Ask HN: Have you faced burnout for days?

(Disclaimer: Not a native speaker, probably some weird grammer&#x2F;syntax) I don&#x27;t know if what i had qualified as burnout, but these past three year i sometime felt mentally strained, with huge sleeping needs (but difficulty to get asleep), low motivation, low productivity at work and at home (and therefore more stress&#x2F;mental strain).<p>Two years ago, tried to take vacations, did some sport (this one somehow helped, but not as much as i needed, and couldn&#x27;t get motivated to do my best). I ultimately took a month leave and took my old student job, summer camp counselor, for two week. It worked. Around last month, i felt the same, but couldn&#x27;t take a long leave. My father (film set designer&#x2F;decorator&#x2F;constructor) was working on the set of a feature movie. i took four days (long weekend) to help him. Woke up every day at seven, did some woodwork, put some wallpaper, nailed&#x2F;screwed some planks, went to secondhand market&#x2F;junk shop with him, carried old furniture from there. I honestly don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s the work i did or the fact that did it with my father, but it has been i long time i never felt this good. So my advice: find a work you can do that&#x27;s time consuming, physical, that you find meaningful, and do it with someone you like spending your time with. Maybe juste one of these will suffice, i really don&#x27;t know. For the last question, in my experience, it&#x27;s both.

Hi, Time off might not always help. The burnout feeling will resurface when you go back to work. I am not able to give you any concrete suggestions as there are no specifics in the question.<p>With a little bit of conscious effort, we can channel burnout into helping our betterment. Try to accept that it is a normal reaction of your self trying to tell you something. Calm down a bit and try to work through your feelings. What is causing the depressing feeling? The lack of structure? Uncertainty of a problem? Lack of recognition? Workplace environment? Very little social interactions?<p>If you can isolate the problem, you can look for fixes. I believe everyone in the tech industry burns out once in a while. It is often indicative of a lack of balance somewhere. The trick is to, with time and practice, learn the triggers and symptoms of an approaching burnout. Then, you can address the issue before it grows into a full-fledged problem.

For me, any creative profession is draining. Creativity takes something out of you, picture it like a well you draw water from. If there is no source filling that well up again, eventually the well will dry up and you will hit rock bottom.<p>There came a point where I realized that if my work requires me to be drawing from my well of creativity, I have to make a _daily_ habit of replenishing it with inspiration so I have enough left for tomorrow.<p>Things that inspire me to write CSS are things like listening to new music, cooking a dinner, watching funny things on YouTube, and exploring my city on foot.<p>Try to make a daily habit if replenishing your well with the things that inspire you and it will really help make sure you have plenty of creativity to draw on as you need it :)

Is it so bad that productivity grinds to a halt like this? I can understand if your employer has Henry Ford posters on the wall to keep workers productive, but sometimes the best work is done when a worker gets <i>home</i>, as if home is some precious thing that is forcibly denied, because it represents a reward, and that the reward of work is only represented as enjoying the spoils of your labor at home.<p>This is, for want of better phrasing, the <i>rat race</i>, and quickly being swapped out for better work-life balance, increasingly being lambasted, and seen as generally not ideal for more and more people.<p>Burnout is such a catch-all term these days and is usually a word associated with the more negative aspects of 9 to 5 culture. It&#x27;s not a word in the vocabulary of high-performing people. High performance is not especial to 9 to 5 culture, or especial to those who have grit. High performance can be seen in unpaid work, or in work that <i>feels</i> more like work, simply because, there are different types of work, like body work, mind work, etc

I have suffered from this more then once in my career, it sucks and sorry you are experiencing it. Honestly for me at least, if I catch myself early enough in the process and can afford to take a few days or just pure R&amp;R it usually does the trick. But more commonly, I work too much, get too focused and then do that for too long and then poof, my productivity rests somewhere between a snail and a sloth and so does my attitude and ability to focus. Overall, I have learned to manage it better over the years, but when it does happen here are some of the things that help me when I am in sloth&#x2F;snail mode.<p>1. Time off (2-10 days usually), but it is mainly dedicated time away from computer&#x2F;phone&#x2F;electronic devices. Allow yourself only a very small time each day to check in on friends etc via social media or whatever, but otherwise put the electronics down and lock them up.<p>2. Do something active. The key here is physical activity, ride your bike, hike, swim or whatever you can do physically. Sometimes this is the hardest thing to do because when I get focused my exercise and outside time seems to be minimal and so getting motivated is the hardest thing, but after forcing myself 1-2 times it quickly becomes easier.<p>3. Get outside in the sun. Soak up some sun (safely of course), but get your body to reboot itself with some good ole Sun exposure.<p>4. Get some solid rest, take melatonin and Benadryl (to start) if needed, but get good rest. I have had to do take Benadryl the first couple of nights to get myself to sleep at a reasonable hour in the past (otherwise my brain racing keeps me awake), it just helped me kick start some rest.<p>Overall, the biggest thing is to distract your mind with physical activity and let your body refocus and reboot. Then try to keep this up at least 1-2 times a week and you will stay further away from burnout.

I&#x27;d imagine this is very individual and depends on your life in total.<p>How much are you sleeping each night? How well are you eating? How clear are your goals at work and how much do you able to progress along them? How much time are you spending with people who care about you and rejuvenate you?