Burnout Afterthoughts

Almost two years ago I had some thoughts about my programming burnout, which I was facing at the time. I had no idea where it came from, and what to do. I was devastated. I promised some update so here it is.

Understand yourself is the key

It is complicated matter to understand yourself good enough to have the answer. Why do you feel that way? Why the feeling doesn’t stop you for prolonged period of time?

Stoicism and buddhism attempt to solve the very same challenges. Meditation and face the fate with calmness are one of many tools to face the unpleasant emotions. Monks learn to accept emotions and treat them as part of humanity. Emotions you face are just your reaction to something else in life.

Sometimes, instead of that, we ignore our emotions and the more we do, they get stronger. Over time, strong enough to shake our identity, goals and feel of purpose.

I just don’t feel like doing it boss

What a burnout tells you? Does it feel like you don’t want to do it ever again? You could feel like that at the moment, but that’s not true. Burnout rarely is about the thing you do. It might be something around that thing or even lifestyle in general.

In context of programming, work culture has a big factor. People you live and work with. Crunch hours. Overall dissatisfaction.

• Are you stressed?
• Do you like what you’re doing?
• Are you proud of your achievements?
• Do you like the people you spend most time with?
• Do you like your life?
• Do you love yourself?
• Do you need some time to rest?

Are you stressed?

Short periods of stress might end up as a good thing. It can and likely will force you to perform and focus. The problem starts when stress is constant. Stress can be a factor in burnout. You need a time to break, otherwise you prolong consequences of your state for your future self.

Do you like what you’re doing?

Do you have fun? Over time I realized I was not happy. I just lost that dopamine boost when you solve a problem. I lost it because problems got repetitive. It was no longer a challenge of how to do it, but rather how fast and efficient you are. I had dejavu solving another tickets on the kanban board. I knew how to do them without even questioning it.

You can’t expect things will be exciting consistently for years. Sometimes it will be just another dull day you have to face. But you need something more than that in the long run.

Are you proud of your achievements?

Was I proud of what I was doing? I thought so. I have been working for big companies on their ambitious goals. I had impact on their product. But… I didn’t even use it. I strongly believe on idea of dog fooding. If you do some project, you have to use it to appreciate the effort you put in it.

After some time, I realized I feel best when creating internal tools. Tools I would use myself.

Do you like the people you spend the most time with?

That one is really important. I need to like people I spend most time with. At least some. After all, your job is 8 hours a day. People who stay in one job for years rarely do that for good money, more likely for good atmosphere, team, fair management. I advise you to treat that part of life seriously. Although that might not impact you when you have kids or wife, its still worth to have good friends and colleagues.

Do you like your life?

You need to take care of you. Cook something new. Put nice cloths on you from time to time. If you have to, force yourself to see your friends. Relationships must be maintained so they grow healthly.

You may not be in the mood that day. You may want to read a book in the bed or go to sleep instead of a party. Do that. But also, let yourself to keep the relationships. People do not appreciate other people until they’re desperately alone.

Have some holidays in another country. See some nature. Have some good memories with your friends and family. Once life gets boring, we fall.

Do you love yourself?

For past few years I was workaholic. I loved my work. But did I love my life? I wouldn’t say so. Some basic stuff like eat well, go to a gym, say few words to a stranger. Lack of these things pile up. Once they grow enough you might be in really bad mental condition. Take care of yourself best you can.

Do you need some time to rest?

When I faced burndown I lost one of my little joys, the love to programming. At a time, best I could think of was taking a long holidays from any kind of work. I decided that I’ll take as much as it takes to feel like doing it again. I had some savings. I could feed myself for another year or two.

Suddenly, after almost 3 months of just ordinary life, I noticed myself next to a keyboard, writing some code for some side project of mine. It was like a revelation. I still could do that!

However, this time it was domain out of my reach, out of my field of expertise. It was another programming language (Go), another field (native cli application), another community (truly awesome documentation!). It all felt fresh and it was just right.

Where in IT industry feeling burnout is the most common?

Across the internet, gamedev industry is considered one of the industries where burnout takes place more commonly. Why is that? I am not a game developer myself but I have some thoughts about it.

Large projects make you loose the feel of progress and accomplishment. Games are few years projects at least. That kind of effort takes a lot of hours and might be really tedious. Same bugs re-appearing. Fight with the buggy engine. Couple hundred thousands of lines of code within your head. Without proper milestones, key goals, stop points to give yourself a credit, its hard to see that the project is going anywhere.

Relationships and family are your support structure. In case of indie developers it might be a big issue to keep going with empty bank account. If your wife works so you both have something to eat, it’s like feeding an artist, hoping his painting will pay it off for you both. In case of large game studios, there are crunch hours, which make you loose relationships with your friends and family. Deadlines might make you be stressed about your work quality or even delivery estimates.

All of that has direct impact on your well-being. Don’t ignore it.

Summary

Burnout is just a feeling but it has various reasons. In order to avoid it, you need to take care about you and your close ones. Watch the symptoms carefully and take actions as soon as you can to avoid lasting health consequences.