I parent a child with autism. The care needs are intense; the burnout is real. But I can't employ usual burnout mitigation techniques like taking time off or making career / lifestyle changes. The world relentlessly marches forward. However, I've learned human resilience is AMAZING. You'll be surprised at what you are capable of when life asks for it.
Here are a few big insights that have really helped me:
- You never have to feel like doing something to start doing it. This insight is so strangely freeing. It really got me out of my head and the loop that I was in berating myself about motivation.
- The act of doing something is usually what creates motivation to continue. Tell yourself you'll spend 30 minutes on whatever it is. No matter what it is, I always know I can survive 30 minutes of it. However, 90% of the time, the timer goes off, but I don't feel like stopping. I've found my grove and I keep going.
- Procrastination isn't poor time management; it's poor emotional management. Be gentle with yourself. Know that you can be scared, frustrated, or angry but don't have to let those emotions define you. CBT works really well here. Don't define emotions as "good" or "bad". Define them as "useful". If the emotion you feel isn't useful, acknowledge it, but realize it's fleeting and let it pass on. Some people like to visualize emotions as clouds drifting by.
"And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy."
Psa for anyone who has tried this or similar advice and found that: it actually feels physically impossible to force yourself to do things when you want to, as though you’re trying to push an immovable object, and has found that even did you manage to start something, you just feel more exhausted rather than motivated to continue. Please consider getting tested for adhd, because I spent years of my life not understanding why well meaning advice like this just made things worse for me.
Everything the GP comment said is still worth considering. It’s just that you might need some assistance if you’re neurodivergent. Also remember that it’s a spectrum and to be kind to yourself.
ADHD is no joke, it can be extremely debilitating. I was force-fed medication throughout my childhood and couldn't stand the physical side effects, which opened the door for several abuse-related traumas.
Now that I'm approaching 30, I am considering getting back on medication. For the last 15 years, I've relied solely on caffeine and weed to medicate which is great for what it is, but just not enough, and sometimes counteractive to my goals.
I'm a bit over 40 and I'm in the process of starting meds again after stopping when I lost health insurance after college. I lost a couple relatives last year and it really drove home the point that I have limited time to live the life I want. I cannot patiently wait and hope good things will come.
Hey hey! As someone with ADHD who coped the same way for a similar time period and has been exploring medication for a little over a year, I would highly recommend trying again even if just for the sake of experimentation (a supportive health care provider helps a ton here).
I've found it to be a better trade-off that's helped me make a lot more progress in addressing the things that worsen my focus/follow-through/ability to take care of myself and help avoid counter-productive cycles of anxiety, depression, and short-term reward seeking behavior.
It's not perfect, there are still undesirable side-effects, and managing medication tolerance (without just endlessly bumping my dose) is something I've had to figure out on my own, but I definitely prefer the feeling of clarity to the fog.
I have recently experimented with vyvanse 30s, and it's been quite nice. As a child, before I became homeless at 15 and was finally able to stop taking medication, I was being pumped with vyvanse 70s, and it was hell.
I also highly recommend caffeine. I don't primarily get it from coffee or sugary drinks, but caffeine pills which allow me to precisely dose myself throughout the day and analyze the effectiveness. This has worked well for the last decade, but I still don't feel like it's effortless, and that's what I want.
Oof, 70mg is a lot, I can't imagine what that would be like, especially at a young age. Congrats on making it through, sorry that life threw that at you.
I typically stick to just a morning coffee, but I've never actually tried caffeine pills. I suppose if I'm dispensing advice on the benefits of experimentation I might have to look into them, thanks!
I am 11 years sober now. I used to self medicate with alcohol and drugs. It worked but it also stunted me in ways that I am only now reckoning with. There are a ton of options out there for you to try these days. I'd recommend discussing with a medical professional and see what your options are. :)
Regardless, if you are struggling with ADHD, I would recommend going on youtube and looking at videos by a guy named Russell Barkley. He's got a bunch and wow did I feel seen after watching a few of them.
I appreciate that, I'll look at some of his videos later. I consider myself highly functioning, despite an extremely debilitating case of ADHD, thanks to strong coping mechanisms. But I just am mostly tired of feeling overwhelmed while working through my task list. I'd like it to just be easier, the cognitive load is too much these days.
I've been prescribed just about any ADHD medication you can think of, but they all pale in comparison to solid coping mechanisms. I know my options are basically adderall or vyvanse, and I know how I react to them.
Caffeine is a decent substitute most days. What it comes down to is my aversion to the physical response of amphetamine, as well as the long-term implications of blasting my brain with speed every day. I haven't had any drug problems, I take a rational, knowledge-driven approach to the disorder. But I want to feel like I'm at 130%, not 80%. I'll probably return to vyvanse, just much lower doses than I used to be prescribed, and see how that shakes out.
It's hard for people without this disorder to really appreciate the implications. I just lost a best friend last year over his toxic behavior and insensitivity around what he believes is a made-up disease, despite overwhelming evidence for a genetic explanation involving reduced dopamine uptake.
Dude that sucks on your friend. I feel you. I’ve lost a lot of people for the same reason. It’s hard for people to accept that it’s not a moral failing. All I can say is that the ones who really matter will try to meet you halfway.
I too am high functioning and have a system that mostly works for keeping food on the table and the lights on. Professionally I’m doing great in fact. That said, a lot of personal stuff has fallen through the cracks and continues to. Hence the meds. I’m also working with a psychiatrist who specializes in ADHD and it’s been really helpful. Highly recommend.
Thank you for posting this. You wrote it better than I could. Much respect and appreciation to the parent commenter for the good insights; for some of us though, that first bullet point is a bit of a sore spot. When I initially read the first bullet point I had to close my browser for a while. For decades, I tried to "just do things" or "find meaning in tasks" or do whatever other advice I could find. About a year ago, I finally went to a doctor, got diagnosed, and started trying different medications. It took months to find the right combo of meds, but once we did I was astonished at how I could now also "just do things" (at least, for part of each day). The meds aren't perfect--I have good days and not-so-good days--but I am thankful to have some predictability now as to when I will be functional.
Also, for those starting out, it might take a few tries to find the right med(s). For me, just a stimulant or just an antidepressant didn't do much, but a stimulant and an antidepressant together has made a great improvement in my life.
After decades of frustration it turns out that 'discipline' and 'motivation' are available from the local chemist. You're not actually a bad person. Store bought is fine. You might even find that things like to-do lists and calendars, which everyone always told you to try 'because they make it easier', suddenly actually work for you.
Almost, the ones you can get from the chemist are kind of a blunt instrument unlike the ones normal people get, since it just elevates the dopamine levels in the brain continuously, rather than in response to stimuli.
I think I'm gonna try for an official diagnosis soon. It's bad enough that it has been giving me issues for years, but I had the benefit of a very low stress easy job. I've switched to a much more rewarding and challenging job, but have found out the hard way that living with ADHD has completely burned out any drive I had, so I need to get it sorted out before I run out of runway.
Can you explain how ADHD and things being hard in the way you describe are connected? I don't see the connection, but if it's the case, I should go see a doctor...
At a very high level, the answer is Dopamine. Normal peoples brains have a ready supply of it available and their brains generate some in preparation for doing a task and then continue to generate more as they keep working on things, this is the task positive reward loop keeping the brain focused. For people with adhd, this entire feedback loop is more or less fucked. You don’t get dopamine as you start a task, you don’t get it when you persist with a task, and you don’t get it when you complete a task. So getting things done basically provides no reward, as a result all you get is the negatives from doing the thing, it tires you out and depletes the dopamine reserves you do have available.
> The world relentlessly marches forward. However, I've learned human resilience is AMAZING. You'll be surprised at what you are capable of when life asks for it.
What I'm about to say obviously pales in comparison to raising a child with autism, but entering an ultramarathon/triathalon is a quite good way to experience something like this first hand in a safe environment. The amount a human can actually "go through" when it's asked of them is entirely remarkable.
