[HN Gopher] Is our definition of burnout all wrong? ___________________________________________________________________ Is our definition of burnout all wrong? Author : pmoriarty Score : 47 points Date : 2022-11-19 22:30 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.bustle.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bustle.com) | kayodelycaon wrote: | I think what the author is seeing is the human reaction to | prolonged stress. Trauma can create this, but so can many other | things. | | Source: Bipolar... my body is overreactive to stress. | legitster wrote: | I still think this is largely wrong. | | I've worked some tough jobs in my life. Physically laborious. I'm | talking 100+ hour weeks on an ice cold production line working | under complete psychopaths. I felt overworked, abused, frustrated | - I turned off my brain, chatted with coworkers, and did the job. | But never once did I feel "burned out". No matter how much I | hated the jobs, I could always stand there and do another day. | And the end of every shift felt _so good_. | | In contrast, I have felt very burned out in relatively nice jobs | - thoroughly pleasant environments with minor workloads. I don't | even know why. Something about staring at screens all day - | something about that "unplugging" feeling you get after locking | in on some code all day - maybe constantly thinking about how | other people think. | | Honestly, the closest non-work simile I have found was signing up | to do a video game marathon. After hour 8 I had a _distinct_ | feeling of burnout for that game - as bad as any terrible job I | have ever had. For doing something I should otherwise find | enjoyable. | | So I think there can be some amount of trauma involved, but I | think the core of "burnout" has less to do with actual negative | experiences and more about the type of work we engage with. And I | specifically think it has to do with our capacity to either do | continuous creative problem solving, or engage with large | varieties of different people - both activities that humans have | not historically had to engage in for extended periods of time in | previous eras. | shortcake27 wrote: | lkrubner wrote: | I strongly agree with this: | | "In contrast, I have felt very burned out in relatively nice | jobs - thoroughly pleasant environments with minor workloads." | | For me, I feel the most intense burnout when I see stupidly | wasted opportunities. For instance, if a startup has a great | idea and plenty of funding, but the leadership is hopelessly | stupid and engages in self-sabotage (and perhaps I try to save | the situation but I'm ignored) and millions of dollars are | wasted, then I get burnout. I felt burnout in 2016, after | witnessing the insanely self-destructive leadership at | "Celelot" destroy a brilliant idea, which I wrote about here: | | https://www.amazon.com/dp/0998997617?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_... | _trampeltier wrote: | For me also, there had been times I worked several weeks from | 7am to 23pm and on weekends. This was no problem. The task was | clear, it was possible to do (with much overtime) and it had an | clear end. Later in my career, on a different job, different | position I almost got a burnout, because I thought I could | solve some problems with much work. But the problems there had | been endless. So there was no chance ever for me to solve all | the problems. I asked my boss for a different position in our | company. I just realized later how close I was to a very bad | burnout. I guess I had also a bit luck and good people around | me. | | [Edit] The job, where I almost got a burnout. The job was empty | and they asked me for it, because the person before left with a | bad burnout. The person now in this job is now also close to a | burnout. | quickthrower2 wrote: | I suspect decision fatigue is a real thing. Especially the | harder should/should not decisions, rather than the clear quick | chat to the group then no-brainers. | FooHentai wrote: | Perhaps more like... 'engagement fatigue'? When it's truly | rote or mindless work your brain can disengage and be | somewhere else. With knowledge work you don't have that | luxury, even when the work itself isn't what we could | consider 'engaging', you nevertheless are obliged to be | engaged mentally to carry it out. Do that long enough without | deriving any satisfaction, it seems a perfectly sane reaction | to want to escape the situation, or just plain shut off. It | makes sense for our brains to realize we're spending a lot of | brain focus and time on something that isn't activating any | reward centers, and insist we stop doing that. That really | seems like a fundamentally sensible and healthy response from | a brain functioning properly. