What do you do when you're feeling Tech burn out? Worked for some great companies. I have a good manager now and I just am feeling so burnt out right now. It's hard to find the motivation. And I can't stop working LOL or I would. How do you get over that hurdle? I have a friend who when he hit burnout, he quit his job and literally just went off grid. My burnout is not that extreme and like I said I do like my job and the company I work for. I just feel overwhelmed and been talking to my other tech buddies and it's not an unusual feeling.
Slow down and start thinking. You will notice you are doing not the high priority things, you need to delegate some items to somebody else and some things better to be dropped
Reward yourself, take it easy and buy what you have been craving, porsche, mercedes, etc. better spend on yourself and enjoy life than burning out
I don’t believe in temporary solutions, therefore my reply is about how to “solve” burn out problem by changing your life to a state where it simply isn’t a thing. The key you have to understand is that modeling, logic, problem solving, conscious thinking, “evolved” (if you can use that word) in order to help humans survive in the environment. It is partially based on self-preservation mechanism, which is taxing on the body in many ways. Conscious thinking and planning is a very resource-consuming process that 1) costs brain power “units” (and you have a limit on what’s available per day), as well as 2) it takes away the awareness of your surroundings while you are involved in conscious thinking. What this means is that it tires you out mentally while also “stealing” life away from you as you become less and less consciously aware of your surroundings because your awareness is consumed by the conscious thinking process. And this lack of awareness in life little by little erodes your intuitive thinking (which is much more powerful than conscious thinking, you get “dumber”, unable to see a broader picture), and removes all the little joys and pleasures out of life (no time to enjoy sunset colors when you have a project due!). You become a biological machine of sorts whose only job is to churn out code. The burnout feeling, mental fog, inability to concentrate, inability to focus, lack of interest, apathy, etc - are all the symptoms to what I’m talking about. They are symptoms of you being mentally exhausted, experiencing a growing lack of mental resources. What makes the matters worse is you become too identified with the conscious thinking, you no longer connect with life, with your own body, and you start to FEEL like a biological machine whose job is to work perfectly and get the job done in predictable perfect ways. And when your body doesn’t behave the way you want it to, because it is not meant to - you force it. Tired? Drink coffee. Feeling depressed? Get pills, therapy, and a daylight lamp. Feeling unhappy? Go buy something. Feel bored and tired? Binge watch Netflix. You view symptoms as individual events, that aren’t otherwise connected, that need to be taken care of - and the modern world offers an easy solution for every symptom. Due to the lack of awareness, you fail to step back, look at your life objectively and ask “What the hell is it that I’m doing? Why am I living my life this way?” All this leads to you failing to notice that your body is giving you all sorts of subtle signs that it is tired, that the way you are using it is unnatural and it’s killing you. This process is very gradual, you can’t get burned out in a week. If you don’t react and adjust how you live your life then the symptoms will keep getting worse and will eventually lead to extreme burn out, anxiety, panic attacks, mental illness, heart attack, physical illnesses, etc. The worse it gets the harder it is to do something about it. So what’s the solution? First step would be to do whatever is necessary to offload as much of conscious thinking as possible. Remove all the distractions like social media, YouTube, music, TV, news, movies, audiobooks, etc, and replace it with simply doing nothing. Simply sit still in one place in quiet with eyes closed and do absolutely nothing. You probably won’t even make it a minute before you’ll experience an extreme urge to check your phone, start thinking hard about work, etc, etc, you’ll feel extremely bored and a strong sense of uneasiness. Like a drug addict. These are all symptoms of an overworked mind, and of a mind that is used to receiving constant hits of dopamine (social media, TV, etc). Keep working on removing distractions and learning how to be OK with being bored. Soon you’ll learn boredom doesn’t exist. Of course, don’t just spend all your time indoors and It get involved in hobbies that have repetitive physical tasks, help you get out of the house. And when you do these hobbies, you still practice “doing nothing”, meditating. Second step would be to bring awareness back into your life. There are many approaches you can take like meditation, mindfulness. What I like is to do is to simply note things around me as I live my life. I make note of how the wind feels on my skin, what the temperature of environment is, what shape the pen is, what color it is, how heavy it is, etc, etc. Basically the key here is to feel and experience my surroundings, be aware of what’s around me. Not consciously thinking and resolving it as a logical puzzle, but simply noticing. I know it sounds strange, but what’s going to be even more strange is when you’ll find that you feel more pleasure from simply watching sunset, the ocean waves, feeling the wind on your face, than buying a new car. After a couple of months, maybe half a year, there will be a realization that you don’t actually need anything to be happy, because you can just be happy. You can stop searching for happiness in the external, and this will free up a ridiculous amount of time and mental energy. You’ll realize how simple life really is on a level that cannot be described as it is too simple. It will feel a lot like waking up from a dream. You’ll be able to look at people, humanity, as an impartial observer, you’d be able to observe humanity like you observe ants. All this will give a great boost to your intuition, you’ll start having moments where you ask yourself a question, state a problem, and you simply get an answer without any conscious thinking process. It will feel like you didn’t think of an answer but you somehow just knew it. The thinking will still happen, but it will be in the unconscious and you’ll be simply made aware of the result. You’ll experientially learn how to offload task to the unconscious mind without having to worry about them consciously. You’ll learn that you are not your thoughts, feelings or emotions, on a deep experiential level. Your conscious mind, logical thinking, will become a tool that you will use in certain circumstances and no longer your main mode of operation. You will also rediscover the same joy you felt about life as a child, as that is your birthright and the baseline of your being. Step three, which kind of goes together with the other two, would be to clean out all the childhood traumas, depressions, anger issues, all the psychological garbage that is consuming your mental resources. Getting rid of repressed emotions, psychological problems can be very difficult, incredibly painful, and you’re likely to go through most horrible depressions, loneliness, etc, etc, but all shall pass. You’ll have to do it because it will be painfully obvious to you how much it is slowing you down. Here you will get rid of any drug habits, unhealthy patterns, etc, it will mostly happen on its own as byproduct of your inner work. Step four, which goes together with the other three, would be to really adjust your environment, people you speak with, etc, to what you really want such that living is effortless. You’re likely to find work such that you only spend a few hours a day consciously thinking, and the rest of work is done intuitively, with awareness. Despite working less, the amount of work you get done will be exponentially more. You’ll prioritize effortlessness of living over everything else, in many cases by simply changing how you react to things and how you approach life. You may currently think that it isn’t possible, or sounds like an impossible dream, but you’ll be surprised. I know it is a lot to take in and much more than what you asked for, but I hope it gives you a clear sense of direction for dealing with your burnout. Also check out my replies in this thread as it has useful practical information: https://us.teamblind.com/s/SHty8vmm Let me know if you have any questions.
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Buy an expensive house. The mortgage is a real solution to all burnout issues.
Ha!
Ha ha.. I feel burnout as well and if I did not have that home loan .. I would have surely taken a 6 month sabbatical..