I used to attempt things like that too (long races or tough mudders with little to no training). After doing my third tough mudder and getting injured I realized it's just stupid and a great way to cause a serious, possibly life enduring, injury.
Most people in somewhat reasonable shape could "run" a marathon on zero training. They might take 7 hours and have some minor injuries by the end, but they could finish.
To add a personal anecdote, I once walked 25 miles in about 8-9 hours* with a heavy bag, and then showered & walked to work afterwards. I was kind of out of it, but definitely not falling-down-tired or anything like that.
*I severely misjudged the length of the trip before setting out, thought it was about 5-6 miles.
I'd say if you're under age 40 it should be possible unless you're in really poor shape but then again that shouldn't be a problem to get in shape.
As you get older recovery time is an issue it takes a long time to get over hard workout unless you've always done it but even so it's still not like when younger.
My parents had the Desiderata on the back of the toilet door. I've read it innumerable times, but it didn't really start meaning anything to me until well after I'd moved out and needed that kind of perspective.
Also, I like all the points you've made and they ring true because I've experienced them more than a handful of times, but I still struggle to grasp their usefulness when I need it.
It's funny how emotional states can be the exact opposite of what may be best at the time.
Lastly, respect for parenting a child with special needs. Putting most of yourself on hold for an unknowable number of years is a rocky uphill trek. Keep a hold of yourself, but a tighter hold of them.
> The act of doing something is usually what creates motivation to continue.
This is one of the techniques I use when feeling burnout or overwhelmed by an insurmountable task list. I set a goal to just get one thing done. Sometimes that snowballs into getting more things done and sometime it doesn't, but at least one important thing got done, which greatly helps my mental state.
> Procrastination isn't poor time management; it's poor emotional management. Be gentle with yourself. Know that you can be scared, frustrated, or angry but don't have to let those emotions define you. CBT works really well here. Don't define emotions as "good" or "bad". Define them as "useful". If the emotion you feel isn't useful, acknowledge it, but realize it's fleeting and let it pass on. Some people like to visualize emotions as clouds drifting by.
As someone who has suffered from depression and related procrastination, thank you for your kind words.
I learned about Desiderata from my computer science class at secondary school in Poland. We had to style and type in a text from a piece of paper, and that was what we were given.
I value your comment. It revealed some thoughts I never Had, especially your first point.
When you talked about procrastination, ist reminded me of a Video that I watche every time I feel that procrastination overwhelms my life, which ist usually every 1-3 years.If you dont already know it, i Hope you enjoy it: https://youtu.be/mhFQA998WiA?si=YoO06S48xo8H5fKq
These were the observations that made the most difference in my life too. I also only learned and internalized them after my child was born. He's 3 now and I'm happy to admit that I've grown a lot thanks to him. For the first time in my life I look forward to what's to come next and feel confident to face the challenges.
I'm glad you're coping with a very difficult situation. Jumping on a bit of a tangent I'm fascinated how you swap between 'I' and 'You' in your comment and how it could read differently:
"Be gentle with yourself. Know that you can be scared, frustrated, or angry but don't have to let those emotions define you".
could become:
"I'm gently with myself. I know that I can be scared, frustrated, or angry but I don't let those emotions define me".
The difference is interesting to me.
Edit:
You just inspired me to rewrite Desiderata in the first person. I'm not conceited enough to believe that my version is doing more than faintly echo the original text but it was a (self) enlightening process. Thanks
I move placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember the peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
I speak my truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
I'm a VC-backed founder who's definitely burned out. I know for certain what caused it, and I know for certain when it became unrecoverable, and I know for certain that I charged ahead deeper into it anyway because I had little other choice at the time. There's also a very strong sort of sunk-cost/devil-you-know thing with burnout that sucks you down the rabbit hole.
You simultaneously feel like you're too burned out to be able to do some entirely new thing, if you can even muster the energy to engage in the switching process (e.g. job hunting, etc.), and the familiarity of the thing that's burning you out brings its own kind of perverse comfort.
However, now that I've been deeeeeep in it for a couple years (still doing the thing that's burning me the whole time and even now) I've developed an appreciation for what it probably really is... existential malaise. That's a really useful thing to experience. Because it can be used to redefine a superficial value system you've adopted, to get to this point of dread in the first place, toward things you do actually find personally fulfilling for their own sake. Sometimes in dramatic fashion.
> You simultaneously feel like you're too burned out to be able to do some entirely new thing, if you can even muster the energy to engage in the switching process (e.g. job hunting, etc.), and the familiarity of the thing that's burning you out brings its own kind of perverse comfort.
This describes an average Monday. Though I would not describe it as comfort but as continuous eternal pain you try very hard to ignore.
Thanks. Appreciate it. I'm probably fortunate that I came to grips with that whole end of things 20 years prior to work-induced burnout. I can probably safely credit the experiences for both the relative ease with which I went down the burnout hole and the relative ease of building a mindset for dealing with it.
Maybe. Dunno. Depends a lot on so many things. I mean, I'm excited about doing another startup after this one using everything I've learned about how I actually want to be spending my time and what kinds of users/customers/people I want to be interacting with everyday.
I feel like being forced to spend 40+ hours at any/every job has to create more work to justify that amount of time (an "agreement" that people died for when they were working in factories, not that its based on anything realistic or 'scientific'), and that's not very inspiring and takes SO MUCH ENERGY, at least for me.
On top of that you then are faced with this constant increase in "tech" that is supposed to do so much amazing stuff / make everyone more efficient, so now you are forced to do even more work in those 40 hours or get squeezed by wealth inequality? The new AIM chatbots coming out now can do so much! wowee! now I can be in 4 meetings at once?
Then on top of THAT you also have to wake up each morning facing global climate change where there is no real effort to change the course (you can say all you want about renewables, but as long as these graphs keep going up we're all going down https://www.climate.gov/).
People do get value and meaning from their work, whatever it is, it just feels like this mindset and social structure of the industrial age doesn't match up with any of the challenges we face nor does it feel like it fits with all the knowledge and technology that has been developed. What's the point if what we're doing on a day to day basis takes so much of our energy and then just gets us closer to human caused environmental destruction no matter what it is?
I'm less pessimistic. I'm convinced that technology will at least considerably decrease the amount of trouble caused by climate change. There are a lot of options, and we will converge to a 'golden' combination of strategies to deal with the effects of climate change. Today we can make huge rockets that can land themselves vertically. What will tomorrow bring?
This sounds like a fallacy. Just because technology is helping humanity achieve incredible things (for profit), it doesn't mean it will be employed to make advancements in climate change prevention strategies (until it's too late?). It hasn't been until now, anyways.
I don't think we will be in time to prevent climate chznge to a large degree. However I'm quite hopeful that technology will seriously decrease the cost of the consequences of climate change.
> Arnsten recounted walking in the woods in Vermont, when suddenly along the path, a bear appeared in front of her. Luckily, the bear was facing the other way. Rather than consciously reasoning that most mammals lack a ventral stream, and therefore would not be able to recognize a still object, she froze. In this moment of fear, her reflex of freezing was engaged. When the bear turned around, it did not notice her because of her lack of movement, and ended up wandering off.
Such a great example of how the fear reflex is functional from a survival perspective. We often talk about how we can combat our fears (e.g. public speaking, dancing, etc) and this serves as a good reminder how this primitive response serves a purpose.
> Such a great example of how the fear reflex is functional from a survival perspective.
All of our emotions (when we're healthy) are tools. They're all programmable to some extent as well. If somethings not actually dangerous, repeated exposure to it will desensitize you to it, for example.
> repeated exposure to it will desensitize you to it
Not necessarily, as someone who has a difficult anxiety that I have to deal with very often, being exposed to the situation doesn't make me any less fearful of it.
