Burnout is some part of your body and/or mind telling you you need to stop what you're doing and find a healthier path.<p>So, dealing with burnout requires you to identify what it is about your current work/life situation that is causing some part of you to apply the brakes.<p>For me, it's been many different things, but it has included: both fear of failure and fear of success; working for too long on projects that seem destined to fail; working with people who have values I don't share; resentments about all kinds of things that are mostly outside my control (and therefore pointless).<p>My methods for identifying these issues have included various emotional awareness/healing techniques that allow us to learn about our own subconscious beliefs and behavioural patterns, and then to take steps to adopt more healthy behaviours by aligning our internal thoughts with our external activities.<p>Feel free to email me if you want suggestions of specific techniques that have worked for me (email in profile).
Have. Other. Hobbies.<p>If you do anything over and over, you'll get sick of it. A well-balanced life is important. Start exploring other things in life that you find interesting; there is plenty to keep you occupied.
Take a month off and out of the house. Leave your computer at home and turn off any notification for anything that causes you anxiety or stress.<p>If you can't because you are a startup <i>founder</i> and it's not making enough money then you have some hard choices. Either ask for help from people that love you, get day job, or go into debt to get your sanity back.<p>At the end of your life the $2k that month off in Costa Rica cost you will be a pittance compared to everything else you've earned.<p>At the end of the month off evaluate your life.<p>Do you still like programming? If the answer is only "kinda sometimes" figure out what you actually like about it and what you hate about it and shift things around to match those.<p>Are you out of shape? Start biking to get around or get a running buddy. Try to get 15 minutes of heart pumping exercise every day and work towards at least one day a week with over an hour of heart pumping exercise. Do some strength training too. callisthenics is my jam since its super cheap and effective, but some people need social encouragement and take better to things like water polo.<p>Do you hate your wife? Fix the relationship. See a therapist. If your wife won't work to fix it leave her. Unfaithfulness isn't just cheating.<p>How's the diet? Cut the fucking soft drinks to 0 and start eating something flavourful, protein / fiber rich every day. I do savoury omelettes in the morning (fresh thyme, soy sauce, mushrooms, onions and jiggled eggs) but whatever it is make sure you have at least one meal every day that is low in carbs, medium-low in fat and high in fiber and protein.<p>Get a hobby that doesn't involve a screen or prolonged mental energy. Photography, weaving, carpentry, painting. Start small and set realistic goals.<p>Quit tabacco. Prolonged use raises latent anxiety.<p>The key thing though is to not to try to do this all at once. Come up with a plan and implement only one change at a time about 4 to 6 weeks between each change.<p>Good luck!
Start by identifying the root cause of the burnout. I feel like programming itself shouldn't burn you out. It's usually other parts of coding for work that lead to burnout. I've interviewed thousands of developers over the years for books, research, jobs, and if I had to choose a single culprit I'd say the most common cause of programmer burnout is a really terrible codebase that viscerally painful to maintain.<p>I did my best to illustrate that here: <a href="https://twitter.com/AndrewStellman/status/896405621494382593" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/AndrewStellman/status/896405621494382593</a><p>Tangled, nasty, poorly maintained code is not an easy problem to fix. The first step is getting everyone on the team -- and especially the boss -- to recognize the real problem, and accept that fixing it will save more time than it costs.
Dont fall prey to Kanban. Just because you completed a story doesnt mean you should immediately pick the next one. Add estimates in days and if you complete in advance, use the rest of the time to relax or learn something else at your pace. Also, work from home more when you need rest.
For me, not cures, but some things that help:<p>- Work on shorter projects with clear goals and a clear end. Finish them and move on.<p>- Exercise is a priority more important than work. I can be flexible about when, but I never skip. Ever.<p>- If the source of burnout is never-ending support at your day job, take action. Alert your manager. Or start looking for a better job. Realize that no amount of money or security is worth the entirety of your life, attention, happiness & time.<p>- Work harder to identify and prioritize what you want. Recognize you can code every waking second and never finish what you want. So make sure you think more carefully about exactly what you want, and start figuring out how to spend your time on only what you want and nothing else.<p>- Make sure you're learning something new that you want to learn (and not something someone else wants you to learn.)<p>- Reserve time to socialize. Reserve time to get outside.<p>- If heading toward management is something that doesn't make you cringe and run, reflect on how you can improve the process that's burning you out. Can parts be delegated? Can you request assistance? Can it be done better? People problems and not software may be the source of your pain. Starting learning how to solve people problems. Read books about it, etc.
A bunch of people are suggesting "work from home". Which sounds great but at the same time impossible. I don't think I could convince my employer to let me. I'm sure I'm not alone.
Eat, sleep and exercise. Most devs I know who have burned out (myself included) hadn't ate well, slept well or exercised at all for months if not years before they burned out.<p>Also, there are a lot of comments here that basically amount to "stimulate your dopamine receptors with novelty more often." I would argue the opposite is what you want to be doing. Stop doing anything that has a high reward for little effort. Socialize in person instead of on social media. Learn to cook instead of eating out. Take up a sport instead of watching sport on TV. Use a boring language you already know to build a product that solves a real problem instead of learning a new language by building a toy product that accomplishes nothing. Etc.