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | I've noticed a similar discrepancy in my life: Mental burnout | wasn't present in my early, physical-labor jobs. It also wasn't | present in my early coding jobs. It only started to appear | later in my career when my pay was highest and my actual time | spent producing tangible output (whether physical labor or | code) was lowest. | | One theory is that I became less physically active over time. | Exercise is well known to have a protective effect against | burnout, and physical labor jobs are a lot of exercise all day. | I was also going to the gym much more when I was younger. | | Another theory is that my later career burnout came from what | studies would call "social defeat stress". I was most burnt out | when I spent most of my job time trying to navigate | dysfunctional companies, deal with incompetent bosses, and | fight against dirty office politics. | | Changing to a job where my boss was more demanding but also | more competent unexpectedly reduced my burnout symptoms rather | than worsening them. Something about being in a socially | consistent environment makes everything easier to stomach. On | the contrary, being in weird office politics situations where | Bob in management gets to insult your work and upend your | priorities every week just because he's got a certain title | leads to burnout. It's like the burnout is a response to dampen | your expectations and efforts in response to situations where | more engagement will only produce more stress and frustration. | | Physical labor jobs, on the other hand, have a property that | more input will usually result in at least some tangible | forward progress. | eastbound wrote: | > I'm talking 100+ hour weeks on an ice cold production line | working under complete psychopaths. | | <s>Testosterone</s> | | I've worked cutting trees under a literal psychopath (just out | of jail for murder), a guy had died of dehydration on that job | the previous year. It was strenuous and I mourned/cried the | loss of my girlfriend while sawing branches like a madman. | | It was also the best time of my life. | | See, using my body, requiring agility, quick varied | microdecisions and physical strength, it _makes use_ of the | body I was given by mother nature. Compare that to working in | front of a computer all day, using only the logical part of my | brain, no emotions, gray screens everywhere: As much as I love | being an entrepreneur and I love using my IQ 136, well, it uses | 8% of the body's capabilities - the brain and the fingers, | period. It's unnatural. | | So I suspect hard physical work with actual people and | emotions, triggers hormones (testosterone being the caricature | of it) that regulates everything including motivation, a clean | mind, and happiness. Of course I wouldn't wish to work on a | field all my life, but programming or Excel spreadsheeting may | have a negative impact on the mind. | bitexploder wrote: | I do BJJ and once you get into it, it is extremely fun and | rewarding. Strenuous physically. Mentally, extremely deep, | popular with tech folks because although you have to be in | shape skill development dominates. Strength will always be an | asset. So will cardio, but skill dominates. Plus close human | contact releases oxytocin and other hormones. And the | physical activity does the equivalent of a runners high. And | the mental activity gives you intrinsic learning rewards. I | suppose you can burn out on it, it can be very frustrating at | times, but once you get past the first humps it is golden. | eastbound wrote: | I loved judo for this reason, although BJJ might be less | dangerous. Exhausting; You take hits (unvoluntarily... | maybe); You learn gestures. And more importantly: You learn | with your body. I think our bodies demand to be used ;) | | Socrates was right! There's no mind without a strong body! | (for a man at least). | bitexploder wrote: | Test is definitely a factor in working out and feeling | good for all men, but especially young men. Plenty of | women enjoy BJJ for many of the same reasons men do | though. BJJ is relatively safe. You will end up with | injuries, but it is worth it for me as a desk jockey. :) | throwaway675309 wrote: | Now try doing that job for 20 to 30 years, your entire body | will be totally broken and riddled with arthritis. | | For somebody proudly touting their Mensa membership, you seem | to have fallen into the same transcendalist trap that | everyone does who waxes poetic for natural and "Mother | Earth". | | Natural is one in three women dying in childbirth, natural is | contracting rabies by being bitten by a rabid animal and | having 100% mortality rate, natural is dying at age 50 to 60. | cpsns wrote: | > Now try doing that job for 20 to 30 years, your entire | body will be totally broken and riddled with arthritis. | | I see this a lot on HN, but never forget that sitting for | eight hours a day has long term negative health | consequences too, some that are very very serious. | golemotron wrote: | It might have a lot to do with expectations too: illusory ones. | If one gains meaning from their work with the idea that they | are "changing the world" in some Utopian sense they might be | more prone to burnout. | | It's nice when a job is just a way to make money and support | yourself. | choxi wrote: | I've always thought burnout is the same thing as learned | helplessness, which is a pretty well studied phenomenon in | psychology. It doesn't seem mysterious to me that if you | repeatedly do a task that is unrewarding for long enough, you no | longer want to do it. Then the COVID burnout can be explained by | a large scale reduction in the rewards that typically keep people | going. | vouaobrasil wrote: | I can see the reasoning here but I think it's a little | different. Learned