I think it's similar to one thing I learned about dog training. If your dog starts freaking out and barking uncontrollably at another dog, because they're afraid, once you get them away there's a sense of relief. "Oh good, I got away. Whatever I did that time definitely worked."
It takes an active approach to pierce through anxiety and fear. Repeatedly becoming terrified of something will more likely just make us feel bad, and helpless. Actively perceiving something frightening as tolerable is the kind of exposure that helps.
It will if you do it right. I had panic disorder. You probably need to gradually increase the stimulus and set your goals lower. If you're panicking in the situation then you've started at too intense of a level and need to work up to that over time. Don't give up. You can do it.
Another key thing a lot of people don't know is that you need good sleep in between stimulus exposures. Also, you probably need a shitload more exposure than you think. Persistence is what will save you.
Then why would you try to get rid of it. Fear is a tool that protects us from dangerous situations. If something is actually dangerous, then it would be rational to be afraid of it. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever to desensitize yourself to cobras unless you're literally a herpetologist or snake handler, for example.
Because even though it’s justified it’s still extremely inconvenient on a day to day level. Basically yes it is like I’m a cobra handler who is scared of cobras
Snake handlers shouldn't be afraid of cobras though. It's still a risk of course but it's not dangerous in the sense that it's dangerous for a normal person because of their education and experience. They've done the exposure therapy.
If your situation isn't actively harming you and is only a risk, then exposure therapy will work.
Science does not say that behavioural therapy works in 100% of cases. It seems you want to believe that it does. I have tried behavioural therapy, it is not right for me, it doesn’t work for me. I pursued different modalities that do work for me instead
Asserting that one modality must work for everyone is ascientific nonsense
It just sounds like classic depressed thinking to me. Every depressed and anxious person thinks they're the exception to being able to ne helped. Some are right but the odds are not in your favor on that one.
Even what are healthy emotions is an interesting question. I’m 99% sure my anxiety is work / chronic stress driven largely. It might not be a rational emotion when I’m in my ACd office with snacks and every physical need satisfied.
Arnsten misinterpreted that incident and drew the wrong evolutionary lesson. Black bears (the species in Vermont) aren't particularly aggressive versus other large animals such as humans, and will usually wander off even if they do notice you. The usual advice is not to freeze but to make noise and slowly back away.
when i watch media from 60 years ago i am overwhelmed by how much community there was inside workplaces. people communicated. they had community. ideas were communicative. so was effort. it almost feels like a violation in the modern sense to watch how in each other's business they were. and the backwash of social communication that comes with the transaction of work chat.
well anyways that's starting to feel like, i would not mind that level of familiarity and interaction at my job and maybe in society out with strangers, people i am competing against for resources, like, milk at the grocery store.
it's just me, and, my spouse, that i dump 100% of my social needs on, and i'm a lot, so i exhaust her quickly. i learned to keep bottled up most of my need to deflate after a day because that is basically holding someone hostage, to hear how my day went, as therapeutic as it is for me, it's an exchange of toxic assets that deserves compensation or greater distribution across a wider audience... like a workplace or a society tolerant of exchanging with strangers
so in the vein of lugging all this work around that gives us burnout, i have a theory that we're bottling way more up and solving it solo, poorly, just accumulating baggages that a different world used to exchange freely as part of a social acumen.
anyways i've put myself in a precarious situation of being vulnerable to a bevy of reality checking thread responses, which, i'd gladly take as good medicine to hear what i'm getting wrong; but i think i might have lobbed this point generally in a direction that is accurate, even if not precise: we dont have "our people" anymore and we're rotting together
You are just above average social, or maybe even a bit extroverted and as you mention you need to vent out but not have company to do so. Ie I am the opposite, no need to upload all the daily crap unto others, I deal with it on my own ie via long evening/forest walks, workouts and various sports, smoking weed sometimes (and mixing with long walks).
Its tiring to be mostly on receiving end, either there is a lot of negative stuff being unloaded unto you, or people are hopeless in some basic situations and can't speak up or generally help themselves or similar, and there is very little I can actually help with.
What is important for long term stable relationships is to have them balanced, give what you take in similar if not same ways, and not be a semi-constant source of negativity/complaints, everybody has their limit. The shit I've been told from some of my close folks, without ever asking or wanting to hear that... I would never bother them with such crap, its often borderline rude, and usually there is 0 I can do just listen or stop the whole circus.
As a suspected introvert, I really love sitting down and hearing about my partner’s day, but this is really crucial:
>Its tiring to be mostly on receiving end, either there is a lot of negative stuff being unloaded unto you, or people are hopeless in some basic situations and can't speak up or generally help themselves or similar, and there is very little I can actually help with.
I’m sure OP is wonderful and I don’t want to make assumptions about them, but I’d hate to do this with someone who is really negative and finds too many things to complain about. The other thing you mentioned is that if you’re a certain type of listener, it is an exhaustible skill to engage with so many “i need comfort not solutions” type stories and conversations.
> it is an exhaustible skill to engage with so many “i need comfort not solutions” type stories and conversations.
Very much this. I'm in a similar situation myself, and I noticed at some point I started mentally begging for any of the complaint to be something solvable, because I'm running empty on comfort. It's especially hard when you heard the exact same complaint for like 5 times in the last two weeks; comforting stops feeling sincere just by sheer repetition.
While media can reflect reality to a certain extent, it is still just a fantasy. See 'Friends' and young 20 somethings living in a million dollar loft in NYC while working as a barista. "What happened to those good times in the 90s?"
> See 'Friends'...living in a million dollar loft in NYC while working as a barista.
I see this comment everywhere and it irks me. Here's my point-by-point, obsessed-fan's rebuttal:
1. It isn't a loft. It's an unusually large apartment.
2. It's explained on the show that it's a rent-controlled sublet illegally inherited from a grandmother of one of the characters. The illegality of the situation is a key plot point in one of the episodes.
3. It's obviously easier to shoot on a larger set than a smaller one. It isn't hard to suspend your disbelief on a fairly minor point. Would it have been a better show if they had shot it on a smaller set purely to satisfy people who want realism?
4. The size of the set is irrelevant to the storylines and characters. The characters don't otherwise live lavishly or appear to spend out of proportion to their income.
5. All but one of the main characters lives with a roommate or romantic partner throughout the entire show's run.
Cool, but it's still not the norm, that's my point. It was the most popular show at the time so regardless of what the intricacies of the backstory were, people got the impression that was normal. "This must be what it's like for the avg 20 something in New York." Almost every show does this. No one wants to watch a show about someone struggling to get by in a shithole. It's just how TV works. You see only the nice stuff with people thriving. The fat dumb husband with a hot wife is another unrealistic trope.
Google Sharon Zukin. She wrote a book on loft living and describes the decline-rejuvination cycles in cities. According to her poor artists are the reason for those million dollar valuations.
Cycle goes something like this. Factories in parts of the city shut down after it get cheaper to run them outside. Those spaces lay empty, rents drop, decay begins. Poor Artists move in. Area starts getting interesting. Yuppies move in cuz of the 'cool' factor. Property developers notice. They start buying everything up. Rents jump. Artists get kicked out. And you end up with boring rich people living in a formally cool area.
Ha, never thought I'd see Sharon Zukin referenced on HN.
"Loft Living" is a great book, although it's been a minute since I read it. To quibble on a minor point -- if I remember correctly, a major part of that book was pushing back on the narrative on part of that cycle, that these factory spaces "lay empty".
Something she describes in this book is that these factory spaces were still very much in use by light manufacturers, and that it was the rich real estate interest specifically targetting this area for redevelopment that pushed a narrative that it "lay empty" so that they could more easily get the neighborhood rezoned and push out the manufacturers for more lucrative residential tenants.
One of the characters "inherited" it from her grandmother (read: the grandmother's name is still on the lease and the landlord was never notified) so the original lease was probably signed a long time before the show's timeline begins. Since rent control limits rent annual increases, that means they're paying well below market rent.
