Developer Burnout: Why it Happens and What We Can Do About It
The pandemic has exacerbated stressful work conditions for software developers. The good news is that there are many strategies developers can adopt to manage stressors while they contemplate larger, more impactful decisions.
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I burn out from time to time. What I've found is that burnout is your friend. It's a warning sign. It tells you to stop and re-evaluate your work. Because, at least for me, doing work that I actually enjoy is the answer. If I love what I'm doing, I get energy from it. Otherwise, it drains me and I burn out. It's that simple. At least for me.
I fully agree, once you catch what you enjoy doing, it would be the pivot, main source, the spine that maintains you going. and from another prospective, from what prospective you use to deal with what you are doing, why you are doing it, for how long and what is the reason of doing it, then "Clarity" would protect of burning out. I think.
Well said!
That's fine and dandy, but if you want to grow a successful startup the tasks that you don't enjoy are in fact the most pressing tasks to work on, because you would have been naturally avoiding them for so long already.
IMO you don't burn out from a few tasks that you don't enjoy. You might avoid those tasks, but that's about it. Burnout comes when what you don't like about your work outweighs what you do like.
It's all about energy flow.
When you don't like what you do, everything takes energy. If you love what you do, though, most of it gives you energy — and the few things that don't give you energy are easily handled.
For me, holding idealistic expectations of myself is the hardest thing to achieve in this respect. I know setting overly-ambitious targets can be very counter-productive. Incremental achievements definitely offer a more sustainable approach. But whenever I remind myself to "be realistic" or "not be too hard on myself," I feel like it's a slippery slope towards complacency. I'm all for being content - but I don't ever want to become complacent. And I think it's a very fine line.
I can 100% relate to this. What I've started doing is breaking down my ambitions into short-term goals, mid-term goals, and long-term goals. They go from (i) 1-month goals, (ii) 1-year goals, (iii) 3-year goals, (iv) 5-year goals, and (v) lifetime goals (these last ones I hope to one day achieve or at least try, but they're less well-defined since they're far into the future and are more likely to change since I could change my mind).
Then within each of those time-frames, my goals are categorized into (a) priorities, and (b) extras. The extras are things I don't not want to aim for because as you said, I don't want to become complacent and not push myself. But if I don't achieve them, I can rest assured at least I've achieved my priorities (hopefully), and the thing I didn't achieve was just an extra. At least this way, I don't feel such a poignant sense of failure.
Oh nice, I'm definitely going to try this. It's exactly what you said - I don't want to feel like I'm not pushing myself enough. I don't want to have any regrets. I know people who manage to be content even when they haven't achieved everything they want to achieve - they keep working towards their goals (i.e. they're not complacent) but they make room to enjoy life along the way (i.e. they see and maximize the positives they already have). I really think your "extra" column could help me achieve this.
Many thanks for the Clarification about Burning out. Clarity makes it clear and helps us to find out what wave we must ride in order to achieve what we are willing to achieve :)
It happened to me few times during my carrer. Usually afterwards I will have a depression episodes or even anxiety. I found that often my expectaions about how I perform or how good I am in everyday work are pretty high and that often I am extremely harsh about my performance and knowledge. Those thoughts will eventually lead me to working more, after hours, proper burnout. Just reading or learning more cause I just need to be safe and predict everything. That is not possible, so I am learning how to be more realistic and rational when it's coming to the everyday work.
Very insightful