helplessness is the phenomenon where people | stop trying to change their situation or circumstance because | they feel ("learn") that nothing will help. Burnout is a little | different. Burnout is more like when you simply don't want to | do something any more, but often people with burnout still have | the capacity to change their circumstance. Often people with | burnout will quit or take time off and seriously reconsider | their situation, whereas that is not the case with learned | helplessness. | | In my opinion burnout is actually more of a natural phenomenon, | which is the mind simply needing to do something totally | different and perhaps more meaningful. I believe it is also due | to the unnatural tendency for people to work in the same or | similar field of expertise for far too long, which is simply | not natural especially for highly intellectual fields. | LaurensBER wrote: | I spend most of my 15 year career working at startups I've | worked long evenings, weekends, dealt with stress, tense | situations (both commercial and social) and deadlines and never | had any symptoms of burnout. I switched to a large enterprise | company and enjoyed the relaxed pace for a year. The first 6 | months took some adjustment but I quickly figured out that | getting things done in a large company just required a bit of a | different skill set. Sometimes it took weeks to get a simple | configuration changed but when I finally talked to the guy I | learned that he had 5 kids, three of them who were sick, | instantly made me realize that my frustration about the pace | was uncalled for. | | Fast forward to the second year, I got a new manager who turned | the office politics to 11, put people in positions that they | were absolutely not fit for and in general made a huge mess out | of everything, ignoring the advice and suggestions of the team | while doing it while continuously reminding us engineers of our | low place in the picking order. If there was a way to rank | managers this guy would be in the bottom 5%, I've worked with | about 30 managers (in one way or another) in my career so this | was bound to happen at some point. | | However, I was totally not prepared for the effect it had on | me. Within months I was reduced to someone who was frustrated | 24/7, unable to do even the most basic task, I was sleeping | poorly and my physical health was suffering. It took an | enormous amount of energy just to sit through online meetings | without lashing out, the rest of the team was feeling the same | so you can imagine what kind of environment it was. I was lucky | to get a new job very quickly and after getting out of that | toxic environment I was my old self again in mere weeks. | | I can totally imagine how burnout can be modeled as learned | helplessness. If, I, as young, healthy guy can be reduced to a | wreck, in months, in a toxic environment, I can only start to | imagine what people have to go through that don't have the | luxury of switching jobs quickly (for whatever reason). | clnq wrote: | I have been through the same. No burnout in startups, then a | period of boreout in a large company, then a political | manager, then depression, and then resigning. Although my | company did retain me in the end. | | There's nothing worse than a clueless political manager. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | > Within months I was reduced to someone who was frustrated | 24/7, unable to do even the most basic task, I was sleeping | poorly and my physical health was suffering. | | Always remember that it's jsut a job, and that your manager's | opinion - outside of that org - is no more important than | anyone else's opinion in the world. | planetsprite wrote: | It's hard to get out of that mindset, especially as a young | new hire. | | In the United States, your job is very closely tied to your | livelihood due to high rents, few social support | structures, health insurance often tied to your job, etc. | | There's a model of thinking taught in schools and | universities that teaches individuals to defer helplessly | to their superiors, to be subservient to a fault and | respect hierarchies as sacrosanct. When someone abuses that | hierarchy, one either has to unlearn their programming, or | assume the burden of the imposition of value on their | psyche. | Trasmatta wrote: | Related to this: one thing I saw somebody here say one time is | that responsibility without authority is a key to burnout. | Having the responsibility to complete a large amount of work | without the authority to make the decisions needed for that | work can be incredibly disempowering, which can make you feel | helpless. | | More reason to have small teams, cut out middle management, | hire good developers, and trust them to make decisions. Being a | code monkey is a recipe for burnout. | kayodelycaon wrote: | I think there is a lot to this. Burnout is somewhat poorly | defined. The more specific "learned helplessness" would cover a | lot of the cases and would be a useful guide for treatment. | breck wrote: | Yes. Don't even need to read it. Anytime you read the sentence | "our definition" it's wrong. There is no such thing as "burn | out". It's a marketing term. Practice root thinking | (https://breckyunits.com/root-thinking.html). Ignore marketing | buzz words, especially if they come from social sciences like | psychology, psychiatry, et cetera. | | Obviously fatigue is a thing and you need rest, but don't believe | anyone who tells you you have some easily labeled condition--it's | almost always B.S. | rzzzt wrote: | > All ideas are trees. All products start as ideas. Therefore | all products are trees. | | The conclusion or the second premise should be changed to make | the former a true statement. So either "Therefore all products | start as trees" or "All products are ideas". | quickthrower2 wrote: | You need to hold in your mind two completing concepts. One is | that you might have a condition, and that condition may not be | fully understood by medical science, and need some self- | experimentation (for example, meditation, diet, blood tests, | psychotherapy, drugs). The other concept is that it might blow | over with rest, time or a change in thinking patterns and there | is nothing to fix. Since you can't know which is true, both | need to be nurtured! | breck wrote: | Agreed. I think the problem is we have 100 "conditions" for | every 1 actual physical condition. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | This article went from "everyone was stressed during the | pandemic" to "everyone actually has complex PTSD now" alarmingly | fast. | | The author writes as though they're in a bubble with other | extremely-online people. People who can't unplug from the 24/7 | news feed and instead adopt the world's stresses on to | themselves, manifesting as a never-ending cycle of stress and | doom: | | > The thing that made me wonder the most about what burnout might | actually be, in terms of a diagnostic definition, was when we | headed back into winter in 2020 after a summer of lockdown, | before vaccines were rolled out, and my friends and colleagues | started expressing a relationship to time and the future that | alarmed me. They began talking about the future as if it didn't | exist, as if their imaginative powers were gone. There was no | future, there was only this moment, this week, this day, and | getting through it. We could be stuck here forever was the vibe | at large. | | I hope it goes without saying that this author is not qualified | to be diagnosing themself or their peers with C-PTSD as defined | by the ICD-11. We should all be cautious against articles trying | to apply serious mental health issues to broad swaths of the | general population. Furthermore, it's not really fair to people | suffering from severe PTSD or C-PTSD to start watering down these | terms such that everyone has the same condition. | | I don't think we're doing anyone a favor by redefining everything | as trauma these days. The pandemic was more stressful than | average and many people certainly did acquire trauma through the | loss of loved ones and other extreme events. However, if we're | getting to the point that merely _existing through_ the pandemic | is a traumatic experience producing C-PTSD, the real issue likely | lies in one 's inability to handle stress and unplug from the | 24/7 news cycle. | fellowniusmonk wrote: | This is not a rebuttal of what you are saying and I think your | caution is valid, but your post prompted a musing about | observations of my elders (all whom have now passed away.) | | All of my grandparents and great aunts/uncles who lived through | the great depression and ww2 (some actively fighting and some | not), all the men and women seemed to be quite traumatized and | in fact much of their personality seemed permanently defined by | the great depression, even more so than ww2 (with the exception | of one uncle who was in a foxhole during the battle of the | bulge.), often to the point of irrational and even harmful | decision making, including hoarding in a couple cases. | | This was true even though none of them were financially ruined, | forced to move, destitute or food insecure during either | period. | | I think cultural contagion, existential worry and trauma/coping | mechanisms/adaptive personality change existed prior to the | plugged in life and 24/7 news cycle (though those two things | exacerbate it for sure.) | throwaway22032 wrote: | They're called life-changing events, right? :) | | The daily experience you have today of being able to walk | into Walmart or whatever and just buy whatever you want means | that you have a certain level of confidence in life. | Generally, people buy dishwashing liquid when it runs out, | not weeks before with a buffer. If you had to live through a | period in which you could go to the store and not find | anything, or perhaps no money, or perhaps you can't go out | because it's dangerous outside, etc, then you're going to | treat that differently, perhaps for your entire life. | | Before coronavirus happened there were a ton of things that I | had planned to do during my life. They all seemed so certain, | like, provided I'm in good health, I can do all of that stuff | over the next few decades. | | But then it was all ripped away. Not all of it came back. Not | all of it _is_ coming back. And so that experience has made | me far more short-termist in my outlook. Do it now while you | can, etc. I think many people feel the same way. | dkarl wrote: | I also think it was somewhat appropriate not to have a