What has changed, in your view? At my workplace we chat. About our spouses, kids, hobbies etc. Sometimes about difficulties at home or our frustrations and ambitions at work and life. We have dinner or drinks after work sometimes. We’re not friends, per se, but we’re certainly friendly. Are you referring to something else?
My usual burnout post; much of burnout is really chronic fatigue (ME/CFS) and much of chronic fatigue is from a genetic predisposition and a trigger. hEDS/HSD appears to be the most common genetic predisposition.
This stuff occurs in smart people more than it should, usually with some sort of anxiety disorder or ADHD. Some of the best public info on this is from Dr Jessica Eccles who examines the relationship between cognition, emotions, and the autonomic nervous system. This stuff shows up in a lot of stats, eg a huge portion of people with long Covid have some sort of hypermobility.
There are effective psychopharmacological treatments for dysautonomia which is usually the underlying mechanism.
I'm probably prone to this, with every single predisposition you listed.
I can't overstate how much getting fit helped me. I absolutely still get burned out, with the same depression, anxiety, and existential malaise, but the lows are never as low, and it is always much, much easier to bounce back.
I don't know how much of it is a purely psychological sense of resilience you build up by regularly putting yourself through difficult physical stressors in small doses, and how much of it is from physical changes that (presumably) improve your autonomic function and balance... but whatever it is, it's been life changing, going on about 10+ years now, depending how I count it.
Just want to add, for some there is the issue of post exertional malaise (PEM) when cardio becomes counter productive. Those can often still weightlift without triggering PEM. This is predominantly how I managed it for most of my life and worked ok until the covid vaccine triggered another setback.
It's directly linked to stress, I think the predispositions are linked to not being able to ameliorate stress so anything that helps manage stress will help.
>much of burnout is really chronic fatigue (ME/CFS)
Sorry, I don't see how that could possibly be true. People with CFS have fatigue to the point where they can't get out of bed. The fatigue from burnout is usually driven by workplace conditions. Like sure, they both have some kind of environmental trigger. But CFS can almost become a disability, whereas burnout is much more narrow and temporary.
That is certainly what people think and why I feel I need to pipe up whenever these threads get started.
While certainly some with ME/CFS are so bad that they cannot get out of bed the vast majority have good and bad days and you don't see them on their bad days and they look just like everyone else on their good days. One of the reasons it's considered an invisible disease. It's a spectrum and some people manage it better than others.
Sometimes the burnout isn't so temporary - even this article talks about how repeated burnout becomes an problem with the person entering a state of depression which bares a lot of similarities to ME/CFS.
Most people with ME/CFS will never be diagnosed and those people will often think they just have issues with burnout. That's what I though for over 20 years and I have a severe form of it. I though I was managing burnout and then graves disease. It never occurred to me that I would have something like ME/CFS until I stumbled on a random twitter comment that linked ME/CFS with hypermobility which I also have a severe form of. So here I am adding my comments to the internet.
There are generally a whole bunch of rather weird and rather rare comorbidities that occur in people i.e. it is known by its associates. That's what a lot of Dr. Jessica Eccles work goes into.
Isn't it a bit of a stretch from going from your personal experiences to generalization to "much of burnout is"?
Fairly certain it wasn't the case for me anyway, I can see what caused me burning out, and can also see what I did to help me get out + prevent it from happening again.
I'm clearly not basing everything on my experience and pointed to a medical researcher Dr. Jessica Eccles who is doing large studies. Like many people who end up in this state I talk to many other people who also ended up in this state.
The advent of covid and the long covid that has brought with it has resulted in a large number of people who were previously well and are now very sick. There are public studies done around this cohort and I've done a number of private studies of > 60 people with long covid and I have the WGS of > 15 people who have the SNPs that I'm interested in - which is a rather large number for a 'rare' disease and especially large for a private person.
Attribution is difficult, it's very easy to mistake one thing for another, disambiguation requires careful consideration.
Yeah, I believe that's some kind of personal bias. For example,I think that much of burnout (and anxiety) is caused by undiagnosed CPTSD (Complex/Childhood PTSD). But that's probably because it's a source of my problems and now I see it everywhere.
Dysautonomia is extremely hard to treat. Symptoms vary from patient to patient and the number of physician is really lacking.
Individuals can have symptoms like fatigue, GERD, poor circulation, neurological problems, psychological effects.
There are many causes too, certain antibiotics, chemo drugs, covid, autoimmune. It is extremely unrecognized.
A specialist in my area used to have a 1+ year waitlist. Now, he moved to a different state.
There is an exciting treatment in the pipeline. WinSanTor is developing a cream with pirenzepine. In clinical studies there was a systemic recovery of nerve damage. I have spoken to a chemist who had nerve damage from flouroquinolone antibiotics, which caused his dysautonomia and he recovered using oral pirenzepine. Keep in mind WinSanTor is targeting diabetic neuropathy in their studies but it should work for other neuropathies.
That's exciting. I got blind-sided by that. A doctor just said he was prescribing 'an antibiotic' like it was no big deal, and I had never had issues with any other antibiotics. I was told by the pharmacist do not exercise while taking these (found out a few days later it can damage your tendons, several people ended up with snapped achilles tendons) but otherwise nothing else.
Took a single pill and within a few hours I felt fairly strong neuropathy all over my body. Took a few more days and a few more pills before I determined for sure that it was caused by the pills and not something else, and got the antibiotic switched to doxy. I continued to get neuropathy in my limbs quite often for years after that. It's mostly reduced now but I think it might have caused damage in other parts of my body, and may have helped lead to me getting the Tinnitus I've been dealing with for four years now (there's a causal link between the two).
Since they prescribed it to me the surgeon general has slapped big warnings on the pills, but I was shocked a doctor didn't think to warn me about the possibility that there could be any serious side effects (it was also the first medicine I took where I had serious side effects by it, took me by surprise).
Seems it's actually not that uncommon that people have bad reactions to flouroquinolone antibiotics, it just wasn't recognized for many years. Wish I was given an appropriate warning. I might not have risked it, or asked for a different antibiotic I know didn't have issues at least.
Unfortunately, your story is quite common. I am a mod and veteran on r/floxies, it is a subreddit dedicated to helping sufferers of these drugs.
Obviously, not every individual will suffer from side effects but even if its 1 in 100 that gets neuropathy from a single pill when other drugs are available is pretty wild.
It is extremely common doctors even fail to accept that these drugs can cause side effects listed on the drug label.
It can be really hard to even get diagnosed with dysautonomia, and absolutely it's hard to treat. A total zoo of seemingly unrelated symptoms made all the more difficult with things like brain fog and psychological impairments.
Interesting, pirenzepine is a antimuscarinic agent (M1 selective antagonist). Neatly in the class of psychopharmacological drugs.
I predominately use Amitriptyline and Modafinil as well as Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) and a very strict diet. Modafinil is a no-go for anyone with gut issues and I don't know the alternatives very well. Modafinil in the morning and Amitriptyline at night help push my autonomic system into the sympathetic and parasympathetic states respectively. I have a very complicated rational around choosing these meds which is not fully fleshed out yet, but they worked for me and work for some others in the long covid cohort. So for now it is good enough and what I'm sticking with. As I understand the science better I might consider switching up the meds and seeing what happens. I still get PEM and would love to be able to fix that.
That info about flouroquinolone is interesting. I've discovered that I was treated years ago using antibiotics that would definitely not be prescribed today. I will keep an eye on the drugs like Pirenzepine.
Flouroquinolones are a pretty high risk drug. Over the years the warnings have been increased. If my memory serves me right, half of all flouroquinolone drugs have been taken off the market due to adverse reactions.
Generally, this family of drugs should no longer be used as first line treatment. Doctors still often use it as first line for UTI though. It carries a very high risk of damage to tendons and neurological system.
