I remember reading this published insight[1] from Marissa Mayer a few months ago:<p><i>Burnout is caused by resentment</i><p>Which sounded amazing, until this guy who dated a neuroscientist commented[2]:<p><i>No. Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It's the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your brain to associate work with failure.<p>Subconsciously, then eventually, consciously, you wonder if it's worth it. The best way to prevent burnout is to follow up a serious failure with doing small things that you know are going to work. As a biologist, I frequently put in 50-70 and sometimes 100 hour workweeks. The very nature of experimental science (lots of unkowns) means that failure happens. The nature of the culture means that grad students are "groomed" by sticking them on low-probability of success, high reward fishing expeditions (gotta get those nature, science papers) I used to burn out for months after accumulating many many hours of work on high-risk projects. I saw other grad students get it really bad, and burn out for years.<p>During my first postdoc, I dated a neuroscientist and reprogrammed my work habits. On the heels of the failure of a project where I have spent weeks building up for, I will quickly force myself to do routine molecular biology, or general lab tasks, or a repeat of an experiment that I have gotten to work in the past. These all have an immediate reward. Now I don't burn out anymore, and find it easier to re-attempt very difficult things, with a clearer mindset.<p>For coders, I would posit that most burnout comes on the heels of failure that is not in the hands of the coder (management decisions, market realities, etc). My suggested remedy would be to reassociate work with success by doing routine things such as debugging or code testing that will restore the act of working with the little "pops" of endorphins.<p>That is not to say that having a healthy life schedule makes burnout less likely (I think it does; and one should have a healthy lifestyle for its own sake) but I don't think it addresses the main issue.</i><p>Then I finally realized how many times I've burnt out in my life, and I became much better into avoiding it. Which is really hard to do.<p>And it seems to me that this is one of the many points that Ben Horowitz talks about on his <i>What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology</i>[3]<p>[1] <a href="http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment.html" rel="nofollow">http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment.html#comment-478842490" rel="nofollow">http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment...</a><p>[3] <a href="http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-difficult-ceo-skill-managing-your-own-psychology/" rel="nofollow">http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-diff...</a>
These ideas all seem like bandaids to me if they aren't personal goals that you care about. I've seen studies that show that burnout is caused by sustained imbalance between your personal goals and how you're living your life. This can also happen retro actively. For example, if you were to find out that you weren't going to get paid for a job you'd been working the last 6 months on, you would almost instantly be burned out. That is, if you were doing it for the money of course. Your personal goal is to spend a certain percentage of your time on things that will increase your wealth, and if you weren't to get paid, the sudden overwhelming sense of losing six months would burn you out immediately.<p>Likewise in a startup, I think the studies would say that you find yourself burned out because at some point, something inside you says, "80 hours a week for the last year wasn't really completely in line with all my personal goals. I have a goal to have personal relationships, spend time with my family, and exercise, yet this startup is the only thing I've been doing." At some point a voice inside says, "It wasn't worth it."<p>People have very different goals, so results will vary as to what causes burnout, but as a boss, something I know will cause burnout is anything that will pull the rug out from under an employee regarding benefits that they expected to receive. For startups this is super tricky because some employees are expecting an IPO with big payouts, and when they get disillusioned about that, there's really no way to stop the burnout.
I feel like this is useful information for much more than just people involved in work. Specifically, as PhD students, my partner and I (and pretty much all of our colleagues) often face burnout, and are always looking for ways to combat it.<p>I quite like the sound of most things in this article, and think I will try to adopt some of the principles to my study and see if they will help. Specifically, I need to get back into fiction, because that really did help when I read lots a few months ago. Also, evening walks sounds like a beautiful way to wind down.<p>Does anybody else here have other advice on ways to combat burnout during a PhD? I (and every other student) would be most interested to hear.
It's funny. I work in New Zealand, and I do my 37.5 hours a week as required (any more than that, and I get over-time) but that 37.5 hours takes such. a. long. time!<p>When I was working for a startup, and working from whatever time I woke up, till 3am in the morning, time flew by so quickly. I could easily do 80 hours, and have great fun. I was creative, and energised.<p>As soon as I went from a startup to working for a large employer and was forced to do 8.30am till 5.00pm all my productivity and energy flew right out the window.<p>Sigh.
