Comment by biasforaction | Hacker News Reader

Comment by biasforaction | Hacker News Reader

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I burned myself out building and launching a cloud service last year. After that service launched publicly, I quickly took three weeks off. The first week I felt depressed and was barely able to get up in the morning. The second week I started to feel better and was able to achieve daily goals. The third week I started to feel like my normal self but was nowhere close to being ready to go back to work.

Currently, I'm still struggling to have my normal drive during the 9-5. My short-term memory is not at its best. I'm averaging only a couple hours of coding a day but I'm also a lead on my team, so I have a lot of interruptions throughout the day. I feel energized on Monday, but by Friday I feel like a failure (like right now). I feel stuck.

After work I invest my time into improving skill-sets, knowledge, and other projects until 10 or 11 pm. My goal is to have an exit strategy in place by the end of this year.

I know I'm still recovering from the burnout and it seems like it's going to take another year to recover fully. Every week I want to break down, cry, and leave but I'm afraid to jeopardize everything that I've worked hard to achieve.

I would like to share more about my story and background, but I'm afraid to share too many personal details that will identify myself.

"Help Me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're My Only Hope"

It sounds like you really gave your all to your employer, and it left you feeling demoralized and depressed. It also sounds like you feel stuck. Stuck in the situation, stuck in the bad feelings. My heart goes out to you.

At times, I’ve put an unhealthy focus on work, and it’s left me feeling drained of life. Probably a similar feeling to yours.

It sounds like your schedule isn’t allowing for much human-to-human connection. (Away from computers!) I don’t know about you, but that’s probably the main human need I have when I overwork! I’d suggest limiting the evening learning sessions and try to invest in some friendships! Try to brighten up someone’s day!

Ha, interesting. Every time I'm severely burnt out, it has to do with humans, not computers.

Computers do work as you tell them to. Humans will make life difficult for you just to make it easy for themselves.

Man, I feel close to what you feel. By the end of the week I'm so burned out.

I have 2 (at least) voices competing. One wants to experience life fully, and one that is eager to achieve results and wants to be "someone" and get somewhere. It can be a real struggle.

I feel like finding a way to let go of being "the best" (I also tend to study in the evenings), just being average me, is what can bring about real change, but it will take a lot of effort since it is deeply rooted in me.

You can study on the job. It's, in fact, the best way to study. Even if you're using technologies you already know, there's almost always something you can learn on the job. If not, switch to a job where you're not learning.

Also, achieving results is not done by working long hours. It's done by avoiding unnecessary work, by prioritizing. My experience, and that of others who work less than 40 hours a week, is that we become far more productive as we developed the relevant skills. E.g. https://lobste.rs/s/hvjwd6/how_become_part_time_programmer#c... talks about it.

I would suggest not working in the evenings for a while. You'll do much better if you take a break and go do something completely different.

When I didn't have a kid I took liberal arts classes at Harvard's adult education school in the evenings. Very different kind of intellectual challenge, and lots of fun. Turned out to be useful for programming too, but that wasn't the goal.

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