It is also the only antibiotic which is topoisomerase inhibitor, other drugs which are topoisomerase inhibitors are chemo drugs. It means that it blocks the enzymes needed to divide and regrow cells.
Could you recommend some psychopharmacological treatments? I’m dealing with some flavor of this which is making my life difficult. I’m working with a neurologist, but I’m interested in your thoughts.
Diet is probably number one, sugar cravings caused by dopamine dysregulation and can also induce dopamine dysregulation causing a rather vicious cycle. Those most addicted to sugar are the most harmed by it.
Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) is probably the most used and widely accepted med within the patient communities and due to having a rather mild side effect profile is a great place to start. Such side effects include really crazy dreams, insomnia, and nausea. The stronger the side effects the more likely it'll work and the negative side effects will go away in time.
I predominately use amitriptyline and modafinil but I don't have the gut comorbidities that would preclude the use of modafinil. I'm not familiar with alternatives to modafinil but a friend who previously had success with modafinil, until the gut issues became too much for him, switched to levosulpiride and he says that worked great. This appears to be counterintuitive for me but psychopharmacological meds are a tough one because they almost always have more than one receptor binding affinity and there is the interplay between ligands of different types and strengths as well as how the brain and body reacts with it. In general I prefer the weaker ligands than the stronger ones and don't try to over-optimize such that every day is good, I target 80% of them.
I basically looked up what books are used in that field and read a bunch of those; Stahl's Essential Psychopharmacology being one of the better ones. There are also books on dysautonomia but I don't know if there is a particular one I would recommend - the whole dysautonomia space is rather nebulous. My big takeaway from that is that is dysautonomia is super complex and hardly anyone understands it.
The official criteria is based on the Beighton score, I think the official thresholds are too high so this test has a bunch of false negatives. I think people can be only mildly hypermobile, especially men, and still show up in the long covid cohorts much more often than they should. It's considered a spectrum, hypermobility spectrum disorder (HSD), where on one end you have Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome hEDS and on the other end you have generalized joint hypermobility (GJH). Even GJH shows up in Dr. Jessica Eccles Long covid research far more that they should which would be weird if such hypermobility was truly benign.
Sounds like you're in the UK? Any chance you could send me the details of your doctor(s) to ivan.ristic@gmail.com? I've been struggling to find a doctor willing to diagnose me properly. Much appreciated.
Not in the UK - the UK is weird in that they have some of the worst gaslighting but also that's where Dr. Jessica Eccles is based and they have a decent Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) medical community https://ldnresearchtrust.org/. While that is starting from a treatment and working backwards doctors who know about LDN and how and why to use it are most likely to know the other things they need to know. I'll send you an email and can probably put you in touch with other UK people in a similar boat.
Yeah, HSV viruses in addition to the SARS viruses are well known ME/CFS triggers. It also appears with toxic mold syndrome and heavy metal stuff.
I suppose it’s theoretically possible for someone to get a IQ bump from HSV I think the correlation is more from selection criteria biased on severity.
There does seem to be a non-zero optimal for brain inflammations effect on IQ which could explain why smart kids have are likely to burn out when an existing predisposition to brain inflammation is made worse with age.
Is long covid still a thing? I thought it was a coping mechanism for managing the regret of taking the vaccine AND then getting covid and/or injured.
Is there a proper differential diagnosis?
Long covid is no longer a thing the same way ME/CFS is no longer a thing. The world moves on without you (me). I did have an adverse reaction and I knew before taking it that I was in a high risk category for adverse effects, i.e. I already knew I had ME/CFS. My main consideration was that I'm also in the high risk category for adverse effect from covid. I'm open to the idea that the pericarditis that I got from the vaccine I would not have gotten from covid but I really don't know. I wish this was something that society would talk about openly and honestly.
Not something I particularly wanted to get into but the genetic predispositions for long covid do seem to appear most frequently in the more intelligent. And since our society is so stratified by intelligence a large portion of the population does not directly interact with intelligent people and are truly sincere when they report that they don't personally know anyone with long covid. My experience is quite different as 1/3rd of my friends that I knew prior to my own issues have developed such long covid/ME/CFS issues of their own. I went through the whole gifted / magnet schooling system so my peer group is substantially biased.
> genetic predispositions for long covid do seem to appear most frequently in the more intelligent
I am not surprised, since many of them were easily manipulated into a pretty bad risk trade off that even a plumber would not take. Regret is bound to be high for that kind of people.
Historically speaking many of the brief episodes of strange psycho-somatic “illness” with vague descriptions were found among the equivalent of the laptop class and suburban wine moms.
I believe the word you're looking for is 'credulous'.
Yes, there is a general question of why do otherwise smart people believe ridiculous things. There is a common refrain that because they're smart they can more easily rationalize their beliefs but I don't believe that is true.
I think diminished ability to ameliorate stress leads to stress aversion behaviors and a strong attraction to rules, structure, and authority. I think when the effect of that is greater than their intelligence they become prone to believing many untrue things but once intelligence goes over a certain threshold that effect is lost. I think that's why a lot of the bell curve memes ring true to many people where both the very smart and the very dim share the same beliefs but for different reasons.
Historically speaking most of those people, generally considered hypochondriacs, did have the conditions they complained of. Historically medicine has been literally blowing smoke up peoples asses, draining their blood, and feeding them mercury.
I think it's a bit weird that you're using evidence from the same medical system you don't trust to get covid and the vaccines right to unwittingly gaslight on their behalf.
You are simultaneously dismissing others personal anecdotes while providing your own as evidence. I believe you are reporting honestly of your observations, just as I believe these wine drinking suburban moms do have the conditions they complain of. This stuff does affect women worse than men and for the aforementioned stratification reasons those affected are more likely to be in the upper middle class and above.
Your immune system does not generally prevent you from catching anything; it allows your body to fight the infection more effectively the next time you catch it, thereby reducing or eliminating the symptoms. In your lifetime you will likely have caught some illnesses that you are vaccinated against without realising it, because you successfully fought the infection before it became serious. The COVID vaccine in particular never claimed to eliminate the symptoms altogether but reduces the severity so that rather than breathing through a tube for three weeks, you get a nasty cold. Long COVID is still a possibility and yes, very much a real thing albeit not well understood yet; I know at least one person who is recovering from it now.
> In your lifetime you will likely have caught some illnesses that you are vaccinated against without realising it, because you successfully fought the infection before it became serious.
>The COVID vaccine in particular never claimed to eliminate the symptoms altogether but reduces the severity so that rather than breathing through a tube for three weeks, you get a nasty cold.
Good examples of propositions that cannot be falsified.
Indeed, and you cannot prove that a specific car crash would have been worse for the passengers without seatbelts, however a proper understanding of how seatbelts work makes the conclusion nonetheless fairly obvious.
Also, statistics are a thing; propositions like 'vaccination reduces severity of illness' can in fact be proven or falsified by studying a sufficiently large cohort, such as is readily available during, say, a pandemic.
> “The final feature is a reduced sense of personal accomplishment,” Santos said. “You never feel like you’re doing things effectively and so you feel ineffective and like the work you do doesn’t matter. If you notice signs like this, it’s important that you pay attention early on and make some changes in order to feel better.”
I wonder if this had to do with the fact that in modern society, we often have to go through great mental loops to convince ourselves that our jobs are meaningful. After all, they are very far away from doing things like obtaining food and shelter or even learning things we are curious about.
At some point, I feel like the illusion cannot be held for long: it starts in school when the learning is onstensibly about curiosity but then the gradient between curiosity-driven learning and being a cog slowly eats away at the facade that we have constructed in our minds of actually doing something useful in society until burnout becomes inevitable.
Seems rather obvious as society these days is mostly about furthering advanced technology for very little benefit to the average person except that it keeps the economy going only due to the fact that the economy itself is based on broken principles not compatible with our amazingly high human population density.
Not only that, the rate of change is increasing or speeding up. Brains are not really capable of handling constant change.
