I am off to my daily commute. I'm happy to say what worked for me, so I'll type something up once I get home. Just wanted to let you know I will be responding.
816 karma · joined April 25, 2009
http://www.planningforaliens.com | @sfioritto
email: sean@planningforaliens.com
My personal path to recovery involved a complete redo of my entire life. I quit my job, moved to a new city. I took an entire month off and did nothing but stuff that was fun, (mainly programming :-) My new job is a boring corporate coder type job that requires very little of my attention. I also started dieting, quit smoking and took up running.
You can get better! It just takes time. Please be patient with yourself.
Believe it or not, even after everything that happened to me, I very nearly did it again! I began spending all of my spare time working on my side project, (my goal here is to eventually own my own company/startup). But at least this time when I started getting anxiety I realized, "wait a minute, I think I know why this is happening..." :-)
I really, really, really want people to avoid what I went through, so it thought I'd share some gory details. I clearly went through every phase of burnout jacquesm mentions.
A compulsion to prove oneself:
This was my entire purpose in life. I worked for a consulting firm with an 'up or out' culture, and this really fed into my desire to prove myself. It's like getting addicted to leveling your character in an RPG, except in real life.
Working harder:
My only mechanism for coping with stress was to 'work harder', which of course fed right back into this vicious cycle. There was a point when I saw how much work was ahead of me on my project, and it was distressing. I didn't think I could keep up the pace. I spoke to someone close to me and said as much, and they said sometimes this is what is required in a job; just break it up into pieces and bulldoze through it. That's the advice that stuck with me for the next year. That advice fed into all of my personality flaws.
Neglecting one's own needs:
At one point I told my boss I needed a weekend off. He was a bit shocked since I hadn't had a weekend off in months. I remember still taking calls on my 'weekend off'. I worked from home, but not so that I could take a break, but instead so I could waste less time commuting or dealing with stuff like personal hygiene, (I'm not joking, I actually rationalized this). My schedule was wakeup, grab breakfast and laptop and start working. Work until I was hungry, then stop to make myself a sandwich and have a 'working' lunch. Around dinner time my wife would feed me, and I would usually work straight through dinner, if I didn't I would spend most of dinner talking about work. Then I would typically work until I fell asleep. I did this for months.
Displacement of conflicts (the person does not realize the root cause of the distress):
Near the end I fabricated paranoid stories about my coworkers and their attempts to make me fail. It took me a year of recovery to finally realize these stories were false and my failure and eventual collapse was almost entirely my own fault.
Revision of values (friends or hobbies are completely dismissed):
It's hard to have friends when you are working 80 hours a week. I didn't have a social life and I killed all hobbies.
Denial of emerging problems (cynicism and aggression become apparent):
-- See displacement of conflicts
Withdrawal, behavioural changes, substance abuse, depression:
I went from occasional smoker to smoking a pack a day. I gained 40 pounds. I became physically ill for weeks at a time, (a simple cough took me a full month to get over). And..(and this is humiliating, but I'm hoping other people will learn from my mistakes), I cried myself to sleep most nights. I don't cry, but during this period of my life, I did.
Nothing is this important. It takes years to recover. If you are still convinced that you need to 'optimize your productivity' then know that my output dropped to zero and stayed there for a long time. That is not very productive.
I really, really, really want people to avoid what I went through, so it thought I'd share some gory details. I clearly went through every phase of burnout jacquesm mentions.
A compulsion to prove oneself: This was my entire purpose in life. I worked for a consulting firm with an 'up or out' culture, and this really fed into my desire to prove myself. It's like getting addicted to leveling your character in an RPG, except in real life.
Working harder: My only mechanism for coping with stress was to 'work harder', which of course fed right back into this vicious cycle. There was a point when I saw how much work was ahead of me on my project, and it was distressing. I didn't think I could keep up the pace. I spoke to someone close to me and said as much, and they said sometimes this is what is required in a job; just break it up into pieces and bulldoze through it. That's the advice that stuck with me for the next year. That advice fed into all of my personality flaws.
Neglecting one's own needs: At one point I told my boss I needed a weekend off. He was a bit shocked since I hadn't had a weekend off in months. I remember still taking calls on my 'weekend off'. I worked from home, but not so that I could take a break, but instead so I could waste less time commuting or dealing with stuff like personal hygiene, (I'm not joking, I actually rationalized this). My schedule was wakeup, grab breakfast and laptop and start working. Work until I was hungry, then stop to make myself a sandwich and have a 'working' lunch. Around dinner time my wife would feed me, and I would usually work straight through dinner, if I didn't I would spend most of dinner talking about work. Then I would typically work until I fell asleep. I did this for months.
Displacement of conflicts (the person does not realize the root cause of the distress) Near the end I fabricated paranoid stories about my coworkers and their attempts to make me fail. It took me a year of recovery to finally realize these stories were false and my failure and eventual collapse was almost entirely my own fault.
Revision of values (friends or hobbies are completely dismissed) It's hard to have friends when you are working 80 hours a week. I didn't have a social life and I killed all hobbies.
Denial of emerging problems (cynicism and aggression become apparent) -- See displacement of conflicts
Withdrawal, behavioural changes, substance abuse, depression I went from occasional smoker to smoking a pack a day. I gained 40 pounds. I became physically ill for weeks at a time, (a simple cough took me a full month to get over). And..(and this is humiliating, but I'm hoping other people will learn from my mistakes), I cried myself to sleep most nights. I don't cry, but during this period of my life, I did.
