Ask HN: Post Burnout Ideas
I burnt my self out a few years back after spending 3 years working full-time on a startup. Since then I've been working for a FAANG.
One thing I've never really recovered is the passion I had for side projects. Worse than that, I can't actually think of anything worth building, or even tinkering with, which is sad, as spending some of my free time on side projects was something I really enjoyed.
If you've found yourself in a similar position, how have you dealt with it?
123 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadYou can reduce stressful problems by automating them away. So I would just start with your own problems, going step by step and focusing on low maintenance and immediate benefits. I would set very low expectations and always be aware of the risk you are taking for your health. Maybe you will get better in the future to push something to the next level. Worst case, your own life got easier.
And after 2 years of surviving, I feel that I lost a lot of time
Avoid competitiveness and "getting ahead" -- pursue mastery the same way a zen gardener does. It's very enjoyable to be good at useless things.
Though, as it turns out, software is eating the world, and every analog hobby I've picked up eventually wants to become a computer hobby. You can choose to resist this entirely, or give in a bit. The analog part is still there waiting for you whenever you're tired of starting at rectangles.
(Example A: FM synthesis ideas should obviously be reimplemented in python... Oh wait, super collider exists, and now this cheap USB game pass I had lying around is an FM synth. But I've still got a small pile of synths to play with.)
(Example 2: Birds are cool. Eventually I found my way into bird song id with machine learning, but I can now always justify a long walk in the woods as field research...)
Oh but now if I want to find a publisher in this era of a totally saturated market the game should look nice, so I should spend some serious time on the graphic design and sell sheets and writing up the game rules and designing graphics to put in the game rules and making and editing pitch videos...on my computer.
Oh and it's really hard to find enough playtesters to play the game or publishers to look at the game (especially during the pandemic)...unless I make a digital version on Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia, and playtest on the computer.
Oh, people are getting used to certain things being automated for them like the setup in Tabletop Simulator, so now I'm expected to... write code in Lua to automate player setup or handle round cleanup and make things easier and faster.
Or, I don't really want to spend thousands of hours on hundreds of playtests to make sure this game is balanced / no first player advantage / etc...so I'll write Python scripts to model the gameplay and run a bunch of Monte Carlo simulations to analyze the data.
I almost spend more time on the computer than not for this analog hobby nowadays. Especially when working on games that are past the initial pen and paper and basic components phase.
When things largely moved online for the pandemic, it was a great opportunity to reach publishers I normally couldn't without going to a convention overseas, and yet I lost almost all motivation to work on board game design that year. Still had some great ideas for my designs, but I couldn't get myself to do much more than write those ideas down.
Eventually just started coding video games again. Figured if it's going to end up on the computer anyway, might as well make a video game to start and not have to have a publisher in the first place.
Which reminds me of one other important point: "you don't have to monetize your joy."
https://repeller.com/trap-of-turning-hobbies-into-hustles/?f...
But I would like to find an audience that enjoys playing my designs, and pretty much the only way to find an audience is to get your game published via Kickstarter or a publisher (there are other methods, like Print and Play and The Game Crafter, but the potential audience is a tiny fraction of other methods, especially since there's already too many board games released every year by publishers to keep up with. I myself have slowed way down in my game acquisitions and the number of games I try every year, I've run out of room in the house and what I do have don't get played enough to warrant keeping anyway).
Otherwise I'm just designing games purely for the hell of it, and I almost might as well be solving Sudoku puzzles or playing Chess instead.
Also despite it being easier to develop and test board games, I've had a super hard time getting any luck in the industry. I've had a meetings with several publishers, but only got one game signed in about 5 years of trying.
But It's a lot easier if you're a known personality. Like I'm friends with a few people that have made more progress in less time because they volunteer a lot of time in the industry and are pretty well known...one woman has a podcast, works for a game manufacturer, has helped run a few board game conventions, and has three games in the pipeline after in less than half the time I've been trying, but she is fully immersed in the world so it's easier, whereas I'm juggling it with other interests and a job that has nothing to do with the industry. I could be putting myself out there more, but I just don't have the energy for it.
Whereas back when I used to only make video games, I was usually knocking out one or two web games a year, just on my own, and some were getting played millions of times, no publisher needed. If you played Flash games back in the day, there's a chance you played something I made. I still run into random people that have played my Flash games. Two coworkers at my current job alone played them over a decade ago. It has gotten harder to get back into that now that I'm older, slower, and have a wife and two dogs that need my attention, though.