There is much more to learn. There are more unknowns. And there is much more competition.
If you take competitive sports and look at size of support stuff its ridiculous these days compared to 20 years back. There is coach, physio, shrink, nutritionist, biz manager, social media manager etc
So now extrapolate and imagine what things will look like 10 years or 20 years from now on the that trend line. Its just not sustainable.
People have to think about rate of change in the environment that surrounds us.
Everything feels like that all the time. And yet we constantly find
ourselves 10 years down the line, with years of exponential growth
piled on top, and some post-Malthusian explanation of how "actually it
is sustainable if we just keep pushing through and believe in
progress".
I'm not saying this or that _is_ sustainable, just that the point
people declare it "unsustainable" is often only the beginning. It's a
(mis)perception David Goggins speaks of a lot - about just how much
deeper an organism can dig in crisis, or how low our pain/risk
thresholds are set. Maybe we unconsciously factor that in.
Personally I think that's reckless and we are better heeding warning
signs. But if we'd done that in 1970 climate change wouldn't be a
thing, right.
Well, so far we have proof of unsustainability: we've already raised the extinction rate of species hundreds of times the background rate. So, already unsustainable.
Very useful comment: the rate of change is just as important as the nature of the change. Hence why the change through evolution in the biosphere is generally much more stable that the change brought upon us by technological innovation.
>I wonder if this had to do with the fact that in modern society, we often have to go through great mental loops to convince ourselves that our jobs are meaningful.
Especially since a lot of them are not.
It's often corporations acting as middlemen and extracting value like parasites, bussiness making bullshit for conspicuous consumption, modern mega-bloated bureaucracy and busy work
Was it ever any different? I’m very skeptical that there was ever a time when the average person did personally meaningful and constructive work.
I think we all have this sense that life should be nothing but personal fulfillment, and anything getting in the way of that is a problem. And maybe it’s even true that that’s how things “should” be, but I really don’t think it ever has been.
What about when the majority of people were farmers. Growing and harvesting your own food so you don't die this coming winter seems about as meaningful and constructive as it gets.
Were the majority of people ever farmers who were entirely self-sufficient, and not producing food for the local gentry or warlord or whatever? Genuinely curious, was there a time when the majority of humans were self sufficient, enjoyed the fruits of their own labor, were not conscripted into tribal / feudal / corporate endeavors?
In the same way digging ditches and then filling them up isn't meaningful. Creating things that last for a year or two, creating food that leaves you hungry, drinks that leave you thirsty. Designing things just to create work instead of value.
I think that they are talking specifically about conspicuous consumption. That is: consuming things just to display to society that you have the resources to consume them.
In the same vein, I was thinking recently about how this ever increasing number of “abstraction layers” in the economy impacts day to day life and community–I think it’s much more likely someone would feel connected to their community and a sense of purpose in life if they, for example, worked out of their own small bakery and met their customers all day, versus working in the back room of a corporate chain supermarket making minimum wage. We seem to be losing things that anchor our communities together, and I wonder if being directly dependent on other people in the community, as opposed to indirectly through layers of bigger, abstract businesses, isn’t one.
There are obvious myriad and complex reasons we’ve arrived where we are, but it’s an interesting topic to ponder. I’ve also thought this shift could be responsible for other societal phenomena: it’s fairly well known that some portion of people are pretty awful to the people working in shops or restaurants. Is this perhaps a behavior that only really develops in a world where people rarely visit owner-operated businesses (where they might face consequences for treating the owner poorly)?
It's helped me a lot to move to a small town that is thriving near a big city, then volunteer on ambulance and firefighting. I see my neighbors every day when they most need help.
I get to show up and give them a helping hand. In just two years I've met so many people and made so many friends.
It helps to feel like I'm doing something valuable to society and not just fixing the validation on an input form for the 1000th time. I feel deeply connected to my neighbors now in a way that I never would have imagined.
It also breaks up the day to get to run down for a call, and not just be stuck behind a keyboard all day. Sometimes I'll go work from the station, which has great AC and WiFi.
Likewise, I’ve become a parent and moved into a small community and it feels a lot better for sure. Im still ball tied to a corpo for a living but even that seems to have got somewhat more bearable by being part of some community.
I worked at a company making project management software and, although in the grand scheme of things the product wasn’t meaningful, I enjoyed working on it until the company tripled in size and I was fixing bugs for enterprise support team number 3.
I like making things. People find satisfaction in toy making as well (especially at nerf, from what I hear), even though toys are not inherently meaningful.
What killed it for me was realizing that my individual contributions didn’t affect anything with the product.
> People find satisfaction in toy making as well (especially at nerf, from what I hear), even though toys are not inherently meaningful.
I think toys are meaningful. They encourage exploration and fun. That's certainly meaningful and fun is a basic human instinct. What isn't meaningful is that which does not contribute to an increase in human happiness in the long-run, such as the creation of new iterations of phone models that last only a few years just so people have to upgrade.
It's difficult to define meaningful, but I would include that which allows people to enjoy their life in a sustainable world that is compatible with creating opportunities for freely exploring all aspects of human existence, while maintaining respect for other living beings. Much of what we do in the modern world is not that.
Maybe on a market/profit level. On an interpersonal level, though, joy is not valued. If someone feels that you are expressing joy they are very likely to view you less than they did before. We find the expression of joy to be distasteful and childish, and culturally are disdainful towards it. Only cynicism and stoicism are acceptable.
I'm a youtuber and software developer with a small but determined following.
Almost all of that has been gained, not through the quality of my work, but the degree of enthusiasm I showed for it. It's on me to make sure I'm still going in the right direction, because my audience will be swept up in the enthusiasm.
Joy is not only valued, but it is marketable. So is anger. Cynicism is considerably less marketable, and stoicism isn't really observable at all: you're probably thinking of expressions of woe implying great burden and suffering.
When you specifically say on an interpersonal and cultural level that "joy is not valued", and "only cynicism and stoicism are acceptable", that's a screaming red flag that you aren't hanging out with the right people.
Also, who gives a fuck if someone else looks down on you for being happy? Let them wallow in their own misery and judgment. You don’t need their approval. Live for yourself and not for others.
P.S. You might be surprised to find out what they are actually thinking. It’s usually not what you imagined.
The surprise has come because what they are thinking is, in fact that expressions of joy make them respect you less. They hide it, but only for so long.
You don’t get to express joy to family or friends or partners. They will have less respect for you.
You do not get to be an adult man and feel joy about anything. You certainly don’t get to express it.
I’m sorry your friends and family look down on you for expressing joy.
If I was guessing, they don’t actually disrespect you less. They are actually jealous, but don’t feel comfortable expressing their own joy, so they take it out on you, to pull you back down. They probably aren’t even aware that’s why they are doing it.
But that’s a problem with them, not you. You aren’t responsible for their emotional disregulation. It’s your job to take care of you, before you help others. Put on your oxygen mask first, yeah?
It’s a sad life to be rigidly beholden to only express emotions in ways that you imagine others would approve of.
If you care about the person or have the time, then it is good to at least consider their views and feelings (which are often different than what we imagine them to be — you can only find out if you go to the source of truth and ask them. This might sound scary but in a healthy relationship it’s okay to talk about this stuff), but you don’t have to be beholden to them.
And, of course, it should go without saying that doesn’t mean you should completely ignore the current circumstances. E.g. If you are at a funeral, you should tread more lightly, obviously. Every situation is unique, and you have to use your judgment.
It’s ok to do things other people don’t like, as long as you aren’t a jerk about it. Live authentically and listen to your inner voice. Do so with kindness, wisdom, and courage. You might be surprised by the positive reactions you get from others.
Good luck to you.
P.S. This is so important I have to say it twice. Everyone has issues and will project those issues in the way the interact with the world around them. It's not our job to cater to the issues of others. It's our job to take care of ourselves and live honestly and authentically. Sure, we make compromises for those that we love, but we want to do so because of that love, not because we are afraid of what they might be thinking.
