How do you keep going without burning out?

I've quit my job from burnout multiple times and on the 3rd iteration, it's been even more difficult to get back to a non-burnout stage. So I would try to focus on a long term strategy as opposed to bursts of productivity.

I've had to slow down. This means reducing all the things that distract me. It means coming to grips with "missing out".

I've leaned into some life hacks like:

- Designating social media time to just after work but not after dinner (includes HN).

- Leaning into meditation. Not just 10min via an app but a walk to and back from my favorite cafe every morning without my phone or any headphones.

- Going to bed early and waking up early. The quietest, non-distracting moments are in the early morning.

- Using a pomodoro timer. For both work projects and personal projects.

- I try to spend some time focusing on activities that are intentionally slow like writing poetry and personal essays.

Not being flippant about it, but my current requirements to pay the mortgage and support my wife and kids tend to push any sense of burnout down the priority list. I simply decide to keep plugging away, because if I stop to "find myself" things can get bad for lots of other people quickly.

One word: Alignment.

It's a Buddhist concept that says that to achieve tranquility (end of suffering) you need to have what you value, what you think and what you are actually doing aligned and going in the same direction.

When you're feeling lost, ask yourself these 3 questions:

- What do you really want?

- What do you really value?

- What are you really doing with your life?

I've wrote a longer post that you can read here: https://kerkour.com/alignment

Hey, so I've got a few thoughts here that I'll word. I'm sure other people are going to say it better, but here we go:

* Remember that Social Media is the place that everyone shows 'their absolute best' - even a fake version of their best. It doesn't show their times of down, their stress, and so on.

* the social media that you're using may connect thousands or hundreds of thousands of people together. There's only 365 days a year, and even if each person only has one good day a year that they show off, 273 people (out of 100k) would share each individual day. It'd look like you're going slow.

* As other people have said, life is a marathon, not a sprint. You've got a whole lot of years left and you want to be able to function in them, too. Burnout can absolutely ruin developers, and has, many times in the past.

* As other people have said, "work to live", don't "live to work". Now, I get the feeling that this is your personal project or your business you're running at. That's awesome! You still need to give yourself space between a singular project so you can recuperate from it. How often do you look at code you wrote or things you worked on when you were at a fever pace and go "wow, what was I thinking?"; or, when you couldn't solve a problem for days, go to bed and then hey, the solution is right there! Give yourself the space so that those events can happen - and they happen because you're getting away from the work, you're getting rested, you're relaxing.

Your health, your life, the connections you make are of incredible value and as you get older, they get harder to train, recover, grow. Make sure you're tending to yourself like you should in ways that are completely disconnected from your work.

Make sure there's more to your life than only work. Work to live, don't live to work. I used to think this was bs, but, after scaling back on work hours and filling them up with time for my own hobbies and side projects all not work related, I think I'm even more productive at work than before

I did burn out. One day I decided I had enough, I lost my temper at the douchebag CTO, I had a “talk” with the CEO and laid myself off after. Spent six months unemployed, and I don’t give a shit. Honestly quitting was the best decision I ever made. Life is to precious to waste on idiots.

I constantly feel like nothing I do is ever going to work out. Even if I built something in the best way possible, the best that exists, it's not going to be enough to succeed. But even though I know 100% deep in my soul that everything I do is going to fail, I can't stop myself from trying. It does take a toll though. What helps me is to let off steam by complaining non-stop. I complain to my family members and strangers online. Unfortunately, my condition means that I can't see friends regularly because it's difficult for me to NOT complain for even 1 hour straight and most fellow westerners just can't handle that. Every deep conversation I have devolves into some horror story about the ills of society and how everything is rigged.

The metaphor I use to think about burnout is imagining your energy as a lithium ion battery. You can occasionally charge it to 100% and run it down to 0% without any real degradation, but if you start doing that every day it won't hold a useful charge after a while. Keep your charge between 20% and 80% if you can.

Also helps to maintain pretty firm limits on work time and not-work time, or even just having a small window of your waking day where you're on Do Not Disturb.

If possible, I would highly recommend going part-time. I wasn't close to burn-out, but my mental health and stress levels are much better since I made the switch. Worth it for that alone, even if it wasn't the best move for my career. In any case, I'd also recommend cutting down on unnecessary screentime and spending more time in real life - walking outside, talking to people, doing hobbies, and so on!

I don't have an answer for you, because I haven't found it myself.

I have been struggling with burnout for a while now, but I was unable to really put my finger on what was wrong. Maybe it was the job, maybe it was the management, the colleagues, maybe it was the lack of autonomy, maybe it was /me/, etc. I changed jobs a few times, tried my hand at another function in my line of business, became an independent contractor, etc.

