How does your remote team beat burnout?

I have been working remotely for about seven years (six at Buffer, one at ReferralCandy). Here are some of the things we have tried:

• Managers setting an example (e.g. sharing in Slack when they are leaving for the day, not sending messages on the weekends)
• Managers to nudge people who have not taken a break in a long time
• Company-wide off days (so that people don't feel the pressure to reply to one another's messages)
• Proper quarterly or monthly planning and goal setting
• Have social channels to talk about things outside of work (e.g. books, cooking, travels, side projects)
• If possible, in-person meetups, even if it isn't the whole company

Not an easy problem to solve but I personally find that I feel burned out when I'm not working on things I want to or meaningful things. It helps if managers are quick to pick this up and adjust things if possible.

I've observed a minor feature in chat applications can accelerate burnout on remote teams: status indicators (online, away, etc.)

It encourages a focus on the appearance of work (e.g. not going "away") rather than the productive completion of tasks. It also sets the expectation that a message will receive an immediate response, regardless of whether you can stop your current task, leading to fewer blocks of uninterrupted work time.

This is just one of many places where a 1:1 transition from in-person work to remote work doesn't really correlate well, and remote-first companies can gain significant operative advantage by understanding this. Overall, I believe remote teams can manage burnout by having honest conversations about their methods and structure of communication.