Ask HN: 9-5 burnout?

29 points by noamelf 8 years ago | 22 comments

I always feel a little strange among all the other 9-5 workers. It's really difficult for me to do that every day of the week. It's not that I'm not enjoying work or anything like that, while I'm at the office I totally enjoy it, but I once I get home I feel drained out, as if I can't do anything but watch TV. It's like all my mental powers are gone and I can only do the simplest thing possible.

Thing is, when people are talking about burn out, they usually mean 60 hours work week, so complaining about a 40-45 work week feels spoiled. Maybe my psych is not built for continues effort but short sprints and relaxation. When I stay to work from home, and split my work day into 2 halves, morning till noon, and evening until night, I feel much better, though I still work the same time more or less. Problem is, this is not something I can do regularly since It's not common to work from home where I work, and I'm leading a dev team so I need to be around.

Does anyone else feels the same way? How do you handle daily burn out?

biasforaction 8 years ago |

I burned myself out building and launching a cloud service last year. After that service launched publicly, I quickly took three weeks off. The first week I felt depressed and was barely able to get up in the morning. The second week I started to feel better and was able to achieve daily goals. The third week I started to feel like my normal self but was nowhere close to being ready to go back to work.

Currently, I'm still struggling to have my normal drive during the 9-5. My short-term memory is not at its best. I'm averaging only a couple hours of coding a day but I'm also a lead on my team, so I have a lot of interruptions throughout the day. I feel energized on Monday, but by Friday I feel like a failure (like right now). I feel stuck.

After work I invest my time into improving skill-sets, knowledge, and other projects until 10 or 11 pm. My goal is to have an exit strategy in place by the end of this year.

I know I'm still recovering from the burnout and it seems like it's going to take another year to recover fully. Every week I want to break down, cry, and leave but I'm afraid to jeopardize everything that I've worked hard to achieve.

I would like to share more about my story and background, but I'm afraid to share too many personal details that will identify myself.

"Help Me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're My Only Hope"

PaulStatezny 8 years ago | |

It sounds like you really gave your all to your employer, and it left you feeling demoralized and depressed. It also sounds like you feel stuck. Stuck in the situation, stuck in the bad feelings. My heart goes out to you.

At times, I’ve put an unhealthy focus on work, and it’s left me feeling drained of life. Probably a similar feeling to yours.

It sounds like your schedule isn’t allowing for much human-to-human connection. (Away from computers!) I don’t know about you, but that’s probably the main human need I have when I overwork! I’d suggest limiting the evening learning sessions and try to invest in some friendships! Try to brighten up someone’s day!

muzani 8 years ago | | |

Ha, interesting. Every time I'm severely burnt out, it has to do with humans, not computers.

Computers do work as you tell them to. Humans will make life difficult for you just to make it easy for themselves.

noamelf 8 years ago | |

Man, I feel close to what you feel. By the end of the week I'm so burned out.

I have 2 (at least) voices competing. One wants to experience life fully, and one that is eager to achieve results and wants to be "someone" and get somewhere. It can be a real struggle.

I feel like finding a way to let go of being "the best" (I also tend to study in the evenings), just being average me, is what can bring about real change, but it will take a lot of effort since it is deeply rooted in me.

itamarst 8 years ago | | |

You can study on the job. It's, in fact, the best way to study. Even if you're using technologies you already know, there's almost always something you can learn on the job. If not, switch to a job where you're not learning.

Also, achieving results is not done by working long hours. It's done by avoiding unnecessary work, by prioritizing. My experience, and that of others who work less than 40 hours a week, is that we become far more productive as we developed the relevant skills. E.g. https://lobste.rs/s/hvjwd6/how_become_part_time_programmer#c... talks about it.

itamarst 8 years ago | |

I would suggest not working in the evenings for a while. You'll do much better if you take a break and go do something completely different.

When I didn't have a kid I took liberal arts classes at Harvard's adult education school in the evenings. Very different kind of intellectual challenge, and lots of fun. Turned out to be useful for programming too, but that wasn't the goal.

itamarst 8 years ago |

I definitely feel that way - I'm much happier when I'm working less than 40 hours a week, these days. It is possible to start with what you want and eventually negotiate or find a work situation that meets your needs.