I've considered using Twine for some story-based games before. How are you using it for playtesting?
I'm playing with a design using some decks of cards; Twine seems like it has the right amount of functionality to manage a few different decks without having to print them out. The Twine app is then just a few buttons to draw from different decks, and is really easy to hand off to players. (not that I actually have playtesters at this point, or anything worth playtesting beyond my housemates. :P )
Trying to have fun over getting results.
Maybe getting into some different things that involves new people and subjects.
For myself: the drive, and the creativity, only come back if I stop working for an extended period of time (weeks). I need a lot of idle time and some boredom before I feel creative again, let alone want to touch a keyboard, but if I wait long enough it always happens.
I promise you the creativity and desire is still there. It could be more that the current job (or something else) is suppressing it, and less that you haven’t recovered something you lost.
For me it was first weeks, and then months. And as for the last time, took six years.
I’ve represented my country and competed abroad. After burning out racing, I weirdly couldn’t enjoy it as a hobby anymore.
Perfectionism was definitely a factor. The main thing for me was the lack of learning new stuff.
When you’re a beginner, the initial steep learning curve can be really fun. Then it flattens out once you’re an expert.
Maybe you could build a side project in a new language - or even step away from coding for a while and learn something completely different.
I'm in a somewhat similar situation to you, but replace the 3 years with 10 years. I had many periods of 'minor' burnout along the way that I ignored or ploughed through, which in hindsight was a pretty big mistake.
Around August last year I just couldn't continue. I wasn't sleeping, I was frequently run down, and I was self-medicating more and more with drugs and alcohol. It eventually got to the point where simply opening my laptop would elicit a fight or flight response.
I was lucky enough to be in a secure enough financial situation to largely take 6 months off. If you're in a position to do this, I highly recommend it.
I uninstalled gmail, slack, etc. from my phone. I considered getting a dumb phone, but settled for turning off push notifications for everything instead. I went away with my girlfriend for a week and left all my tech at home except for my kindle (literally the first time I've been disconnected for more than a couple of days in probably 20 years). I exercised as much as possible and spent time in nature going for walks, etc.
I've been back at it part time for the last few months. Gradually I felt the feelings of burnout being replaced with feelings of boredom, which is hopefully my brain's way of saying that it's starting to repair itself and ready to slowly return to work.
I'm still nowhere near back to peak productivity, but I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that I may never get back there. I'm 36 and probably would have dropped dead of overwork by 50 if I kept up the tempo of the last 10 years anyway.
I'm not 'cured' by any means, but I believe things are slowly getting better.
My advice to you is to be kind and patient with yourself. Try not to stress about not having a side-project, and instead just focus on self-care for a while. Someone posted this on HN a few weeks back and it really hit close to home for me: http://www.robinhobb.com/blog/posts/38429
And yeah - very powerful piece of writing. She's a published fantasy author and I'm going to try one of her novels (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77197.Assassin_s_Apprent...)
Anyway. Five years on, haven’t worked since other than very lightweight consultancy. Live in the woods.
Still wake up at 0430 every morning in a panic. Still grind my teeth. Still flinch every time I hear my phone. Incapable of being kind to myself.
There’s a point of no return, beyond where the brain damage is irreparable. You can learn to live with it, but you can’t ever get rid of it.
I’m damaged, but functional - managed to build a house with my own hands this spring, while writing an ISO27k1 ISMS, while living off grid - I don’t just sit around on the couch - hell, don’t have a couch.
So yeah. Coping rather than being cured is the best many can hope for - and I’m just about coping.
I hope you find a path forward where you have health and happiness.
It does get better - consciously, I’m a much happier and calmer person than I was - but whatever part of me it is that screams in their sleep and kicks me out of bed in the pre-dawn hasn’t improved one jot. I wish it would.
I think my biggest since issue was - and probably continues to be - very poor work/life balance (no hobbies, basically no social life outside of work, etc). Obviously it's hard to disentangle cause and effect, but I suspect a prerequisite for getting burnout is having a mania or hyper-fixation on work.
Of course I'd expect someone already burning out to deceive themselves and game their own metrics (like reading and answering emails at night and not counting the time spent).
Video games allowed me back into the mode of thinking without any sense of external requirement. It was all on me to decide how deep I went and for how long. Eventually I played until I achieved boredom after over 900 hours. (Not all at once! Over months.)