1st step, listen to a Navy SEAL commander with 20 years experience [1] tell you about his take on day to day (acute) burnout:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Vp7fTgQ3g" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Vp7fTgQ3g</a><p>... at the minimum - it'll fire you up. His stuff is great for motivation.<p>2nd step, because long-term burnout (chronic burnout) is real:
Exercise + Hobbies + Family<p>...Make time or you WILL fail everyone in the long run - the literature on this is fairly established if I am not mistaken (sorry no refs).<p>1 - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocko_Willink" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocko_Willink</a>
- take a 6-month break<p>- if you can't afford, find a part-time low-stress job paying just your bills and try to slow down<p>- have interesting hobbies meeting people from outside tech purely for fun; if they become stressful in any way disengage without explanation and move away<p>- do saunas<p>- eat well, figure out which food makes you feel good long-term<p>- drink a lot of water<p>- get fit but don't train up to first symptoms of exhaustion, or you'd make your burnout way worse<p>- relax as much as you can<p>I had a friend who was driven to hospital by his bosses and stayed there for >6 months while cutting contact with the outside world completely. You don't want to go that far.
Have you ever read the label on those "natural herbal remedies" and thought, "it cures headaches after two to three days... that's about how long it takes for a headache to go away by itself."<p>I'd apply that same skepticism to pop-psychological advice.<p>It's also possible you're not actually burned out, but that this is a natural part of the ebb and flow of your emotional state. This isn't to say "just power through," but if you're a bit sick of it, you may find you naturally recover.
When the option to ditch the keyboard is not available (Ie. always for me), the way I deal with this, is to change what I am working on.<p>Ie. I may be weeks and weeks in networking code and get it to a reasonable point but then get fed up, and move to 3D graphics code, then on to the caching system and then back to the networking code and so on. None of these sub-systems are complete in 1 sitting, but taking this iterative approach gives me a few things:<p>- the change brings variety to the mind, which prolongs the burnout.<p>- every "round" of work, I will learn something, thereby building my knowledge bit by bit. It is good to consume this knowledge bit by bit, giving time for it to be absorbed, which this approach allows for.<p>- it means that at any one time, I have a good "overall" view of the state of the entire product.<p>- i notice things that I did not when working on that sub-system the first time. Fresh pair of eyes, almost.<p>Well, the disadvantage I suppose is that it is probably not the <i>most</i> efficient manner to work, but it keeps me relatively sane. Progress feels slow, but then there are moments where multiple sub-systems come together at the same time, and those are very rewarding.
You have to vary your routine, workout in the morning but in different ways on different days, play with your kids, visit friends for coffee, talk to your spouse, play a sport or put together a robot. Pick activities that are not in front of a screen so when you do burn the midnight oil or push yourself to finish those deadlines, it doesn't feel like your life is just in front of a command line.
Laptop off, phone off when you get home. Read science fiction or fantasy books, watch an engaging mini series, or get a Nintendo switch and run around in Breath of the Wild for 40 hours. Or get out and actually go camping. These are some of my burnout cures.
Browse reddit LOL.<p>Actually, sometimes, when I tired writing code, I will just go hangout with my friends, have some little chat or something.<p>Other hobbies also helps, like photography, cooking or just staring at sky, watch the cloud floating by. If you have a small astronomical telescope, then you can even see the stars (Well, plants actually and nebula if you do photography).<p>The key point is: Don't just write program, have some life. Good life will eventually give you better code in return.
I check alternative programming languages. D, Nim - there are a joy to use. I push them whenever I can. Sometimes I regret, sometimes people thank me for that. Novelty, novelty. I try to experiment with new things as much as I can. Is there some margin for trying out some new ways? Let's do that! Connecting with unfamiliar hardware, be it microcontrollers, SBCs or huge clusters, also gives your brain a refreshing fix of what it needs.
When dealing with burnout, you should identify what specific stressers exist for you in relation to programming, and then work to cut those stressers out from the process. I’m afraid that from person to person, programming burnout can come from different sources, so we’ll need more information first. For instance, is it specific aspects of the job / management? Is it the codebase itself, or a specific project you’re working on?
There's definitely been a lot of great material on HN about this in the past. If you haven't seen it, I invite you to check it out:<p><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?query=burnout&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?query=burnout&sort=byPopularity&pref...</a>
Every 6 months to a year I pick a new tooling language. New paradigm, nothing like what I've done before or use on a day to day basis. This gives me something "new" w/o having to change jobs.<p>Other hobbies, and keeping the screen off when I'm at home helps too.
What's burning you out? Too many hours? Bad coworkers? Bad management structure? A general anhedonic feeling towards work? Is it a feeling stemming from work and leaking into your life or is it a feeling stemming from your life and leaking into your work?
I build something super stupid. It often makes me feel better.<p>Also, lots of working out and meditation. It helps to keep life in perspective. Humans have pass many great filters and your life is better almost all who came before you.
Have a child. Get home to him / her every night and just look at that smile.<p>It's working for me better than any other thing I tried in the past. And obviously (?) we didn't even do it for helping me deal with burnout.
Have a network, as in family, friends, partner. Also, make them your priority over work. And as other have pointed out, do something else on your free time, and protect your free time.
You should never reach that stage where you feel like you are burned out. Then you are doing it wrong.<p>Slow down. Let things take time. Learn to say things took longer than planned. People who are not devs will not understand why you need rest sometimes.