Ask HN: Anyone else burnt out due to extended lockdown and work-from-home?
I'm no more productive at work. I produce in a week the same amount of code I used to produce in a day before the pandemic.
Am I alone to feel work-from-home made things worse?
554 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 305 ms ] threadA friend's Dr told him he has never written so many anti-anxiety prescriptions in his career until covid started. People are experiencing the same enmasse.
The PhD on the other hand is more like a regular job. That's not to say it's a bad job but it's more about getting things done than just taking time to grow in your knowledge.
And if the group's not for you, you can just stop going and find a different one. That's a lot harder to do with something like graduate school (speaking from experience).
One of the main things I miss from college was constantly meeting new people.
COVID really amplifies how boring life can be post-graduation.
It's not apparent because it's borne most by lower classes; the experts and "concerned" are almost exclusively all upper class.
I'm focusing on food, sleep, and exercise to get me through this.
If you're feeling down, look into what kind of food you're eating. I've cut down sugar just to avoid the highs and the lows.
I also found this video to be helpful https://youtu.be/snAhsXyO3Ck
[edit] Oh, and remote pairing over teamviewer turns a terrible isolated work day into a casual conversation with a friend about code. I find that 2 developers actually getting 1 job done is better than both being isolated and just scrolling reddit.
For anyone who hates clicking on YT links without knowing where they lead.
I would hate to do that. Idk how you can. I have this imagination of the partner either being a super need Hipster smartassing over everything or a real Dumbo. In both cases they would drive me blood pressure up.
Not like religiously... my pair for today wanted to break early to develop a deeper understanding of the code on his own, so we split up, but I do have to say I came into today pretty low, and left our session pretty high, and look forward to see what his results were and how he wants to go about refactoring tomorrow.
As your stereotypical autistic basement dwelling programmer type, who studied talking to humans like any other field of study, I have to say it really is just that, and it's also worth the effort. IMO.
Another vacation tip is to take your vacation across weeks (Wen to Tues). That way you have short work weeks (2 or 3 days) around the vacation.
Being indoors in a one bedroom apartment makes you crazy.
I admire people who took vacation alone and enjoyed themselves. I had many plans for which I completely lost motivation.
Make a timeslot and schedule for things that used to be automatic, like going outside for a quick walk and exercising and starting and ending your day.
I wouldn't attribute it too strongly to WFH just that outside of work life is limited, cant travel, socialise (properly - not zoom).
Work tends to blend from day to evening, I definitely work later into the evening but I guess its my choice and partly because there's not much else to do (Netflixed out!)
Exercise helps. Reading. Eating well but allowing treats now and again (this is important).
I have booked some vacations for later in the year as something to look forward to (do this if you can, there will be a rush to the door when were in a better state and firms will not want everyone out at the same time).
Also make sure there is clean separation between work and home. Different hardware, different location even if it's the other side of the same room.
I've been remote for 5 years, this last year alone was the hard one.
I'm holding out hope that things will turn around soon with fixes to the vaccine rollout, but literally everyone has been on survival mode for way too long.
To void burn out, I did a few things which I feel are extremely helpful.
1. Have a room that is a dedicated office. When I leave this room, I leave the "office".
2. Establish communication throughout the day. This means having slack conversations (typed and video) that are casual. It's okay to vent on these calls.
3. Have a defined schedule - Awake at 6am, washed/dressed by 6:30am, Red Bull (or if you like food) and at my desk by 7am. I do work long hours, but I enjoy it because I'm accomplishing something.
4. Work on something that excites you or find joy in your work somehow.
5. Lastly, realize most of the mental stress can be managed with a little mindfulness, learning to accept that you still can grow and find joy even when at home and cut back on social media; or if you're like me, I cut out 99% of social media.
I hope everyone remains positive. Do something today, that makes you better tomorrow.
I used to drink it daily and it destroyed my body. Also, Red Bull is quite expensive!
I was working around this once by drinking red bull, which I found lifted my emotions temporarily, but after it wore off in 4 hours I crashed way harder into despair. This effect built up over time and fortunately I noticed it and stopped using it routinely.
YMMV - just a friendly warning of how it affected me.
And the worst case scenarios happened when my body was tired and wanted to stop, but my brain was high on Red Bull and didn't let me fall sleep.
This can apply to pretty much any substance or routine. Right now for me it's video games :(
Partly because we have "real coffee" here in Portugal (expresso, a cultural import from the Italians via the Cimbalino series of coffee shop hardware, IIRC), partly because a long mug is better suited to winter, and partly because I am back working 90% with British folk, to the extent where we can compare blends...