Some options:

1. If you have good relationship at current job, see what you can negotiate. E.g. maybe you can become individual contributor. Maybe you can figure out way to make it work just by rearranging things - in office first half of day, available from 4-5 pm in afternoon, or something.

2. Find a different job where you can the job schedule you want. E.g. remote job, or just a job with more flexible work schedule.

2. Negotiate a less-than-40-hours job - definitely possible, I interviewed someone who has been doing that for 15 years: https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer...

(I talk about options, negotiation skills and more in my related book, The Programmer's Guide to a Sane Workweek: https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/).

muzani 8 years ago |

Working a proper 9-5 job in software is extremely tiring. I compare it to athletes; you can't expect an athlete to work 8 hours a day of intense training without collapsing. Often they work a certain amount of hard hours and a few softer ones. They cycle it.

One should do the same for programming as well. It's all energy management. I find I can only work 3 hours on a tough problem, and the rest would be something lighter like refactoring or writing tests.

A lot of people who wake up at 5 and sleep at 11 PM are managers, which isn't as energy intensive.

BjoernKW 8 years ago |

First, everyone's different. There's no single optimal workload that applies to everyone.

That said, 8 hours of real, intense, mentally challenging work per day probably is more than enough for most people.

The problem is that when talking about work in terms of time spent this often includes stuff that isn't really work at all but mindless busywork like writing emails, attending pointless meetings or idle water cooler talk.

This is particularly prevalent with those 'vaunted' 60+ hour weeks (also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law).

The point being: Your 40 hour work week might very well be equivalent to somebody else's 60 hour work week in terms of workload and mental energy required.

You seem to have already found a viable solution by working remotely and splitting your day in 2 halves. If that works for you you should try to optimise your work in a way that you can do this more frequently.

There are fully remote companies with employees across multiple timezones. So, this is definitely achievable. It just requires a little more effort than the default 9-5 kind of work organisation.

It should be in your employer's interest to ensure the long-term happiness and effectiveness of employees. So, why not talk with your employer about this and try to make the necessary changes in work organisation?

parttimethrow 8 years ago |

I feel exactly the same way as you do. (I thought I was the only one who feel like I just want to relax and do nothing in the evening even though only working a 9-5 office job!)

I'm at a relatively 9-5 job now (aside from occasional week nights or weekends emergency response work). The thing is, I've been in 60-hour jobs (even 80-hour in some cases) before. I know what that feels like. I know what true burn-out is. I've even done that for 5 years. It was a cool experience when I was younger. I keep thinking that, my job is 9-5 now, I really shouldn't be feeling burn-out. But I am.

I blame it on the commute a lot; in Silicon Valley, a normally 40-minute drive becomes 1.5 hour one way, and 3 hours a day is a lot of time to spend on the road, and it's taxing. I know it's a huge part of the reason to feel burn-out. Like you, I'm also in the position of a team lead. I already have a one day a week WFH arrangement. It's helping me survive and not quit the job, but it's only borderline acceptable. I feel like I can't move to more WFH days. But having read itamarst's comment, I feel like maybe I should ask. I would probably feel better if I either WFH 2 days or, just work only 4 days and WFH 1 of those 4 days.

zackmorris 8 years ago |

Just in case this is an XY problem, maybe looking at the question in a different light could help. Instead of asking why we are burned out, maybe we could ask why we feel burned out.

For me, the opportunity cost of being burned out is that I can't summon the energy to work on my side projects and hobbies. It really kills me that every day I come home and have hours that I could spend coding or building something, but instead I just watch TV over a beer.

A couple of people closest to me say to just do all the things. So they are advocating discipline which is great and something I could probably find again if I was more disciplined.

My gut feeling though is that the issue might be more complicated than that. From prior experience, I know my odds of failure at any side project I attempt are somewhere around 90% if I measure them in terms of monetary gain. So I'm subconsciously multiplying the cost/benefit analysis by 10 and getting discouraged. But if I remove risk from the equation, maybe by working on something low-risk like an open source project or learning a skill I don't know (like playing music), then maybe I could get closer to feeling rewarded by tinkering instead of drained. Then I could build on that and add more ambitious projects over time (in theory).

Freak_NL 8 years ago |

Can you cut down on the number of days you work? Even as a team-lead your team should be able to handle missing you one day a week (your team wouldn't be very self-sufficient if even that is impossible).

