Ask HN: How to deal with burnout clashing with Covid downturn and stress?

15 points by starlord 6 years ago | 8 comments

For folks who were nearing or already in burnout phase, how do next steps look like now in the post-covid19 world?

1. It seems the mental stress of processing all Covid19 impacts (real and anticipated) on the real and financial world is a bit much added to general depressing vibe when you're already in burnout phase. Any practical strategies?

  - Turning off news doesn't work, this is all even your mom is talking about

2. General advice is to stick to your current job for a while and perform good to avoid being termed "non-essential" and laid off. Any advice? (especially someone who has seen the decade old crisis first hand? I was still in college then)

- Personally I was planning to take at least a 3 months break as next step until this news of covid19 broke. I haven't taken any breaks in last 4ish years (2ish years on a startup as founder-CTO and then another 2 at a large company where we got acquired...) and I feel super shitty in a low productive phase right now which makes me question all my decisions everyday

2.1 I still feel slightly excited to learn new skills if I just leave job (and money/ptions) and invest a few months in upskilling after a break, but I don't know how long the recession would be and when will the jobs start appearing or the market start looking good again to start a company. Any advice on would be much appreciated here.

- Would expertise in Machine Learning/AI be good skillset to pick up in post-covid world? After crossing 30, I now feel like moving to a more hard skill based industry like health-care, biotech, robitics where I can actually help more real folks with my work and feel better about myself, but it seems quite risky to shift from software product industry at this age given how well it gets paid...

op03 6 years ago |

>> I still feel slightly excited to learn new skills

What you learn at work during crisis can be very valuable. Especially with unexpected events that people up and down the food chain, don't know how to handle. It's like being a fly on the wall while watching things break down at Jurassic Park. Its not fun if you are in a position of responsibility, but if you are not and an observant kind, there is lots to learn watching a system break down and reboot.

There is always another crisis around the corner where you can apply lessons learnt. The world is getting a whole lot more complicated compared to what our small brains can handle, thanks to hyperconnectivity and info exploding, so expect a whole lot more weird ass black swan events ahead.

If you have been in the deep end and not just survived but seen good outcomes, it makes a very big difference to how you handle the next crisis, what you think you are capable off, what to look for when picking teams etc.

pietroglyph 6 years ago | |

> There is always another crisis around the corner where you can apply lessons learnt. The world is getting a whole lot more complicated compared to what our small brains can handle, thanks to hyperconnectivity and info exploding, so expect a whole lot more weird ass black swan events ahead.

I’m curious, do you mean that there will be more black swan events due to hyperconnectivity and they’ll be weird, or that there’ll be the same number of black swan events but they’ll be weirder due to hyperconnectivity?

I understand the reasoning behind the latter, but if it’s the former I would be interested to hear why hyperconnectivity results in more black swan events.

op03 6 years ago | | |

I see the current hyperconnectivity state as similar to what happens in human babies brains. They are much more hyperconnected than the adult brain.

To the Baby everything is a black swan event. The more connected we get we revert to that state where info is flooding in (similar to the brain on lsd etc). The ability to handle that load/decide what to focus on/what to filter out hasn't yet developed (and requires a culling of connections as we learn). Much like the baby bumbles about precariously in that state, similar story is playing out with our networked hive mind.

Everything is mesmerizing or frightening until we learn to cull the connections and reduce the hyperconnectivity

Based on Allison Gopniks work - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-it-like-t...

https://www.edge.org/conversation/alison_gopnik-a-separate-k...

austincheney 6 years ago |

Sorry for the distraction but I have noticed a new thread everyday this week asking about surviving burn out or depression with each of these threads receiving few comments. Perhaps these threads can be consolidated.

starlord 6 years ago | |

Yep, good idea. Will try to search for them through the weekend and see if I can summarise them in. single thread perhaps... Should help personally as well I guess

runawaybottle 6 years ago | |

And maybe a few blunt answers that don’t placate along the lines of ‘welcome to life, it’s hard’.

starlord 6 years ago | | |

Haha. I understand that "Life is unfair, get used to it" and you just gotta wing it with sink or swim mentality in such adverse situations...

Frankly I was just looking for if anyone has a better defined strategy for this situation as I can't really figure out one with enough confidence...