Excellent article.<p>This is the first time I've deliberately activated the Kudos mouse-over thing on this guy's blog.<p>I can't count the number of times I've done it accidentally.
I've been sitting here at my computer since almost 8pm yesterday. It's 8PM now. I can absolutely identify with the OP. It's not just startups, having a full time job and going to uni as a full time student was a stupid move.<p>It's bad enough I work myself like this but there's also all that caffeine. The coke, chocolate bars, energy drinks I consume and not forgetting the smoking.<p>I tell myself 2 more months and I'll graduate. In the meantime I've made moves by dropping the nicotine, dropping coke and energy drinks and keeping a large bottle of water with me while I work. When the water runs out, that's my cue to get up, stretch, refill and maybe take a power nap.
This article really hit home for me. If I could I would take this advice, but I literally can't afford to. My only option is to continue working 12 hour days or I'll actually become homeless. So if anyone here has been through a similar situation I would appreciate any advice you may have to offer.
You have a good regiment for burnout.<p>You can always feel burnout approaching which is usually about 2 weeks before it really happens (waking up and dreading working on the same thing).<p>Stop what you're doing and do something totally different for a while. For me its working on a vastly different project and spending weekends in the mountains.<p>This has never failed me yet as I always re-approach the offending project with the same drive I had when starting it.
Obama makes the right call on the suits. Here's Dan Ariely on "ego depletion": <a href="http://danariely.com/2012/08/15/understanding-ego-depletion/" rel="nofollow">http://danariely.com/2012/08/15/understanding-ego-depletion/</a>
while often overlooked in our industry, it's the importance of hitting the "reset" button. we're making sure clients are happy, sales people have the information they need, and that can creep very hard into the rest of they day.
instituting a "hard stop" can go a long way, it did for me. i've spent 12-15hrs at the office, per day, dealing with meetings, questions, providing guidance and the like.
eventually you must put you interests first. whether it's picking up that book, working on that personal project, or calling that friend who works in a different field.
ultimately, the problems are not crazy new, but it's the day to day that burns people out. there's knowledge to be shared but when you feel like day in and day out it's the same old, then all the more reason to institute basic guides/metrics that let us know things are on track.
vacation is equally important, truly the 'reset' button, get off the grid. after all, it things fall apart while we're getting replenished, it's time to rethink our priorities.
Coincidentally, NPR profiled a productivity researcher from HBS this morning. (I haven't been able to find the segment yet, but when they post it I will link to it.) According to her research, the most important driver of productivity is motivation which aligns with Daniel's comment.<p>Her recommendation for improving motivation? Use tools like IDoneThis to track what you've accomplished each day and take the time now and again to reflect on your progress through that journey.<p>At Google, we had an internal product called Snippets which is functionally identical to IDoneThis. I'd always believed the purpose of Snippets was to improve communication across a team and company about the contributions of employees. But perhaps I missed perhaps the more important benefit: motivation management and burnout prevention.
Excellent post. One of the top reasons I don't let employees work more than 40 hours a week, and start kicking people out of the office at 5:30 (if they're still there).
Totally. I just left Contour and realized I spent most of my twenties behind my laptop. I was completely exhausted and it has taken me almost six months of doing nothing to have my full energy back.
I wrote a similar piece about enjoying the ride. I missed a lot of it at Contour. <a href="http://marcbarros.com/enjoying-the-ride/" rel="nofollow">http://marcbarros.com/enjoying-the-ride/</a>
Judging from the comments and the articles, it seems like I've never had a proper burnout. I always recover within days, this seems to be a longer matter however. The author talks about warning signs, and many of you mention you can feel it coming, even two weeks advanced.<p>Would it be possible to describe this to someone like me? Not the burnout, but the warning signs?
I cannot understand people who feel "on top of the world" yet are still working within a business that is not cash-flow positive month to month.<p>"We didn't need a break, we felt great. Better than great."<p>Yet they are still burning up runway. Just lunacy.