concrete | idea of the future early in the pandemic. We didn't know what | was coming. Lots of speculation turned out to be false. One | scenario that was suggested very early on was a low single- | digit percentage of young healthy adults being hospitalized, | which could realistically have caused interruptions in basic | municipal services in some places. Other scenarios were too | optimistic. We really didn't know the future and couldn't make | firm plans about it. Feeling that way all the time, no matter | whether it's appropriate, is a symptom. Feeling that way when | it makes perfect sense is not a symptom. | ogoparootbbo wrote: | > People who can't unplug from the 24/7 news feed and instead | adopt the world's stresses on to themselves, manifesting as a | never-ending cycle of stress and doom | | The adopting the world's stresses seems to be something I've | observed with the newer generations. No actual problem solving | but merely adopting the stress which I wonder is a symptom of | being overly empathetic but I can't understand why the adoption | doesn't progress into actual problem solving? Is it because the | average joe regardless of the generation is a bad problem | solver and more unrefined free stress is bound to paralyze said | joe. Or is it something else? | legitster wrote: | I tend think the problem is that the world is _under- | stressed_. | | Personal tragedy used to be unbelievably common for humans. | Just consider the sheer number of childhood deaths before the | year 1800. | | If you are a generation that has been raised in a world with | few diseases, famines, foreign invasions, and even fewer | things like verbal abuse or bullying - by the time you reach | adulthood you are probably much, _much_ more sensitive to any | sort of negative emotion anywhere. | | It's like growing up in a zero-G environment and coming back | down to Earth - you have no emotional muscles. | SoftTalker wrote: | I agree. In prior generations, if you survived childhood | you probably went to fight in a war as a young adult (if | you were male) or you had a loved one who did and you had | to struggle to keep things together at home. If you | survived that, you had a hard life working in fields or | factories until your body was so broken you couldn't do it | anymore. You didn't have time to worry about the types of | things that many young people have as their big concerns | today. | pessimizer wrote: | > I tend think the problem is that the world is under- | stressed. | | I'd say that it isn't the world that's under-stressed, it's | upper-middle class NYC/London feature writers. Other people | still suffer plenty. | bob1029 wrote: | In my experience, intentionally stressing yourself in | controlled ways (i.e. with exercise) is an incredibly | effective way to counteract this issue. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | > Personal tragedy used to be unbelievably common for | humans. Just consider the sheer number of childhood deaths | before the year 1800. | | While the troughs of that sorrow are undoubtedly deeper, | childhood deaths in your family weren't a 24/7 stressor. | | I think the issue is that people can log in to Reddit, | Twitter, or even any news website and receive a constant | stream of tragedy, bad news, and worry. It's no longer an | exception, it's the everyday experience available on | demand. | | I see this come up in extremely online young people I work | with: They're always invested in a new tragedy or | catastrophe or drama or concern somewhere in the world, but | those worries disappear and get replaced with a new one as | soon as the news cycles shift. They weren't actually | invested in it, they were just reacting to what they put in | front of their eyes for hours per day. | MrLeap wrote: | This probably depends on the parent. One of my brothers | died when I was in 3rd grade. After that, the head vice | was pretty much constant until my mom kicked me out at | 14. Things rapidly improved after that. | vlunkr wrote: | I would say it's because they are stressed about problems | that are much too big for them. A single person has | essentially 0 influence over politics, climate change, and | social issues, yet people spend hours a day getting fed news | and hot takes over these issues, on any side of the political | spectrum. Surely ingesting so much of this content will | impact your mental health. If it turns into some sort of | productive action, that's great, but that may not be the | natural response for everyone. | rocketbop wrote: | > I would say it's because they are stressed about problems | that are much too big for them. | | I have heard these described as gravity problems; problems | that might be worth solving, if they are solvable at all, | but which are almost certainly not the problems you should | be concerning yourself with. Instead finding the right | sized problems and solving them can be very satisfying. | throwaway22032 wrote: | I'd agree with you in the general sense that people need to | unplug from the news, however, unfortunately that doesn't solve | the problem here. | | Between 2020 and 2022 in many countries we were prevented by | law from engaging in everyday activities. Even for those of us | who decided to take calculated risks, life as a whole became | incredibly difficult