But, overall, it suits me better. Takes longer to drink, does not mess with my stomach in the mornings, and smells great.
(Mind you, we do not consider American-style coffee to be "coffee" in the strictest sense of the word, because it's too processed/diluted/mixed).
Out of curiosity, what exactly do you mean by "American-style coffee"? Are you referring to something you would get at Starbucks, or are you referring to the quality of the coffee beans used to make it?
If you add an equal quantity of hot water to an espresso that is the European cafe attempt at emulating an American coffee, but it still has different taste because of the pressure.
I don't think Europe is as obsessed with aribica beans, robusta is common and actually quite good. In drip coffee, arabica is really the only thing drinkable or the closest to drinkable depending on your perspective.
Europeans prefer to chew on a few green coffee beans throughout the day as a long-lasting source of clean, non-jittery, all-natural energy.
I’m currently experimenting with different blends of black tea and decreasing the amount of milk (as is tradition in Ireland) so that I can taste the tea better. I find that I can develop a taste for any decent tea leaf (or coffee bean).
I can't compare the De'Longhi with any other burr grinder but the results are similar to those of the shop that I get my coffee from. Its one downside is that the minimum grind quantity is too much coffee for one person so I try to time it for when my wife will share the coffee with me. The whole point of grinding your own is that you can then brew the coffee at its freshest.
So far, I've been enjoying the results of having freshly ground coffee. Best of luck with your own grinding.
[1] https://www.delonghi.com/en-us/products/coffee-and-espresso/...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr_mill
Once I finish this case, I think it's time to go back to water and coffee for 6 months. :)
I'll emphasize on 3. Manage your expectations with your direct reports. Let them know in order to stay sane you are going to have set schedule to manage stress while wfh. I do this with everyone I meet at work to set those expectations onset. It has helped tremendously.
If this is important (and I agree it is) then we're setting up the vast majority of people for burnout. Most people don't have the luxury of a room they can convert into an office.
Feel free to write code after work if you like, but to consider it anywhere close to a requirement, even to just help with burnout, is perpetuating a rather toxic view of this particular industry's workers.
"Find a hobby" would be a better phrasing.
That is so not true. When are doctors supposed to perform research or their required continuing education? When seeing clients? No. It’s on their own time.
They may be on-call sometimes but generally if they're off they are not working or training.
They read UpToDate on work time.
Additionally, if you're smart that time can wind up being compensated later. I wrote JavaScript on my own for 3.5 years before I started doing it professionally, and while I didn't get paid, it allowed me to eventually double my income, so I consider it a great investment.
> We don't expect this of other careers,
Sure we do. Doctors may be expected to read medical journals or keep up on the latest research, for example.
Great if you are young and have no commitments. Not so great if you are old and have many commitments.
Or are we expecting programmers to program after work even during their later years?
Look, OP suggested a strategy for not getting burnt out that works for them, and I'm just saying what works for me. You are the one who is turning this into some sort of "expectation".
If you don't want to code outside of work, and don't see value in it, don't do it. Nobody gives a rats ass.
One should never consider it a requirement, but it's not a recipe for certain burn-out either. (But yeah, if you are doing it because it's a requirement, then it's work and it will lead to burn-out.)
For those who don't understand, here's my annecdote:
After the divorce the only thing I could afford in my son's school district is a 2 bedroom^ apartment. I have to pack up "my office" just to serve dinner. We now have lunch from the couch. I'm not complaining, but the idea of a dedicated room is up there with personal island for me.
^ the master is his to give him playspace lacking a playroom
Alternatives I've heard from others are things like dressing up for work. I had a colleague that wore a suit to work every day (at a tech startup) so that when he got home he could change into something else. That helped him define a boundary.
Find what works for you, it doesn't have to be physical space.
That's actually a great point - the days that I put on a button-up and nice jeans as if I was going into an office are days that I'm way more productive, as opposed to wearing pajamas all day.
Also my kids whom are stuck at home at the moment recognise the difference and "somewhat" tries to disturb me less if I got a work shirt on.
Make sure you've got everything ready to go when you 'arrive'. Don't do chores during the day -- but if you have a partner, discuss your reasoning for this with them beforehand.
I grew up sleeping on the floor for 15 years because I couldn't afford a bed. I get it.
It's not as good as having a separate system for office work but you can conceptually separate what you are doing at least.
I try to keep work/personal data completely separated. No logging in to private email from work account, no hobby code and work code accessible for same user account. No Hacker News or other unrelated sites on work browser. Private matters during work hours done on my private phone.
I find this good for work/free time separation, and helps a lot with concentration too.
When booted off the work drive, do not mount your internal drive.
