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Ask HN: How do you recover from burnout?

20 points by throwaway14454 ↗ HN
I have been working for several years now, as a software engineer, as well as an engineering manager. Right now, I'm jaded and uninterested in my current job. I have no motivation to work, or make things better. I spoke to a few different companies, but am failing to see myself motivated with the change as well.

I have switched a few teams and roles internally to see if that helps reenergize me.

How do you all deal with this? How do you get motivated again, and light that spark?

I still have several productive years, but am not able to take advantage of those to make life more comfortable for my family.

11 comments

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gustavo456
A job is a job and it’s not there to be perfectly aligned with your passions and interests. There is nothing wrong with not being constantly obsessed with improvement and career path. I found that doing things that the 12yo version of myself would not be proud of for a prolonged amount of time takes a lot of joy away.

Taking some time off for self study has helped me a lot. Once every couple years I dedicate a couple months to play around and let my curiosity take me places. This might be a project, degree or undirected self learning. While this might not fix any day job disappointments, it helps to gain a fresh perspective and regain some of the time that I’d normally give to some organisation that pays the bills.

ldjkfkdsjnv
Just stop working so much. Especially if you work from home, just tell yourself you dont care if you get fired, and put in 15 hours a week. You might be surprised that management wont care all that much. I used to have this ego thing where I needed to be the top employee and it was burning me out, so I just dropped that and embraced mediocrity
Overtonwindow
I think it helps to identify precisely what burned you out in the first place, and include if that was a specific person. Once you can identify one thing then that might give an idea of what to remove or resolve to bounce back from burnout. Otherwise, you go back into a meat grinder for more potential burnout in the future. In my case, it was my boss. I had to leave a job and I did, and my burnout evaporated.
errantmind
For me, the cause of burnout was working for someone else instead of being an owner of the output of my labor. It feels totally different.
cosmedev
How did you transition from working for someone else to working for yourself? I been trying to find a way to do it for sometime now, but I'm still not skilled, savvy, consistent, etc. enough to make it work.
errantmind
I quit my previous job and took some time to unwind (several months). Then I started making products and putting them out there. One had some success. I'm working on more products now.

I quickly realized 'doing' is the only thing that matters, not 'ideas' nor 'thinking about doing'

cosmedev
Thank you for replying, so I assume you have savings to be able to quit before you started making money, how much time did you have in terms or money?

how do you promote the products that you make?

errantmind
I had a lot saved, multiple years of 'runway' by living way below my means for many years.

I promoted them wherever the people hung out, like particular subreddits with high concentrations of my target audience.

There is no guarantee it works, but life has been better since I started down this path.