and stressful because simply talking about | anything at all became a political battleground. Coronavirus | became _everything_, we were following arrows around on the | floor for christ's sake. | | Some countries are still engaged in such practices, e.g. I'd | love to visit China but it's not effectively possible; the | China of pre-2020 doesn't exist. At the moment it feels as if I | missed out on visiting it, potentially forever. | | I lost my job during lockdown, twice, and at the moment those | workplaces no longer exist. What I consider to be my career no | longer exists. It may come back, but at this point I can't rely | on it. | | These events have been traumatic for me. I've lost a huge | amount of trust in people, to the extent that making any kind | of medium to long term plan seems pointless because society | could simply decide to completely up-end the existing | structures again. | | I can plan for "there may be an infectious disease". I can plan | for losing a family member. I can't plan for losing my partner, | and I can't plan for "anything you want to do might suddenly | become illegal with zero notice; the career you train for might | disappear overnight; society may arbitrarily turn against you". | | I've not been back to work since. Aside from a few events (like | meeting my current partner), my life still feels as if I'm in a | bad dream and I'm waiting to wake up in 2019. | | > expressing a relationship to time and the future that alarmed | me. They began talking about the future as if it didn't exist | | I feel a lot of affinity with this, actually. The future I | trained for and built my life around disappeared. | jpswade wrote: | Burnout is the loss of momentum. | nonameiguess wrote: | Interesting premise, but I'm having a lot of trouble with this. | He says burnout is the default condition of a millennial. Various | definitions I've seen seem to disagree on whether that includes | me (birth year 1980), but I was in the Army before getting into | software and am definitely part of the generation that joined up | post 9-11 and served in a pretty horribly-paced environment of | long, repeat deployments that continued forever because of how | long those wars lasted. Echoing other comments, I've definitely | worked under psychopaths, including a guy who bragged about how | hard his dick got blowing up hospitals in Mosul. I've seen a lot | of what this guy is writing about in terms of people who become | totally trapped in the present, believing they have no escape | from their current predicament, and also become so accustomed to | stress that they lose the ability to live without it and can | never adjust back to regular civilian life. This is certainly a | form of PTSD, but I have a lot of trouble accepting that anyone | working a regular office job in media experiences anything like | this. | | On the other hand, I'll also echo other comments about the | difference between this and what I would personally call burnout. | Traumatic jobs can be quite thrilling and produce intense bonds | and feelings of mission importance. On the other hand, a modern | office job can often result in monotony and a feeling that what | you're doing is unimportant bullshit that would leave the world | exactly the same if no one ever did it. That tedium is like Bart | Simpson being forced to write the same sentence on a chalkboard | over and over again for hours on end. That feeling that you're | being pushed for no real reason is what leads to burnout. | | Contrast the same intense bonds and feeling of mission that comes | from being at a fast-growing startup in the early days, where | every decision has a magnified importance because the difference | between life and death for your organization is so razor thin, to | something like the purely manufactured urgency happening at | Twitter right now. Pushing yourself to the absolute limit for a | real mission tends to be the kind of thing people eventually | become tired of, but nonetheless look back fondly on and miss a | bit when they're honest with themselves, even if you can't do it | for a lifetime. But deadlines for the sake of deadlines and | induced scarcity intended to extract startup-level productivity | when your situation doesn't actually call for it is what sours | people entirely on the very idea of work and capitalism. | | As for the pandemic, I think it exposed an uncomfortable reality | that most people stuck in the rat race don't exactly appreciate, | which is that a whole lot of what we spend our lives doing for | work is not "needed" in the sense that consumers will be | materially worse off because they have less to consume if we stop | producing it, but because our entire economic system is | predicated on a level of consumption and growth that can only be | achieved through induced demand, fake scarcity, marketing tricks, | and busy work. That is, entire industries like salons and barber | shops just disappeared for a while and it mattered because those | people lost incomes and maybe it also mattered because customers | are using interaction with service workers to fill the hole left | by the fact they have no real friends, but it didn't matter that | anyone's nails and hair looked a little worse. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-21 23:00 UTC)