The thing is that in the past, the "non-useful" work (e.g. intellectual work) was often backed up by a philosophical and religious system. Now there is no sacredness to Reason or to science. In a totally secular worldview (I'm an atheist myself) there isn't an inherent value to doing that kind of work.
To be fair, philosophers and religious figure throughout history have struggled with "acedia"[1]; which seems very much like something we'd call burnout today.
Yeah I don't think that burnout is a modern problem at all. But I think that I can point to certain aspects in modern society that cause it that may not have been present before, such as the completely emphasis on utility over everything else, and a spiritual and philosophical desertification.
I grew up in the UK which has the most extreme sense of "anything unproductive is useless". I completely failed my English oral test but because I was good at Maths and Science they just wrote "A" in my grade for GCSE English anyway. Who cares about humanities education (low wage, low GDP, likely unemployment) if you are good at Maths? Many people on this website will even swear there is no downside to foregoing an education in literature, philosophy, art, etc. We also don't have a liberal education at university: I studied physics and only physics for my entire university education.
I sympathise with the article you posted. It's interesting that it has been historically considered a moral failure and even punished:
> The Benedictine Rule directed that a monk displaying the outward signs of acedia should;–
> "be reproved a first and a second time. If he does not amend he must be subjected to the punishment of the rule so that the others may have fear."
Much of my shame over burnout came from knowing it was sinful. I don't think letting go of that shame has helped, though.
I think the problem is not a secular worldview per se (and I am a Christian myself) but a materialist secular worldview that encourages things like the hustle culture and the undervaluing of personal relationships and community.
I got a PhD myself. And I think it's definitely at least partially true: I was told flat-out that I should stick to big-business style research (i.e. research areas with large, complex and directed research plans) and forget following my own curiosity. Of course, once you get tenure in places where it exists or you make it, you can deviate from that.
It's even worse in industry, where I worked after academia. I felt like I was using 5% of my brain to do things I was bored to death with. This isn't just me either: many of the people I've worked with feel the same, including virtually all my fellow PhD students.
I feel like the only thing keeping it going is the novelty of working in new places, meeting new people, and getting new projects. It's almost as if we have a basal attraction to novelty because it's a survival instinct, but we have distilled life so that novelty is the only thing left, stripped of substance long ago when we traded thought for automation.
Of course, it's even harder to see it because we have "propagandists" (i.e. then 1% of people who have carved out a protective bubble for themselves due to a combination of luck, ingenuity, and gaming the system) that say that amazing things are happening.
I think a lot of people aren't necessarily happy because they're highly skilled at it, but because its a default state of being. If it was purely a skill then environmental or biological factors wouldn't play any role.
If anything, we learn to be unhappy. It's no secret how toxic academia can be - I would say the original commenter's personal observation that only 1% of people are happy is probably because many people around them are deeply unhappy.
I know I felt this way when I was in a different career. Once I moved out of that field, I was astounded to find out that people are actually not depressed most of the time. I won't lie, the improved financial situation that followed was a big factor - it's definitely easier to be happy when you're not poor!
So, I agree, a recalibration is in order. But that might involve removing yourself from certain social groups as much as it requires a thought pattern adjustment.
I never claimed that only 1% of people are happy. You are reading my comment far too literally. People can find meaning in their lives independent of their work, even if they hate their job. Nor do I think that people are happy because they are lucky, or that people who are happy are true propagandists.
I only meant that not many people can find true meaning in their work only, and that this phenomenon is far from a theoretical optimum. Of course, people that find meaning in their work aren't literal propagandists. Only, their efforts and enthusiasm is promoted as propaganda as an emergent property of the system that needs their efforts in order to support a pathological system.
There is a bit of a problem with the Internet tending to amplify negative views, giving you the impression that everyone is unhappy - no, it's just that all the unhappy people are on the Internet all the time.
Maybe people are depressed because of the ideas that:
- happiness comes from outside yourself
- the world is fucked (people who think this tend to blame the economy, the environment, the threat of nuclear war)
- humans are weak and ineffectual, so we can't change the environment or ourselves
Why do these ideas exist? Because people trying to sell us on voting this way or that (illegal immigrants are ruining the country! big bad corporates are ruining the environment!) or spending our money a certain way first have to convince us that the status quo is unacceptable and that they alone can effect change.
Get rid of these ideas and watch your well-being skyrocket.
And while happiness needs the "inside yourself", it also needs the outside. Especially the outside that affects the inside, like reduce socialization and spaces to meet causing loneliness, social media and "personal highlight reels" posts from thousands that one sees causing feeling of inadequacy and missing out, an economic climate that brings precarity and uncertainty, etc.
Of course if you e.g. make $200+ plus stock bonuses and such a year in a cushy IT job you might dispute the latter is a thing, and if you're an introverted "hacker" type, you might dispute the former is a thing as well. It's like billionaires saying "everybody can succeed, just look at my and my unicorn 1 in 1000000 company".
And while we can be happy even with bad external conditions (e.g. third world poverty) it's very possible that we cannot be happy with all kinds of bad external conditions, e.g. a damaged social fabric, widespread atomization of society, meaningless work, status and income uncertainty in a consumerist (not a third world, where everybody is poor anyway) society, and so on.
I don't think they made the claim that only 1% of people are happy, but 1% are "propagandists" as defined by having carved out protections for themselves. Which sort of carries weight if looking at wealth distribution of the global economy and discounting the likelihood of people having a fulfilling life below the top 1% wealth level. But it's silly to discount that 99% of the population in my opinion.
>If you think: -only 1% of people are happy, they are happy because they are lucky, every happy person is a propagandist, you need immediate recalibration of your worldview. You only live once, and you ought to be happy.*
The universe doesn't give a fuck, and having one life is not a guarantee or a contract to anything, much less "hapiness" (itself ill-defined).
The fact that the universe isn't capable of giving a fuck one way or the other is immensely invigorating to me. It means it's all up to me. There's no god or gods with their thumbs on the scale one way or the other.
(Life doesn't have to be fair for your outcomes to be all up to you, by the way. You're dealt a hand of cards, and you can play them well or you can play them poorly.)
Well, the configuration of thumbs on the scale is set when you’re born. You could be born in a poor/rich family, healthy/disfunctional family/country, you are inheriting some generic material that may play well or not in the environment where you grow up and so on. Yes, some of it is up to you later on in life but getting there in the first place is not a given.
> I wonder if this had to do with the fact that in modern society, we often have to go through great mental loops to convince ourselves that our jobs are meaningful.
Most of our jobs are not meaningful. They'll carry no impact beyond our tenure, the company's existence, and so on. Most don't help society in any form or fashion, sans generating revenue.
One thing you can do is think about having a meaningful life instead of job. Your job doesn't have to be meaningful in order to have a meaningful life.
when i'm feeling down about the meaninglessness of my company/work, i try to find small wins wherever i can.
someday you'll be stuck untangling a giant muddy ball of legacy code to help a company solve a problem that you don't care about (or even arguably makes the world worse). but just re-scope your expectations and realize that "hey, i made life a little easier for some of your coworkers by fixing some annoying things
Hunter Gatherer: collect nuts, tubers, kill some bison.
Modern Man: get the money, collect some skills, fire some underlings.
Maybe our brain has adapted those base instincts. And modern burn out is more equivalent to what early man would experience in a famine, during times of scarcity.
If you can't get the money, you starve.
Burn Out is the Modern Man equivalent to the stress the Early Man would feel in a harsh environment and near starving.
That's odd: during my K-12 I had believed (encouraged by MAD magazine?) that school was where we learned how to find meaning in life, despite spending large chunks of it in granfalloons paying (just enough) attention to things other people have deemed Important?
