just how life is right now because people have consigned themselves to it. Yes, there are plenty of things that can make life terrible, but that doesn't mean we need to dwell on them, or even accept them. Our greatest achievement as a species on this planet has been our ability to transcend these issues; or at the very least withstand them until we can transcend them.

9. I leave this here for future edits if I decide to add more.

Yeah, you need therapy. And yes, we all feel the same.

Go lift some weights

Am I? No.

I suggest going out for a hike or a run.

In all seriousness, you need to put a block on national and international news. Cut it out 100% for at least a month. You are consuming poison and it is killing your mental health. Just stop. You can’t affect it and your attention does nothing positive.

These news companies have gone into overdrive over the past few years and their business models have mutated around the user engagement they got from Trump and Covid. They must now keep that tempo or their ad revenue will crash. You do not need to participate in this dumpster fire.

After you have cut out the news, you’ll be in a much better position to evaluate your overall mental health and if you need to work on it further.

Burnout is not working towards your purpose.

I'm on burnout burnout.

shut your phone, shut your mouth, spend day in nature, be honorable.

If this guy is you:

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/386:_Duty_Calls

that can explain burnout, as the internet is an endless source of errors.

Yep

I think both are true. Therapy will help you get sorted out, you can go once or twice, there's no rule saying it has to be ongoing. Many many people feel the way you do. Covid pushed a lot of people into the darkest moments of their life.

There was a 1 month waitlist to see a new therapist and 2 month to see a psychiatrist. That's in a densely populated state like NJ, usa.

There are many more things today that are able to more easily exhaust your emotional battery. News has gone from click bait to concern baiting in order to keep your attention. Every other news story is "breaking news". It's not.

I have been feeling burned out too and it's more severe than I have felt it in the past. I can't speak about pre 2010, I was too young. But in 2010s it was so much easier to figure out what needed my attention and what didn't.

There have been, what feels like, back to back world changing events. The reality is there always were. Covid is the first one that managed to touch every single person in the world's life. There's state and country level events like the war. The impact of those events spread it out to continents.

But in my lifetime and maybe most people's, there hasn't been a world effecting event like covid since, maybe WWII. Age is a factor for the previous one I think of, it's not the same for everyone.

Phone and content consumption are things that help me make it through the day. Tiktok is seen as "bad" but to me it's nice to spend a half hour watching random people do funny things. My timeline is tuned to show me cute animals and funny videos. No drama, no news, no stress.

My advice to you is find a hobby with a small local community. If you can't, find somewhere to volunteer. For me, there's an archery shooting range that has Friday night shoots at indoor targets. I see people from different age brackets. I can invite a close friend or two to come and hang out and talk about nothing in particular.

Like this lady tried to argue that she had dibs on a specific box of fruit because her hand touched it first. I just gave it to her but it was funny in retrospect. There were 30 other boxes.

I don't care about getting good enough at archery to make be competitive or go hunting. I feel happy about getting 9s and 10s. I don't feel bad about myself if I don't.

I would say go back to some root. Make a book club with your friends, or join the one at the local library. Volunteer at the local senior center or whenever. Get into 3d printing. Local open intramural sport. I know some of my friends do basketball game tournaments.

Do something you have done already so it's not new. Something you put down and forgot about or just didn't have time for.

Video games are decent, especially if you focus on single player games and not online multi-player.

I love my phone. I have friends I stay in touch with across time zones because of my phone. I am in many discords. There's never a moment in time where I can't pick up my phone, find people talking about a show I like or about some tech project I also like and just talk. They're strangers but we start with something in common. Specific communities talk about drama but I just go to a different discord channel.

Having a community you have a shared interest with gives you something to look forward to. I am in the stable diffusion community and it's pretty nice. Interesting projects and technical discussions.

Other people advising you to use your phone less don't understand the root of the issue. Whether or not you get therapy is up to you. Maybe a heart to heart with a friend you really really trust is enough.

No. Stop looking at your phone.

Yes.