Part 2: How I dealt with a burnout | Hacker News Reader

Part 2: How I dealt with a burnout

chriseidhof.tumblr.com

56 pointschriseidhof24 comments

The most notable part of this post for me was this quote:

> I went through a major transformation during my burnout: I now see programming as a means, not an end.

People, which is more typically a fallacy of youth, waste a lot of time arguing about pointless crap like Python vs Ruby (which are so similar technically that it's basically an argument about idioms).

Part of this I can understand: people often argue about things as a formative stage for their own views.

This also manifests itself with programmers trying to make the code "perfect", which will often entail overengineering or constant refactors (note: lack of sufficient refactoring/rewriting is a problem at the other end of the spectrum).

Another antidote to programmer burnout is this: go get a non-programming job if you've never had one. There are few better cures for your current woes than seeing how much worse things could be.

> go get a non-programming job if you've never had one

I would add: go get a non-programming job demanding physical labor where (one way or another) you are building something or tear something down. It can be incredibly satisfying to just do some simple but physically demanding work and see actual results at the end of the day, results you can actually touch. And it will also show you how much worse things could be if you are doing the same kind of repetitive tasks every day for the rest of your life.

Or it might end up showing you a new love for a completely different kind of job; a smart and handy craftsman can easily keep up with good IT salaries and can do just as interesting work including all sorts of hacks and interesting problem solving.

I wish I could find it but there was a long article in the NYT I believe about a dude who moved from complicated analysis to repairing vintage motorcycles and he could demonstrate very well how the skills he developed there are easily comparable to PhD degree problem-solving in an office job and he got a lot of satisfaction and freedom out of fixing broken bikes and seeing how happy his customers were when their much beloved bikes would suddenly run again.

So, it doesn't always have to be web startups - there are a lot of interesting and satisfying jobs out there outside of IT, if one is brave enough to explore and push to see just how deep the rabbit hole can go.

> I would add: go get a non-programming job demanding physical labor where (one way or another) you are building something or tear something down. It can be incredibly satisfying to just do some simple but physically demanding work and see actual results at the end of the day, results you can actually touch.

I totally agree with you on this. It is one of the reasons that I program. I get to build and fix stuff. I have had the physical jobs like that before. What I do now is work around the house doing things like gardening and other general yard work. It is nice to put some music on and just zone out for a couple of hours while I work with my hands and not my mind.

Is this the article you're thinking of?

The Case for Working With Your Hands http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?pa...

YES! Exactly that one, thank you for linking it!!

Yes. Working with your body feels good, whether it's exercise or work. Another thing I really liked is helping friends with moving or home improvements.

I did consider taking a job as a craftsman. However, I did not need a lot of money to survive but had savings, so it wasn't urgent and I didn't do it. Too bad, I think it would have been a really useful experience. Maybe sometime later.

You should also consider teaching. Talking about interesting stuff to interested young people is very satisfying.

> You should also consider teaching.

This is another excellent idea! You can never know enough about a topic, there is always going to be an interesting or surprising question from one of your students and then you can learn something new along with them!

There's also always Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance by Robert Pirsig, which at least i still find quite amazing.

I also totally agree on the thing with working with your hands – it turns out we at least partially think with our bodies. Howard Gardner also made an interesting case for that in his book the Seven Intelligences, but okay – the source much matter who wrote about it: I've experienced it first-hand.

Doing yoga when I've been strained about something often results in what can only be described as a stream of insight and ideas. The same thing with running. We (i) have so much to learn.

"More about that transformation and the results in the next post."

Seriously? It's just needlessly split up. There's barely any substance to this post. You know what you're doing, so quit it.

Yeah somebody is getting off on watching their analytics numbers go up.

Yeah, a month of 100 hours work weeks can be bad. Three months are much, much worse.

It's not just hours, though; what's worse is that "no time to stop for gas, we're already late" mentality of all deathmarches. So you end up working from unrealistic specs implementing architecturally unsound decisions using wrong tools and digging through a mess of unreadable ad-hoc code along the way. For 100 hours a week, no less.

It's funny, but what helps me most to recover after a deathmarch is more programming -- but done right this time. Something small, something smart, something that needs more thinking than typing. Maybe Euler project or codegolf, or maybe your own small scheme or forth implementation, or something :)

Interesting, another poster argued the opposite -- to do manual labor without much mental demands, as a way of getting over burnout. :-)

(For the record, I have friends that use both methods and it seems to work for them. Personally, I read literature (-: ok, an exaggeration -- sf&f :-) and just take time off.)

When we're young (varsity age) we're unstoppable. I worked 18 - 20 hour days for about 2 years! But, we're not really. It takes its toll on the body (and the brain), slowly, without you realizing it, so you don't have an opportunity to rectify it before it takes you out completely. Balance. Work hard, sure, it's fun, but exercise, eat well, and sleep. You have to fill up the tank once in awhile too...

I found this account interesting. At some points in my life I would spend eight hours a day programming at my day job, then spend most of the evening programming on my own projects. It seems like I've never had a problem with burnout.

However, I've also noticed that I can have a lazy streak. I've been in positions where I'm working on an open source project with an upcoming release deadline. I know there's a bunch of stuff I should really be doing to make the deadline, but my inner self rebels and I watch a movie or read HN instead.

This has made me wonder if my "lazy streak" is actually functioning as an effective protection against burnout. I've seen this laziness in other areas of my life as well, such as school and even at work. I used to feel guilty about it, but I don't really think that way any more. Now I feel that it actually helps keep my longer term productivity up.

Now all of this is based on very subjective feelings. It would be pretty hard to prove anything conclusive either way. I don't know what makes me be this way or if/how it could be learned by someone else who is prone to burnout. But I do believe it's worth thinking about.

Sounds to me like you are in contact with your 'being'. That's rather good actually. The way I've come to think of it, when people get too anxious they start to make violence on themselves - and think they should be something they are not. But changing oneself based on rejecting what one is doesn't work.

"It would take about six weeks, and the deliverables included an iPhone app, an iPad app, a web application (both backend and frontend), and two Mac applications. It was very interesting, and I managed to get everything done" Simply: wow. You're a shipping MACHINE. Good on you!

Well, it was a working prototype. The end result definitely wasn't ready for shipping yet.

I feel like I've been in a constantly resurfacing burnout since I was in 7th grade... (I'm 18 now). Though in line with what other people said I wish he had offered more insight on what exactly got him out of his burnout.

My sympathies, I was there, too. The key to me was finding what I was really passionate about and doing it. Detaching from outcome.

it seems like a transformation from programming itself as a goal to delivery of product/service whatever achieved with programming. I personally favor this view of programming as a tool not as a goal

Seems like extreme shipping needs breaks of equal time :)

Diddums.

Doldrums more like? ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com