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Comment by skizm | Hacker News Reader

I’m burnt out, not from stress, but from being “forced” to do a bunch of stuff that I don’t care about with a bunch of other people I don’t really care about for a company I don’t care about, but if I stop at any time the money stops coming into my bank account so I just have to keep pretending I care for years just to keep the game going. The actual work itself varies from stupid easy to relatively challenging, but again, I just can’t bring myself to care beyond ensuring my team doesn’t think I suck at my job so I can keep collecting my paycheck. All I’m doing is running out the clock every single day.

That’s why I’m burnt out.

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I have a similar feeling, sometimes. It crops up whenever I stop coding on the side, for fun, for more than a month. The playfulness just gets lost over time.

Last week my motivation went to almost 0, and it took me a while until I discovered the why: I had been stunned by the SwiftUI demos, and wanted to get my hands dirty. But I hadn't had ANY time to dabble around because I had overburdened myself with promises to various customers. What I did felt very far away from what I actually wanted to do, and it got worse every day.

When I finally understood what the problem was, motivation started to come back. I played around with SwiftUI for only 5 minutes yesterday, and feel so much better already.

Do you have a side project that you would love to spend all your time on? (doesn't have to be coding)

This kind of stuff just makes me feel worse in the end. I try out all this cool stuff in my free time then I'm stuck doing monotonous work with same tools at work. Or I learn something cool and just never get a chance to apply it. I feel like what's the point beyond satisfying some curiosity.

I think the key is to learn or create something far removed from what you work with every day. If you try to learn something you can apply to work, you associate learning this new tool with how you can apply it to work and it drains it of the fun and novelty it's supposed to provide.

> I feel like what's the point beyond satisfying some curiosity.

That can be enough. What's the point of reading an informative book beyond satisfying your curiosity?

You just put in to words what I've been feeling for the last 3 years that I have spent hours of therapy trying to find a way to verbalize for myself.

The only phrase I had that came close was referring to my current situation as wearing golden hand-cuffs. I feel constrained and unhappy a lot of the times, but boy are those hand-cuffs pretty to look at.

This is Marx's theory of alienation. Textbook example.

For me, when I realise this I quit and move on until the cycle repeats itself. I'm currently working for myself though so it's a bit different!

I think all the cool libraries that occur are a form of release valve for alienation. Engineers working in alienating jobs can at least do something of personal interest.

Thanks. For those like me that hadn’t read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienatio...

Wow, way too close to home. You've got me thinking...

That's burnout? I thought that was just work.

Sounds like it's time to switch your job buddy.

That is stressful.

I recently listened to this podcast and found it very clarifying. The main point is about how to organize life around a central, organizing purpose in order to find joy and happiness.

https://youtu.be/B1rNtdfOpNY

You're ahead of a lot of people in a similar situation as yours, and that's because you have identified what's the problem that is affecting you.

Now, will you b1tch about it for the rest of your life or are you going to find a solution and work to achieve it?

Bitch about it for 10 years while aggressively saving and then peace out to live on a farm somewhere cheap.

Well, that can be considered as a solution. 100% better than just bitching and falling into the rat race, and instead of saving for that purpose you end up buying more useless stuff and spending more.

Oh look, an evangelist.

That's not a very nice thing to say. I am in the position where I could take your advice but for many folks there is no plausible solution. Sure, anyone could fuck off to the woods, open a fruit stand, and tell their spouse and children to suck it up and college is overrated anyway. But what if your spouse doesn't want to live behind a fruit stand in the woods? What if you have to support a family and the pay ceiling for your profession doesn't allow you to save enough money to retire early? What if you're already closing in on 50? It's easy to tell people they just need a plan, but everybody has their own unique problems and it's a bit rude to imply that it's their own fault because they didn't work hard enough. GP could have made a plan to retire at 35 and sail around the world, pinched their pennies, and saved up a million bucks, then their child got cancer or something else equally horrible. Or maybe you're right and they spent all of their discretionary income on magic the gathering cards. Point is, we don't know and it's not nice to tell random strangers on the internet to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Everything I'm hearing sounds like a choice. Married? That's a choice. Kids? Choice. MtG cards? Choice. Fruit stand? Choice.

America is a place where you have more chpices, but also bear the consequenses thereof.

Let me take the opposite: should you be able to live behind a fruit stand in the woods and have your wife taken care of and kid put through college? Who should pay for that?

I don't think it's "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" as "make your chouces and deal with/don't whine about the consequences".

Is cancer a choice? What about other debilitating, chronic, expensive-to-treat illnesses?

Please don't cross into personal attack. I'm sure you meant it as a gesture of help, and maybe that tough-love approach can help in person, but on the internet it just comes across as a slap. Previous explanations if anyone wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Amen.

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