Ask HN: How are you getting through (and back from) burning out?

Aristotle said something like it's a shame to focus only on the mind, and not bring your body to its full potential. Modern psychology says exercise leads to greater sense of well-being.

This isn't a magic bullet that will make stressors go away. Those have to be dealt with as much as you can. But it's nice to focus on other things than work and this is something that I do outside of work and find helpful for the same reasons.

Reading and writing has also helped. I've started up a small medium account for fun, and try to get through a book every few months.

Another big thing is finding a goal for the month and accomplishing it. This month is car repairs. Last month was getting the cat through his first vet visits. Next month will likely be spring cleaning.

All of this is little details. My friends and my church family are far more significant.

The habits to change: Eat breakfast. Cherish loved ones.

The difficult: Empathize with your employer; understand how they (don't) value you. Contemplate the evanescence of your work; it will all someday fade away, and you must come to terms with this fact.

There's a lot of different kinds of burnout, so this might not apply to every case, but going through this episode taught me the value of positive reinforcement.

After you burn yourself out a couple of times you'll see it coming a mile away, so you dial it way back until you're all caught up on sleep and motivated to do good work again.

If it's already too late this time around use your PTO, detach from anything with a battery, and spend some time in nature.

It works only if you actually like what you do. You might have bigger issues that need to be addressed.

I read "Ego is the Enemy", which helped me a lot in identifying why I stayed so long in a position that was bad for me (I was addicted to the title). When I quit, I established all these rules on how I was going to spend my day: out by 9am, back no earlier than 6pm, walk all day, take photos, become a better person.

Terrible idea.

I'd substituted one form of stress (imposter syndrome) for another (impossible goals). Pretty quickly I realized my mistake and accepted I actually had some baggage I needed to let go.

For the first month, I let myself do nothing. I could sleep late, watch movies, walk, or do anything else as long as I wasn't pressuring myself to succeed. In doing so, I was able to jettison my identity (I was a DIRECTOR after all..yeesh), and begin to identify what I actually wanted in life. It took me a full month until one morning I woke up without dread.

After that day I set a simple good: take one good photo a day. I eased back into a creative lifestyle, making sure I enjoyed the work every step of the way. My wife, through quitting coffee, inspired me to build an app that helped track my lesser addictions: coffee, chocolate, sugar, gaming. Now I was being creative and improving myself.

Through all this I learned what I really wanted, what was hurting me in and out of work, and with this knowledge I was able to rebuild my persona into someone who was happy and energized.

tl;dr Take it slow, don't pressure yourself.

Worked remarkably well.

What happens when you burn out is that you engage in a unsustainable situation, often for some time, until the effect catches up with you. To not burn out again you need to regain the connection between e.g. working to much and a decrease in performance. You need the realization that engaging in this unsustainable situation will hurt you again.

Also burn out is often a nice way to say that you are essentially having mental health issues caused by the situation you are in. Not generally something to take lightly. And not something you want to experience repeatedly.

I haven't read it yet but "It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work" might be a good start.

Second, more importantly, burnout comes from using willpower to do something you have no hope of success. Your brain is trying to stop wasting resources.

Problem is your brain isn’t so smart that it knows what is the problem so it stops anything closely related.

Take a break. A vacation. Do something fun and rewarding. Succeed at small things. Go back to work on smaller things you know will succeed. May require changing directions or jobs or careers but the change doesn’t have to be major. Just get back to success.

But first off, just let go. Don't plan on doing anything; you are sick. I get the impression you're lucky in that you've got only a mild case, I've had colleagues who had it quite badly and who couldn't physically get out of bed anymore - where even the idea of planning would knock them on their arse again.

Don't let it escalate any further. The first step is to accept that not doing anything is OK.

2. In a given team, never be the person who cares the most. Lots of power come from simply not caring so much. Only care deeply about things you're in a position to change.

3. Weed

Also, health. It always seems to be just a little too imperceptive to really drive home how little things make a big impact. Sleep no less than 8 hours, eat no more than your recommended calories, be active for no less than 20 minutes (walking, cardio, strength, etc... ideally to your target heart rate), and foster strong relationships [1]. Additionally, try to understand what drives your behavior: why did X make me feel Y, and take control of that causation. Seek therapy and read into behavioral literature to better understand yourself.

[1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-8...

So why do we feel this now? Lack of nutrition. Try taking supplements and see how it changes things. YMMV and please check with your physician before changing your diet or taking any pills.

I’ll list stuff here if others show interest.

If you can afford it, try some Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) sessions. They can help you to recognise and understand the thinking patterns that got you here in the first place. Once you recognise these patterns and their triggers, you should be able to head them off and drain them of their power before they become fully destructive again.

You may also discover that there are other deeper underlying causes to the behaviours which inform your relationship with work. Sometimes you need to deconstruct yourself and look at the foundations before you can rebuild.

Therapy can help you get a balanced perspective on your life and hopefully to re-frame the role that work plays in that.

2. As others have said: a good amount of physical exercise also helps. Try running, swimming or cycling / mountain biking. I've been there and I cannot stress enough that physical wellness has a significant positive effect upon mental wellness.

3. Practice Mindfullness. If you don't know what that means, then now is the time to investigate.

Wishing you well. You can do it!

For me, traveling resets my anxiety to zero. It reminds me there is so much more to life than “work,” and lets me enjoy those things: nature, natural wonders, cultures, languages, food, arts, ...

Before a long run my mind cycles through what I need to do at work, at home, for my aging parent. I just get trapped thinking through this laundry list of worries.

After a long run my mind is different. I need calories. I need a shower. I want to do something outdoorsy with my kids.

You may find that you are placing alot of attention on things that ultimately don't matter. When I've been in tough times, 8/10 times I've put blinders on and tried to fix everything except what is broken for me. It's a cycle that you have to break!

There's a reason why pride is in religious tradition the cardinal sin thats the root to all others, it blinds you to all sorts of things -- you start believing your own bullshit.

Burnout for me is a deeply physical experience of contant tension and utter exhaustion, with mental overwhelm and low stress-tolerance. So I find that I have to take things on the moment-by-moment level to see what I'm good for, and give myself permission to cancel everything if need be.

I'm also taking small, but practical and tangible steps towards a difficult life transition and health goal. Each step I take (there have been many) has lifted a bit of weight off me and put wind in my sails, because I've been on the fence about it for so long. I really enjoy and appreciate these 'small wins'.

Even on that personal journey side of things, I am not planning much, if anything, beyond the next day or two at a time (even while I have longer-term projects I am working on).

I have put my business on indefinite 'tickover', servicing existing clients but not doing any work of expansion at this stage. I have communicated with all staff about that as well and let them know that I am not available for any kind of meetings, calls or creative work.

I have 'uncommitted' from various projects (whether personal or shared/group) for which the ball was in my court. This alone gave me a lot of headspace to move forward in other ways.

I'm sleeping a lot, mostly at night, with some daytime naps. I've been enjoying playing RuneScape again, spending time tidying up and decluttering at home, sitting in cafes, going for short walks, doing self-care stuff.

People say to read books, but part of my burnout was information overwhelm. The one book that's been helping me a lot is Essentialism by Greg McKeown. GTD is also helpful but only when I have the energy to follow its guidelines.

For me the trick is to just really not expect anything much of myself for now. It's also Winter where I am, so I can call it hibernation, which helps.

One general thing that has really helped is being honest about where I am at, coming out to other people about it, and treating this burned-out stage of life as seriously as if I had pneumonia. Treating it as a friend rather than an enemy.

Hope this helps.