From that point of boredom I could see how much energy I had channeled into something pointless, and realized I had recovered. Then I started channeling that work into home renovations and other tangible efforts. Even coding for family projects!
But I never got the motivation back to code for profit again. I’m done with that part of my life.
If you don't enjoy side projects any more, don't force it.
Better side projects would be something offline like improving your personal fitness, learning a new (non-computer) hobby, leveling up your cooking skills, and other real-world skills.
Forcing side projects on top of a day job is a recipe for returning to burnout.
I know how this feels. After a few bouts of burnout over my ~20 year career, I'm not convinced we fully recover from all of it. I think each bout leaves some permanent damage, along with increased risk of subsequent bouts. I made a similar comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22164678
The best general advice I can give is don't push anything. If you're not feeling motivated to engage in a side project, no problem, don't pursue one right now. Give things time and see how you feel after 2-6 months. Other general advice - reduce work hours if you can, exercise regularly, and relax. Morning/evening walks combine the latter two well.
Learning something new can also help combat burnout fogginess. I've found courses in something of interest work well (search Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, etc.). What I like about these is they're smaller in scale and more self contained than an open-ended side project. They allow you to commit time and energy in small chunks and at your own pace, but still leave you with something valuable in the end. E.g. over the years I've taken courses in Vue, Svelte, TypeScript, and a couple math refreshers. All enjoyable and worth while IMO.
Negative experiences tend to produce learned behaviors and reactions that we’re not aware of. These can be overcome, but it takes effort to identify them and implement deliberate changes in our behavior. There are various ways of doing this from self-guided books to professional therapy. It’s not exactly “damage” in the sense that it’s permanent or unaddressable, though. Viewing it as such can hamper recovery.
I guess veterans etc. who suffer throughout their lives with it just aren’t sufficiently resilient?
Sustained and elevated stress causes damage to the whole body, not just the brain. If understanding what you experienced as brain damage helps you accept how things happened and how things are, then all the more power to you.
But if there is something in your thought patterns that you want to change, but feel hopeless that your brain is damaged, I recommend trying to find another framing aside from "damage".
The bits that won’t go away are the dread, the insomnia, the constant anxious waiting for the sky to fall. I think I’ve pared off the behavioural bits over the years and have largely addressed them - but my mind continues to wrestle with intangible beasts.
My cousin has just qualified as a psychedelic therapist, so later this summer he’s visiting and we’re going to try breaking the cycle.
I mention this because pointing to the physicality of psychological conditions often induces a sense of fatalism that often isn't warranted per se, and can become some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Again, this does not mean people should just pull themselves up. It does suggest that people could in principle learn coping mechanisms (through therapy etc.) to a degree that allows for leading a fulfilling life, even with PTSD manifesting physically in the brain.
What I meant to convey, is that w/each bout I felt successively weaker and more sensitive to toxic patterns or conditions recognized from prior bouts. When experienced, I found they took me to bad places more easily (mentally, emotionally, etc.), and for longer durations. I felt less resilient.
And not just compared to who I was before each bout, but also when I inquired, or compared myself, to teammates next to me going through the same conditions. They often didn't feel as affected or concerned. Is that b/c they never experienced burnout? Is it b/c I have, and am more sensitive to it or have lingering effects? I don't know.
But that's what I meant - I feel each bout with burnout takes more out of you, in a way that makes you less resilient to subsequent bouts.
I am in mid 30s now (single; kinda by choice; with no financial liability) and it feels like it’s some kind of fake life I’m living at work even though I know that people one forth of my skill have lived it through and make it through 55 and all.
I considered switching caterers like studying public policy etc or sometimes just doing a one year MBA from somewhere but even the thought scares the shit out of me (thought of MBA I mean). I like history, literature. I often fantasise about working in film making (industry) (not something to do with computers though). I had done woodworking and I had really liked it. Then I dropped.
I am slowly trying to make peace with it. Trying to get into some nice MNC for 6-7 years and kinda stick around and then a stock of things after that.
Why I’m not exploring other fields is because one thing I don’t want in my life at this stage is not earning a living - bills and saving for emergency (in this country you gotta do that; there’s no healthcare).
I think I’m not alone like this. There are many people like me. Or that’s the hope. Maybe I’ll make it somehow.
I think I should meet some kickass career counsellor or make a long post on some subreddit. I had tried here once. In fact that’s how I had created this account.