Nothing is this important. It takes years to recover. If you are still convinced that you need to 'optimize your productivity' then know that my output dropped to zero and stayed there for a long time. That is not very productive.
I only noticed the very top bar the second time I loaded the page. I was looking for more content to help me determine whether this was a legit site or not, and I couldn't find it.
Breaking the bullets out into the grey boxes is awkward.
"Its pretty advanced" I'm not sure you want to put qualifiers like this, it's either advanced or it's not. If your target audience knows about the techniques you are using for the calculations, there's probably not a need to even say it's 'advanced'. Maybe you could get away with 'sophisticated'?
I noticed that when I actually started working on my business on the side, this topic of conversation started coming up less often. I think seeing someone actually work hard to change his reality sort of ruined the dream. "It's fun to talk about it, but you mean I actually have to do extra work??"
Well there's your problem. Assuming you are working part time, two to four weeks is not even remotely enough time to build even the simplest of businesses. Note I'm not talking about building an application, which you could complete in 3-4 weeks, I'm talking about building a business.
I would guess a more reasonable timeline for starting something in your spare time would be about 6 months until you get your first revenue, (or more likely your first 'pivot' because you finally have enough data to realize your idea sucks). I wouldn't be surprised if it took longer. So, whatever you choose to do, try to ask yourself if you are willing to spend most of your spare time for the next year working on it before you even see any money. As soon as you start passing ideas through this filter, I think you'll find more success.
Any more optimistic timeline is a time fantasy.
Side note: this is in my opinion the problem with starting something on the side. It's far too slow. Sometimes it looks like I'm going to be 30 before I make a dime! I think I could cut down this cycle to 2-3 months to my first 'pivot' if I was full time. In other words I think working full time would move things along 4X as fast. Add a competent cofounder and you could probably almost double that.
Other than that, I've heard he writes great blog posts on programming and works at Google.
Kids seek approval from adults, adults approved of my interest in engineering, not my interest in fashion. Is it a surprise that I majored in CS?
1. Pick a company you don't hate 2. Get hired 3. learn their codebase inside and out 4. DON'T QUIT
Pretty soon you will be the only person around who knows about system "X" and they will be glad to keep you around past 65. My office is filled with COBOL programmers that took this path. Hell, we even recently hired a guy in his 60's, because that's just how old COBOL programmers are.
Alternatively you could get your MBA and go the CTO/VP of engineering route. This seems better to me, (as a backup plan to startup failure).
At the worst point I was experiencing anxiety, paranoia and depression. My only strategy for coping with stress and difficult situations at the time was to put my head down and work through it. I thought if I was having problems getting the job done, I would just put in more hours. This turned out to be a terrible idea. I worked 80 hour weeks for months at a time in highly stressful situations. Initially this work ethic bought me promotions and raises, but you can't work these kinds of hours under a huge load of stress for years and not suffer consequences. In two years I gained 40 pounds and became a pack a day smoker. When you never put a limit on how much you work you eventually break down.
I nearly ended up quitting and going to seminary. Instead I just got a new job with less hours and responsibility on the other side of the country. After a few years I'm finally getting to the point where I can handle stress like I used to: until now any moderate level of stress has caused me to spiral into anxiety and paranoia again. I was worried I was permanently damaged, but thankfully I'm getting better.
EDIT: I haven't smoked for two years. I've lost over 40 pounds and I'm running my first 5K on Thursday. I got better but I had to drastically change my life.
I had no idea human beings like this existed. I feel inferior.
Here is a fantastic essay on this very topic: http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/01/achieving-failu...
I've always wondered why this is. I'm from Chicago myself, and while we have a growing community of tech startups that is beginning to resemble the Valley, small business owners are much more the norm. My theory is a lack of infrastructure and culture. I think it's easier to find someone to quit their job and work with you on some big, "internet scale" project in SV because that's (almost) normal behavior there. Plus you have the venture capital ecosystem to back you up once it's time to scale. I know of a few great startups in New York that are struggling to secure VC, and I suspect their jobs would be much easier if they lived out West.
Personally, I'd love to tackle a huge problem. I have some crazy, disruptive ideas. But I'm starting out smaller so I can pay my own way, Chicago-style.
Example: It's fourth down, (your last chance), and you have eight yards to go, that means you went two yards in three downs. You can punt and push the opponent back further, or go for it and risk giving them the ball where you are now. Most of the time you would choose to punt. You give up.
An American football team will punt when it fails to reach a first down. There are four downs to try to go ten yards, if you don't make it after three downs you usually punt. It's a strategic decision; if you fail to make ten yards after four downs the other team gets the ball where you left it. But if you punt, you can push the team further back, which means they have further to go to score a touchdown.
My hourly rate expectation was based on a few years working at Accenture and seeing rates for Java programmers. I figured it would be adjusted down for individual developers, but I didn't realize it would be that much.
"Your BMI is lower than 37% of people who submitted this survey."
This might be better written as, "You are fatter than 60% of people who submitted this survey." Ouch.
Also, if obesity is an epidemic then over time won't these results normalize? So I'm fatter than I should be but so is everyone else, so I don't look so bad in these results.
I don't think that this means an imperative language is therefore better than a functional programming language. Many problems would be better solved with more 'mathy' models.
I'm not accusing you of this, but it does drive me a bit bonkers when code becomes anthropomorphized, e.g. "this guy talks to that observer, who sends a message to the account manager." This type of code is frequently not very modular and hard to maintain. A functional programming language makes it hard to think like this, and IMHO that's a good thing.