Not any of it did anything to relieve the nagging feeling. The mortgage, the family, my progressing age had locked my mind in thinking that the only way out was incremental change, tweaking my career here and there.

But that line of thinking was perhaps too small, and I now believe that this business is just not for me. It has been quite cathartic to at least imagine myself going into another profession entirely, even though carrying out such a transition is anything but straightforward.

To me by far the best thing is to have an enduring, joyful, worthwhile, good purpose in life, that drives everything else (including maintaining one's health, proper balance etc), about which I have written a lot at my simple site (no JS etc; in profile; for example one can click on "Things I want to say", then "Life Lessons", then "Everyone needs a direction in life. Centering on pleasure, possessions, power, or attention, harms us, others & the earth, & cannot bring lasting happiness."

Also, some related prior discussions. Note that this is an attempt at collecting useful comments that could relate, NOT at an insinuation that the OP is lazy, a procrastinator, or other. But some comments were good, like finding balance, direction, etc.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23550758 ("How do you develop internal motivation")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23072333 ("Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help (gist.github.com)")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22919697 ("ask hn: how do i overcome mental laziness?")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22124489 ("Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time (bbc.com")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22096571 ("Ask HN: I don't want to be a worker any more I want to be a professional")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20930439 ("how do you keep your programming motivation up?")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18903886 "Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to keep working on a project? "

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19777976 "ask hn: how do you stay disciplined in the long run?"

For what it may be worth.

Don’t tie your success to social media, SEO etc is another avenue

I only work on my side project on rainy days, never when the suns out

Are you actually money driven? I’m not, I’m passion driven, so I work on passion projects. Money is just a part of the picture, it’s not the main driver.

Work less hours if you can too, if your finances allow it

Yes. I know. This is controversial for a lot of people, but I know it is true for me: working 40h on a computer with mentally-draining tasks is not, and never will be, sustainable.

I worked very hard on many jobs, I always get praise, until I get tired and suddenly it doesn't matter how good I did in the past: I am shown the door or get mistreated so bad that I find the door myself.

So my best solution so far has been to move into freelance/part-time. It is a different world, with different challenges, but nothing beats being able to keep a sane mind.

This might be a hard pill to swallow, but no amount of “life hacks” will fix an issue with the ownership of your time.

If you're doing that for marketing purposes, try automating it or hiring someone. If you're doing that because that's the content you keep consuming, you're addicted to productivity porn and need to revisit how you think about that kind of content: https://calebschoepp.com/blog/2022/productivity-porn/

There's ways to manage it in the short run (increasing caffeine intake for me) but it's not a good idea to ignore the signs too often. If you need to take a rest, take it. No matter what others say, you know your mind/body best. You'll be surprised how little people around you care that you're not releasing features as fast.

For me, social media platforms are on a scale that goes from negative to positive values. The negative side is energy-burning, the positive is energy-adding. One side inspires me. The other makes me feel drained.

I have to keep on the positive side of the scale - Hacker News, some great YouTube channels about things that really interest me. Sometimes, I can venture to the slightly negative side, like "funny" videos about people farting in public and cute dogs... but this is like diving - it is fun for a short while, but if you stay too long, you run out of air and die. And I know from experience there are depths of the negative side where I cannot go - TikTok, Twitter, those crush my soul (subjective thing, I'm sure some find those inspiring).

Also, like with everything else, moderation is key. Even with things on the positive side.

I do my best to avoid going into something too much.

The main things I've found that burn me out is boring work, working too long and no end to the work. Usually it's enough to just leave or stop after my normal hours and do something else.

Being able to choose to do other things (even if it's stare at a wall) helped me a lot

A lot of great suggestions on this thread.

Sometimes you can go a long way by addressing external factors like matching control over outcomes with responsibility (high responsibility paired with low control is bad).

But, my two cents is look at cognitive behavior therapy with a specialist. Especially, if you've been experiencing some degree of burnout for years.

How it might go: you learn to observe your thoughts when you're in burnout; you notice that they're unhealthy; you learn to notice them earlier and earlier; you start to detect increasingly more fundamental behaviors and thoughts that lead to burnout; then you start implementing various strategies to change those behaviors/thoughts/habits.

That said, I still struggle with burnout, so do weigh what I say accordingly.

Life is a marathon, not a sprint. If you're regularly burning out, slow the fuck down!

I have many other interests/hobbies that are unrelated to work. I do my 8 to 5 and almost never think about work outside of it. Having a healthy workplace that encourages this helps a lot, I realize it might not be possible for everyone.