I am fortunate to live in a country where working three or four days a week instead of five is perfectly acceptable. I have explicitly chosen to work four days a week (four times 9-to-17), and use the remaining workday for my own relaxation/chores/shopping/projects. My partner does the same thing with a different day off, so we each get our own home alone downtime day. It works really well for us.

By working less days you effectively sacrifice only four evenings for recuperation from work, but keep three days for yourself. Of course that means less income, so this depends on your personal financial situation as well. It does make it easier to simply accept that you simply need the downtime in the evenings.

Some people are fine working five days a week, some aren't.

> Thing is, when people are talking about burn out, they usually mean 60 hours work week.

Only in some countries (US I guess?). Burnout is a global phenomenon. In the Netherlands people tend to work 40 hours a week, but burnout is still common enough here.

tboyd47 8 years ago |

Think of human activity as lying on a spectrum of mental effort. You probably need activities that lie somewhere in the middle range of energy and complexity. Work is probably on the higher end: an continuously exhausting challenge. Vegging out in front of the TV is the lower end: relaxing, but unfulfilling and boring.

If the only mentally engaging activity you ever do is work, then every time you get bored, you will jump straight into overdrive just by THINKING about it. This will actually wear you out even if it's only 30 hours a week or 20 hours. You need activities that are only a little bit challenging to distract you from the big one.

I experienced the same problem myself (replace TV with jogging). I had other things going on (RSI, frustrating work environment), but adding hobbies like competitive video gaming and painting landscapes helped my mental health tremendously.

noamelf 8 years ago | |

> Think of human activity as lying on a spectrum of mental effort. You probably need activities that lie somewhere in the middle range of energy and complexity. Work is probably on the higher end: an continuously exhausting challenge. Vegging out in front of the TV is the lower end: relaxing, but unfulfilling and boring.

> If the only mentally engaging activity you ever do is work, then every time you get bored, you will jump straight into overdrive just by THINKING about it. This will actually wear you out even if it's only 30 hours a week or 20 hours. You need activities that are only a little bit challenging to distract you from the big one.

That's a very interesting way to look at it. Problem is I'm too tired during to pick anything up after work. I really feel that if I can reduce the amount of mental energy I consume at work, I'll actually have the desire to pick up the guitar or something like that.

Maybe using something like the pomodoro technique can help with that, and then taking more breaks. I think one of my problems is though, that my ambition takeover and I want to get just one more thing done. I feel like I need to produce better results, etc.

tboyd47 8 years ago | | |

What about on the weekends?

Kevin_S 8 years ago |

I've spent 2 years doing 8-5 and it just doesn't work for me. I'm going back to school and becoming an academic. The requirement to be here is what hurts the most, I'll happily work more hours as long as they are flexible and on my own accord, in my own space.

I am counting down the days.

p0ints 8 years ago |

I'm feeling the same. I think it's very common. That's what motivates people to go above and beyond and try to be financially independent - as the alternative is having very little from life until you're old and retired.

shoo 8 years ago |

If you want to have time in your week outside of work where you aren't drained, one thing to try is waking up earlier every day and focusing on your own stuff before heading in to the office

SirLJ 8 years ago |

Yep, working from home, I take 2 hours lunch break to exercise a bit, eat and nap for an hour and after that I can be productive again in the the few remaining hours until 16:30

Chyzwar 8 years ago |

Get rid of the TV.

PaulStatezny 8 years ago | |

> Get rid of the TV.

I agree this can be helpful. But it seems there are some deeper things going on.

I’m no psychologist or therapist, but it seems there are things going on at the emotional or psychological level that need to be addressed.

Of course I don’t know this person, but I imagine solely getting rid of the TV would just make room for a different “mind numbing habit”.

alansmitheebk 8 years ago |

I'm guessing that you're an introvert and being around everyone in the office is what wears you out. If this is case, try and move your desk to a quieter less crowded part of the office and invest in some good headphones. You can also try going out for a walk in the middle of the day to get away from everyone.

Another thing you can do is focus on having more energy by doing things like working out, eating better, etc. If you are always tired you might want to go see your doctor and check for hypothyroid and / or low testosterone (assuming you are a middle-aged man)