I’d suggest a good therapist to try to understand what you really want out of this one life - I am in the same boat right now, thinking about what I want to do next whether in work or in life. I tend to prioritize lifestyles over specific work/career related goals, but I often get sucked into spending all my energy at work. This gets me paid, and well, but I tend also to burn out after a time when I don’t feel like I can focus on other things.
I for one hope there’s something out there that really calls to me more than programming jobs, but if not or I can’t find it then hopefully I’ll be able to find a life I find worth living regardless.
Shitty work life balance in the software field is one of the reasons I lack passion in the field. People say "try US/EU companies". That's bollocks. Those companies actually propagate it. They have these offshore centres so that they will get cheap talent and they can expect them work their own time zone hours and then match US TZ if nothing then daily for a nightly "sync".
Anyway, I have tried finding a career counsellor and have failed so far. I guess I will keep trying to find it out.
You could just keep making money at faang until there’s an idea that calls you.
I was not really burnt down but I noticed I started to loose enthusiasm for “The Craft” (of programming). Surprisingly, what reignited the spark was starting to watch and interact with people livecoding on Twitch. I don’t know what it was, maybe watching people doing THEIR side projects in a playful and relaxed environment make me rediscover the fun aspects of programming.
Writing software without purpose is boring. Writing software to earn a living frequently aligns with business objectives, but not your own. It can absolutely wear you down.
Before worrying about your love for software, find your calling. What you want to breathe into the world. Whether you use software or not to get there won't matter.
And it's totally fine if you don't do any of this. Life doesn't have rules, and you don't have to fit a mold.
For purely code stuff, I tend to learn a new language when I don't want to program anything. I particularly like ones with non-mainstream philosophies as they provide a different perspective on the craft. I don't do much with the languages I learn but it usually kicks me back into regular coding.
I developed back pain cycling at some point, which turned out to me coming from right hamstrings. Regular stretching solved it immediately.
And a bike fitting is a thousand percent worth the effort. Cycling is a bit weird in that it's a low impact sport, but uses very repetitive motions. If things are well adjusted, you can ride bikes til you're ninety. And if they're not, you can slowly exacerbate bad pressure on the knee until it's a nightmare.
Seems like you’re putting the cart before the horse. I’d only start worrying if I actually had something I wanted to build but couldn’t muster the gung-ho to do it because of burnout.
As it stands, it just seems like you have better uses for your time.
I see a lot of comments here have already echoed this same sentiment.
All of my side projects from the time are extremely uninspired.
I experienced something similar after moving to college from my hometown. Obviously the food was much different to what I had at my home. This led to me having cognitive and physical issues for 5 years that I stayed in the dorms. I used to feel like a zombie, no motivation or enthusiasm and a host of other symptoms. During my internship in my final year, I was diagnosed with something similar to IBS.
The solution was just to be conscious about what you eat and how it makes you feel.
The food at my internship was of such poor quality that it made me feel drained for many hours after eating. This was what prompted me to get checked seriously.
Am I better now? On average yes, but never like I was before moving to college. I eat a very restrictive diet. Semi permanent damages to one's system is not uncommon for people diagnosed with IBS.
[1] https://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new-cholestero...
Having time off, ideas came back.
It is hard to know what you want if you don't know what you are and what you want to be. During my six months long seek vacation I had a very small side project because for me the issue was not the technical aspect but the stress that you always had to perform. I was working for a mobile gaming company and on top of your job you had to play, find bugs, join stand-ups, communicate on slack... This was all fake for me and stressed me out to the point of no return. In the end it was just faking enthusiasm.
I am not like that. I love what I do, but when I am off I am off and please leave me alone. Some companies push you to always have an opinion and what is the problem with not having one from time to time? What is the problem with just doing something else in your free time? If I want to have a side project I will. If I don't, I will be doing something else.
To cut my rant short what really helped me was to recognise my problem and through professional help I could accept myself for what I am. Don't overdo, take your time to know where you are and where you want to go and get back when you are ready. If it helps reduce the amount of working hours and try to enjoy you free time.
The best things I've found to cope with burnout are tasks that can't be optimised, are unimportant, and low-medium intensity. Just going for a walk is a good way to start, as is helping friends and family with things they need to do.
Spending months in front of a TV watching Star Trek doesn't help, nor does attempting to invent a new, marketable product. It has to be somewhere in the middle.
In my experience, side projects require much more mental effort than initially thought. At different stages of life, we have different levels of available bandwidth.