Every individual is different. I recently learned about the DISC personality model. It basically says that there are four basic personality traits. Your personality is dominated by one of the four types or a mixture of them. Each personality type thrives with different working styles and working conditions.

It helped me a lot to know what type I am. Now I know what my strength and weaknesses are. It's surprising how accurate this simple theory seems to be in my case.

Apart from that

- I have clear priorities (family first, health second, work third)

- I always have something that I look forward to. If nothing is on my schedule, I schedule an activity that I can look forward to.

I was in the Army for a few years. Back in those days, they trained us not to quit.

I also struggle with this. Not social media, per se, but overstimulation which leaved me unable to unwind and prevents me from sleeping well.

This is probably one of those things like weight loss where you know the "simple" answer (burn more calories than you eat, reduce stimulation and practice good sleep hygiene) but the actual problem is lack of will to do these things, which can be reinforced by the apparent problem itself, leading to a spiral.

The trick, I assume, is to put what energy you have into setting up structures (ideally involving other people) that make it easier to do the things you know you need to do.

For me, 3x 20 minutes meditation helps a lot. In the morning, around mid day, and in the evening. Why? It gives me the chance to go from active thinking mode, to passive “observer” mode - and only in that state, I can process all the emotions and stress that pile up during the day.

Then there are much bigger benefits of meditation (depending on which type one practices). But the stress processing benefit alone is already fantastic.

The times I’ve burned myself out, it usually happened after I started to compromise on my daily meditation minutes.

Just listen to the voice in your head that you’ve been ignoring. You already have an intuition about your limits, but you probably dismiss it because that doesn’t fit the outcome you want.

I don't keep going. I stop. Recovering from burnout is riskier and a lot more expensive than enforcing a reasonable work schedule.

If social media is pressuring you, unfollow people or quit it altogether. You don't need that in your life. You just need to keep your job and cover your bills. Everything else is extra.

Pay attention to the work culture around you. Heroics are not rewarded where I live, and neither is being married to your job. There's a lot less pressure to reach burnout conditions. That's how it ought to be.

In my experience, it's best to accept these things come in waves.

For most of us, it's not realistic to maintain maximum creative energy for an extended period of time, just as it's not realistic to maintain maximum happiness for an extended period of time. Sometimes you'll feel sad, sometimes you'll feel tired, and, every now and then, you'll feel like you can take on the world.

For now, embrace the pain, let it wash over you, and trust that your energy will return again one day soon.

Support from others.

It isn't the difficulties of the task, the working time of the task, or the working pressure of the task.

It is the complete lack of support from Senior Management, Direct Management or colleagues

People quit or burn out not because of they dont like the job, it is either because of pay or management. And in many cases both.

And from my long years of working life, 99% of manager dont have a clue how to manage. Most are only good at delivering ( at the expenses of others ).

keep a balanced life - family, exercise, study and work. You are not your job; but you are to a large extent, your career. There is a difference.

I'm personally driven by a deep understanding of the meaning of life.

Strongly recommend everyone organize themselves around some community of faith.

I solve exponentially harder problems.

When I’m im at the peak, I will start pursuing another field that is foreign to me and, again, grind to the top.

A cycle like this takes me about two years depending on the sub topic.

I have no interest in being the top 100 protein language model scientist in the world and stay there forever. I want to be a polymath.

Your time is finite on Earth so you need to make decisions about how you allocate that time. As you get older you'll probably live to regret decisions made on things like social media. It is a time suck that doesn't provide happy outcome for most. Also, don't work more than 40 hours a week.

At the moment I'm trying to remove any source of "artifical" dopamine: no tv, no youtube, no music, no news, no podcasts, no reddit, no social media during the week and minimal over the weekend. I've just started a week ago and it works pretty well, my mind is a lot calmer. Silence is gold.

Family. Video games. Touching grass. Running. Accepting that I only have 4-6 hours of good programming in me a day.

Do you have an outlet for your expectations? Is that outlet also the people who are adjacent to your burnout? Are you sure your model of what is asked of you is not excessive compared to what they were asking? Is there a way you can negotiate a better prioritization of efforts?

Time management - I allocate some time to work, some time to research, and the remainder to my hobbies and pleasures i.e working on my Rust side project or going out for biking. You need "fun times" to recharge from the "boring" times.

Cannabis mostly.

What does “burn out” mean to you? Everybody has their own made up definition for this and for some people it means, “tired this week” and for some it’s “couldn’t work for 2 years.”

What is your red flag(s) for entering overdrive?

Could you notice it/them and stop yourself?

Would that solve the issue?