I’ve gone the entire pandemic in a 450sq ft studio with my wife and our pets. My trick was to put my desk between a window and a wall and get an $80 room divider. Anytime the room divider was closed it meant one of two things: “Please don’t distract me, I’m busy”. Or “I’m not sitting back at my desk to work until tomorrow”
I love working — prior to my wife moving in, all I wanted to do was code and tinker with different ideas. But I know that isn’t sustainable for many reasons. Having a blocked off space, as tiny as it may be, to “get in the zone” or literally separate me from work has worked wonders for my mental health during the pandemic.
* I used some past tense here because we finally just upgraded to a 1 bedroom after 2 years :)
You end up really not using the PC for anything else than working because in your free time last thing you wan't will be in the front of that PC.
I sold my gaming PC and bought a Xbox to spend my free (I used my laptop to work at the company so I'm just using that laptop to also work).
If that's you, absolutely, definitely, try having different user accounts for work and personal.
Having that separation is very important, and having different accounts is an cheap and easy way that almost everyone's OS already supports.
Now I just go to the living room and play in my Xbox. Dunno, I need to change environments to separate things.
When I'm working I use a dock/monitor/mechanical keyboard and sit in an office chair, but after work I switch to just the laptop and sit on the couch. Every little bit helps.
One bad thing is I keep trying to use my Discord push-to-mute keybind in zoom and it never works :(
- https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/10/29/2200
My recommendations (which are very much like yours):
- https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/03/05/2230
Some venting on remote challenges:
- https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/07/11/1830
I'm convinced that a large part of the stress people have been feeling this past year is due to dehydration and lack of proper nutrition.
Lightheadedness is a big one for me.
I live in a city where an apartment costs 1500 a square foot, so a two bedroom apartment for a single person is barely affordable.
This pandemic has taught me that crowded cities suck.
When I relocated back east, I made it a point to a) not live in the city since it'll be overpriced and I won't be able to enjoy the surrounding area and b) Price per square footage wouldn't make sense if I'm at home 24/7. So I went across the river and pay less for _a lot more_.
I know a lot of people are moving to Austin TX. They get a LOT more for their money. I was lucky to be on a month by month lease when the pandemic hit.
I'm single so I'm wary of not living in a large, walkable city.
Homelessness is off the charts with the street camping and violence that comes along with it. If you're familiar with SF, it's nothing like the Tenderloin but more like SOMA-lite.
In addition, shootings are way up. For context, there were 39 total in 2019. In the summer of 2020, we had 40 consecutive days of shootings. Further, the local DA has also adopted the mindset of not prosecuting "low level" crimes of any theft under $750.
Sacrificing what makes Austin compelling is not the way to go.
I was taken back because I never thought Austin would have such a problem.
Austin isn't entirely alone with this: most of the sunbelt cities that are growing are doing so in the context of a complete lack of long term city planning. But Austin, IMO, is the worst right now. Even Phoenix, with an even more insane lack of water than Austin, has managed this side of things better.
I was fortunate enough that my lease expired back in July so I looked for somewhere a bit further out of the city with more room. I pay a smidge more each month, but I probably at least doubled the size of my place and I have a dedicated office now
But I've heavily considered it!
Point #4... not everyone has that choice.
Item #4 - I fully disagree. Some choices are scary to actually make, but are healthy. For instance, my mom stayed with her abusive husband for many years because she had Stockholm syndrome. If you had asked her why didn't she leave during that time, she would say "I didn't have a choice". Ask her now, and she will tell you "Fear - fear of not knowing how things would work out."
Sometimes the hardest choices to make are the impossible choices.
I messed up sadly on that one.
Sorry for the unqualified snark here, just couldn‘t resist. The realities couldn‘t be more different for different people at this time.
Someone recently asked me whether I enjoyed my Corona free time as well.
I didn’t know what to answer as could not even comprehend the concept.
I‘m missing everything. Time for myself. Silence. Holidays. Physical movement. Sanity.
Work and Noise, non-stop, around the clock. Still falling behind on all projects with limited understanding of single colleagues with more time to kill than Netflix has content.
I love those rascals, but I‘m crashing on the couch every night and barely make it out of bed the next day. Just functioning and surviving.
Never been more exhausted in my life before.
My wife and I are toast by kids'(2&4) bedtime, and can only sit on the couch watching something and reel from the day.
Like Ron Swanson said, I miss silence, and the absence of noise.
These people are also the most overrepresented on various internet fora.
They have the most time.
Hang on and things will get better!
I disagree. I've got more kids than you do (edit: I misread your post, I'm not clear how many children you have. My apology for the mistake), all at difficult ages including a 1 year old. They are one of the few things making COVID seclusion tolerable for me.
