Fighting burnout
How do you combat being burnt out? In the midst of launching our product and between work and other life things, I'm all out of energy and motivation to do anything. Help.
What can you take off of tour plate during the busy season? Get a housekeeper to keep your house clean, a landscaper for your yard. Let Amazon deliver your groceries and maven meals make your dinner. I'm assuming the end of a product release will mean good things for your career. Count these services as a cost against your future cash flows. Use the time you gain rest or do things you enjoy. Love other people well. Sleep.
seconded for outsourcing the daily chores/duties. eat well and healthy, and prioritize sleep above all. even if you have to pay for these two things to get done regularly, good food and good sleep will raise your mood by 80% by themselves. if you can only do one, make sure you get enough sleep - It's the most natural anti depressant.
Workout. Don't skip the gym. It's very easy to get caught up with booze or cannabis as a crutch for burnout stress. Neither have the goal of separating yourself from work and putting yourself first and work second.
This. It’s easy to forget that working out gives you energy not takes it away.
I have been neglecting working out lately. Thanks for the reminder.
For me burnout comes when I’m off balance with too much work and I don’t even care about the product or if I do a good job on it. Take a quick short vacation like a long weekend, do something nice for someone else like a volunteer night or offer to help someone meet their goals, and then reaffirm how happy the users/client will be with the product launch by talking, asking, and listening how great and happy their lives will be when the new product launches. This usually gets me out of the career funk.
I'm definitely way off balance. You can only work so many 15-20 hour days before you're just done. Ya know?
If there are senior (tenure and age) folks that you have access to, discuss with them. When it's crunch time you'll always be busy, but that shouldn't be all the time; if you're finding that it is, the senior folks may be able to help with time management strategies. Working with them had helped me a lot with time management and planning.
There are some stop-gap measures that people will recommend (deep breathing, sleep well, etc.) but the ultimate solution has to come from a structural change. If engineers are working those kind of hours, a project manager (or whoever plays that role) has messed up. It's worth talking to your project manager, people manager, or others who can influence schedule, scope, and resourcing. At least let them know the toll this is taking, because they may genuinely not be aware. A good people manager will be very alarmed by this, because engineers with these work hours will leave quickly. He or she can hopefully help in a variety of ways (removing some work from your plate, negotiating with higher-ups for a more realistic schedule, etc.).
Prioritize properly. Maybe it is time to stop and think whether your job accomplishments are worth to come before your personal life and family. Maybe you are overvaluing your job over other much more important things in life. This is very simple, people: underestimating a project and having to work overtime to catch up is an exception, not the rule. When overworking becomes the rule, then you have a serious planning/management problem. Now if you are overworked because of your own decision of setting extremely ambicious goals that cannot wait, then it's on you stop complaining and push through. How do you push through? Your dream has to be big enough. Just remember it's all about the journey, not the destination. If you're not enjoying the here and now you are not living, and you are wasting your life away for nothing.
Watch out for your mental health. It is really easy to slowly slip into depression when you are burned out or overstressed for an extended period of time. Time off and new job or different work responsibilities can help a lot. I particularly like backpacking for the complete mental disconnect you get, even if it is only for a couple of days.
But isn't it unfair that you are forced into enjoying backpacking because of the very fact that work life balance is off and you're stressed? I agree on loving mental disconnects, but I also wouldn't be caught dead backpacking if I didn't feel I had the need to be plugged in all the time
im with Google on this one. Backpacking is a truly amazing experience. I do it for fun regardless of if I "need" it. I highly recommend you try it some time.
For me it's about working on a project I'm really passionate about. If you aren't passionate about this project, you should look for something new.
Get a modafinil prescription from your doctor and say it's because of lack of energy in the day. My friend told me about this and now I'm super productive
just keep pushing through. after 5 yrs you will get used to it and start to need it or else become extremely bored. if you are truly burning out leave your startup and go work for google/Microsoft/Oracle.
I've been burnt out before, there's no way I would've been able to "just push through" for five years…
Right?