The near constant interaction can be exhausting, but it has also been very rewarding. I know my kids better than ever and have gotten to participate in a lot of moments I would've missed.
I find that the narrative I give myself around things like this is very important. If I told myself I was barely surviving my kids I would probably feel that way. Instead I focus on how lucky I am to be surrounded by my family, and that it's a wonderful thing to have unprecedented amounts of time with them. I've perhaps never been happier with my family than I have been during the pandemic.
None of that is a criticism of people who are struggling. Just looking to offer another point of view.
They never said how many kids they had, which makes it hard to take your comment seriously.
You don't know what their kids are like, how much spousal support they have, the floorplan or acoustics of their home, how hard their work is, or what their threshold for noise is.
> None of that is a criticism of people who are struggling. Just looking to offer another point of view.
No. It's easy to convince yourself that that sort of thing is helpful, but all you're really saying is that you can't understand because your particular circumstances are better.
Life is complex. A change can be beneficial in some ways and harmful to others. And you have many children and keeps wanting more, you are probably an extravert not an introvert.
I've really enjoyed the extra time with my six-year-old daughter rather than sending her off to school. Having her around the house and able to come into my office for random cuddles during the working day is a joy.
My daughters daycare told us point blank no staff wear masks unless answering the door and they “don’t want to close for a virus” (you can read between the lines). One of the teachers also shops for instacart half days. No thank you.
This past few weeks I've started work at 6am (it's 6:07 right now) so that I can create some more space during the day and give her time.
I give my son some focused attention / special time in the middle of the day and in the evening. It's important that he gets a good intense dose of me and I'm not distracted when with him. Without that he's feeling unwanted (why does papa work all the time?) and he acts out. He refuses to join us for dinner: "I'm working" he says.
I was burnt out. Right now I'm doing well.
He has two adorable little girls; 1.5 years old and 2 months.
His kids are pretty calm, by most standards.. but you can't let the older one out of sight for a few seconds.
I certainly feel your pain even though I don't have kids.
Question: Tell me how much you love going to the bathroom or getting washed now. It's the only time you have to yourself lol
Are you listening to the others venting too?
2. It's very hard to do casual check-in with another person.I feel like I'm bothering them too much. I can't get over it. Too stressful. Was way easier in person. Just feel the room and interrupt as needed.
3. I wake up early, take my pre-workout or red bull or 5h energy but just stare at the screen for 4 hours between 8 and noon and can't start.
4. I love the product but I can't start working wihtout others around me.
5. I hired multiple therapists. They put me on meds. I took medical leave. Nothing helped.
For me, work is for work and home is for home or for "work on autopilot"
Without this, I think I would be a lot worse off in this crisis, and I'm a pretty extreme introvert.
If I was in your situation and had to actually bug people to talk to them... Ugh. No way.
Have you asked others if they want to be on an 8 hr/day video call with you? Perhaps there are others that would prefer that, or would do it to help you.
I personally would not enjoy that, but if someone on my team needed it... I'd at least try to deal with it.
Alternatively, maybe you can find a few of them to do it for 2 hrs/day and take the edge off.
1. Realise you're lucky to be in this position to work from home, as opposed to medical staff and being depressed is a luxury.
2. You are not a code machine, amount of code written is not a good measure of how productive you are. Better think of how much you contributed overall or learnt something new that year.
3. Your work is not your life, so focus and even obsess over other things such as hobbies and spend more mental energy on that rather than worry about your job. Your job just pays the bills nothing more.
4. Find online ways to socialise such as playing online games. If you're introverted that should be enough to satisfy your social needs.
I know rationally that you're correct but it's damn hard to keep that in mind when you're depressed.
For me, it's been really challenging during weeks of BLM protests: the seeming insignificance of tasks at work as compared to the plight of people across our troubled nation. Similarly, during the elections, when it seemed like we could have end up with 4 more years of inaction during a time when every year matters in averting a global warming catastrophe.
It's a bit easier now that the government is better aligned with what I think is a good direction.
There is something to be said for better understanding and empathizing what daily life has been like for a lot of our neighbors and colleagues who never really felt that things were right in our society.
The thing that has set my anxiety on fire isn't that society has problems, it's just how far apart people's base perceptions are. Obviously we've always had crazies, but the capitol insurrection shows just how far removed from reality a huge swath of the population is. We can have debates on how to solve issues of policing, or taxation or health care, but in my mind there is just no justification for the 74M people who think a lying racist moron is the answer to anything. And I genuinely believe that "lying racist moron" is objectively true at this point. He led an insurrection based on absolute lies and people ate it up. They just don't exist on the same plane of reality as I do.
It’s no different than why hitler rose to power and scape goated the Jews.
When people are stretched thin the ugliest in them comes out and opportunistic “leaders” have exploited that for centuries.
You want to fix racism but you’re putting the cart before the horse. Fix the staggering wealth inequality first before you even think about having hope of addressing stereotyping and racism.
Downvote me all you want, but this is history. I’m not saying racism isn’t real, it’s very real and very ugly. It’s part of human nature to stereotype others, just as it’s human nature to fight and hoard resources. We have to combat these innate tendencies as a community by FIRST ensuring that all our people have the ability to live comfortably.
The unfortunate reality for most marginalized communities in the US is that they simply don’t have the time to sit and wait for the economic policies to shift back to favoring the middle class. They have to act now.
What is most disconcerning though, is US people seeming to vote against their own interests. Maybe a third party instead of co-opting those who clearly don't have your own interest at heart. But then we see the predicament since the system/culture/billionaires don't support more parties and hard compromises.
They are voting against their own economic interests, but clearly there are other non-economic interests that are more important to them in play here.
A political platform would be able to reason and explain projects using facts and figures.
I am in Europe though, which makes me feel the main reason for this is lockdown/WFH.
Personally, I feel a bit like I'm going crazy. I really miss getting dressed up for the office and the social outlet of chatting with coworkers. We were flexible re: wfh before COVID but most of us still went in a few days a week.
I love my spouse but miss having more people than just him to interact with!
After that, there were very rigid limitation about at what times we were allowed outside and at what times. At the beginning we were not allowed to be further than 1KM from our house, and only from 06:00 to 10:00 and from 20:00 to 23:00.
Trapped in a one bedroom, working all day, and walking outside sucks. There's nowhere to go except online, and that's full of stressful garbage.
My dream is nature and simplicity.
E.g. If you live in a cold, remote climate this time of year:
Do you have enough food for winter? water?
Will your plumbing freeze? Do you have enough firewood?
Will your access to the outside world disappear based on weather conditions?
... Definitely an extreme case that I describe above, but I certainly would take this set of challenges over what the cities are having to deal with.
I'd gladly work longer hours if it meant permanent WFH. Employer gets more efficient worked hours from me, I don't have to waste 2-3 hours/day on a stupid bus/subway commute. My employer is traditional conservative enough (bank) that permanent or majority WFH is a nonstarter though.
Reducing the commute is not possible without paying significantly more for housing (and probably still resulting in a smaller and crappier place).
A 20 minute drive to work would be awesome. One of my best friends traded in a commute similar to mine (NYC) for a 15 minute drive (SV) and is immeasurable happier for it.
Honestly, it’s annoying but I don’t worry too much. Everyone is in the weird place now, and it’s not forever, so I don’t beat myself up if my productivity is slightly down or if I don’t feel super perky.
There was one particular instance that really stood out to me last weekend. I ran into a friend of mine for the first time in a while who asked "How have you been?" to which I replied "Well, it's hard to say -- the days kinda just blend together". He responded, "Yeah, same". And we sorta just left it at that. Sure we could've talked about specific work troubles or the media we've consumed lately or whatever, but it felt like we already had this understanding of what each others' lives have been like in isolation since they're largely identical, so why try to fake the "normal" conversation in abnormal times?
I should add I do have other friends I'm closer to with whom I have regular conversations about the minutia of quarantine life, but with this particular friend it was like "Well...we got nothing right now, let's agree to talk once life becomes interesting again".
It's just different right now. I'm worn out. I feel dull. It doesn't matter if I crank for 8 hours or drag a day out to 16. It all feels the same right now.
But there is something about the mental exhaustion all this causes. I do still have some free time here and there. In the "normal times" I'd be twiddling around with a side project, but all I do now is watch TV or play video games. I dislike it: I feel like I'm wasting time. But my brain is also utterly fried and the idea of engaging too deeply just feels impossible.
I have an early teen w/ADHD and the two days he's in school are fine, but the three days he's learning from home are a challenge. Each home day is a struggle due to weak executive functioning and the plethora of channels and sources of information required to simply understand the day's work. None of the normal school resources are available, so it's up to mom and dad to help get through the day. I rarely get 30 minutes of flow time on Wednesday through Friday.
We started not endlessly being in meetings as meetings were a pain over Zoom/Teams. Now that we are used to that, the meetings are back.
We started out overcommunicating as we were afraid things would be lost in WFH. We have stopped that so now there is lots of getting out of sync again as we are no longer conscious of making sure everyone gets the message.