Exactly: the take I got from MAD is that the lesson Education teaches is not what it claims to be teaching, but how to survive, if not thrive, between the lines of a bureaucracy. If you manage to live despite the machine in K-12 (when the bureaucracy is at its strongest), then it's all downhill later in life, when you could actually spend time in a karass or two, and at least get more and more control over what you're doing, when, and with whom.
Womeone is paying me to do a thing. Therefore, what I'm doing must, at least on average and over the long term, be so valuable to some number of people that it's worth continuing those payments.
That's not that abstract to me, and it certainly feels meaningful.
They can pay because they had make a mistake or don't have a knowledge.
For example I was working with a team of 6 creating a project for a bank that was discontinued after 3 months, without any reason and code was simply deleted.
> Womeone is paying me to do a thing. Therefore, what I'm doing must, at least on average and over the long term, be so valuable to some number of people that it's worth continuing those payments.
I feel that is not a logical conclusion. What if someone paid a hitman to kill their boss because they got into a fight with them and they aren't emotionally stable enough to have a discussion?
Yes, an extreme example, but consider this: not every increase in perceived value is necessarily good.
An extreme example indeed, and a heinous one, which is probably why contact killings are so rare and so expensive. My key operating words of "on average" and "over the long term" are in full effect here.
I direct interested readers to David Friedman's _The Machinery of Freedom_ for some worked examples of how capitalism might minimize such actions from taking place.
I highly doubt it. Look at artists, what they do can hardly be described as "survival" or "productive". Yet they seem to get a great amount of joy from their work. Even if no other person cares.
Here's something to think about: A dog was chasing 2 kids to attack them, one fell to the ground and the other kept running. The dog kept chasing the running one and passing by the one that fell. He attacked and bit the kid that was running.
Dogs for example, have an instinct to hunt on things that run. Plenty of my friends have been bitten while running. I always start walking when I see a dog, and never been bitten.
Don't underestimate instincts in both humans and animals.
If it starts jumping around like a deer I’m sure they would at least investigate. They do have other senses too. Bears have been evolved to do a few things well over millions of years
Apparently, according to this story, when you stand still, they ignore you. If you smell funny, they may investigate.
If a tree moves, they will also investigate, maybe there is something to eat hiding inside. Bears typically live in forests, so there's not a lot of movement of trees on ground level. If a lot of trees move violently, they will go to their burrow to wait it out.
It would take too long to explain all the details. Basically I started my postdoc after my PhD, and my boss was/still is completely absent and left me alone. For specific reasons pertaining to my psychological history as I uncovered in the therapy, this caused a very strong reaction in me of abandonment, and I found it impossible to continue to work. My boss refused to do anything to help me, he would not give me more help or attention. However, my contract is fixed at three years, I am not in my home country, I live in Germany with my wife who I brought here with me who has a "real job", and I get paid a lot. Therefore, I can just remain at home doing nothing (no one cares if I go in or not) and get paid, which also has not helped.
Of course, now I am going to abandon academia, which is very painful, since it is my entire life so far, but I clearly cannot make it work even though I have tried extensively. I need to be in work where you actually are a part of a team, getting feedback, talking to people. As my contract comes to an end I will be forced to look for a job, but of course I'm completely terrified because of the burnout: I've never had a "real job", and when I tried to do some programming work for my stepdad, even though it went well, I felt terrible when doing it and I felt burnt out with that too.
My strategy was of course to seek mental health services, since at the beginning of the burnout my mental health was much worse (suicidal ideation, depression, etc.) and I found my therapist. I won't go into detail about the therapy because it is a kind of psychotherapy that is common and supported by insurance in Europe but that is controversial in the US.
Of course, the therapy has helped hugely. I no longer have thoughts of suicide and I don't have depression anymore. However I am still terrified of work and am almost completely convinced I will have all the same feelings of apathy, disappointment, and lack of motivation when I try.
First step, I need to convince a company that I don't have these fears, and lie to them about my motivations, and hope they believe me.
EDIT: I can no longer reply to any more comments since /u/dang set harsh limits on my account
I wish there was a job for burnout people something like:
1. meaningful
2. high impact
3. high authonomy
4. safe (low pressure, stress, etc.)
5. creative
And counterbalance it with lowpay to please market dynamic, something like a work for people with disabilities or requiring special assistance (which is done quite good in EU).
I did try open source/own project, but the pay isn't guaranteed and I would like to pay the medical insurance/state pension and some basic (minimum wage) income to simply have peace of mind.
when i got burnt out, i left for a low-pay high-meaning tech job at a nonprofit.
it made things so much worse because it turns out that when you go to a low-paying job the quality of the org and coworker talent drops a LOT. this lead to a highly dysfunctional workspace which added so much more stress because a) dysfunction is stressful and b) you could see how that dysfunction directly harmed the meaningful thing you were supposedly working toward.
one of my proposals for partially fixing burnout would be to allow devs to take unpaid sabbaticals.
if i could have taken 6-9mo away from my job to do my "meaningful work" and then come back, i would've much preferred that to just outright leaving. i imagine that that'd be a great employee retention tool for the tech co as well.
In smaller companies you can negotiate it as my friend did.
There is some stigma around "diy sabbaticals" (leaving job without new one), my fiance and family was quite surprised and frustrated for proposing to leave a "high paying job where I don't have a lot of work/stress" without new one in toughy developer market with lot of layoffs.
There are hardly any jobs like that in the world. It would also be hard to create them via some state intervention, because it's very hard to create "meaningful, high impact, high autonomy" via bureucratic process.
I don't mean state intervention as most programmers are quite privileged, but a company that creates something like skunk works for people for burned out people
As Steve Jobs put it, "we're in a business of making phones, not hiring people". It makes way more sense for a company to get rid of an employee when they admit to burn out, rather than try to help them.
Yes, but I think this and (un)paid sabbaticals may attract a elite talent that is in short supply (at least in the US). But then again this is my speculation.
*If* such a thing could be done under typical corporate incentives/behavior, then I suspect the “high impact” part would need to be scrapped. Because when something is important to a corporation, it turns its eyes that thing (so to speak), which disrupts the other properties.
Or, “high impact” could be spread over the long term. So, unknown-payoff R&D. It would need to be an “invest and ignore” strategy and require a lot of institutional trust.
Is it burnout or ADHD or depression? I feel like I have symptoms of all of them. Burned out at work because the project I'm on isn't selling and I don't care about it anymore but I have other busy work to do. Feels like ADHD because I can't stop myself from fidgeting on my phone looking at Reddit or FB or whatever. Feels like depression because I can't focus and I procrastinate like hell and don't feel like doing anything. Literally on the phone now trying to make an appointment with a behavioral health doc to see someone to get a diagnosis.
I recognize this a lot in my now ex-boyfriend. The loss of ability to focus, the emotional tornado, the depersonalization. I still don't know whether I was the main trigger for this, or if it was work.
I don't know anything about your case, but in my friend's case I think work was the main trigger. But if the work was the main trigger, then he needed his home to be is sanctuary which is definitely wasn't.
Having burned out hard, my explanation is hope. Hope is like a zero calorie meal. It will keep you going and focused, but eventually you’ll collapse.
We can learn to push through hard times, but not forever. You need connection, exercise, good food, and nature.
After burning out, I relaxed for a while. Then, I focused on things that were under my control and didn’t depend on others. Exercise, losing weight, etc.
i think being allowed to pivot into maintenance mode occasionally would help with burnout. being able to sit back and do a job that's a bit more tedious and focused on routine would be a nice complement to always sprinting to make something new and solve things you've never dealt with before.
ideally you'd be able to doing that without a change of roles/titles and management would be able to rotate teams into different types of work periodically
can relate the post. but i wonder if what she/he defined is a "burnout" or just the result of the alienation?
no matter which execuses we find, we know that our job is meaningles. KPI's OKR's Jira tickets.. does not mean jackshit to our self.
I've jumped on programming/tech since i got my first computer, i loved how hacking/building something that works and learning new stuff along the way feels. But at the end of the day, this is just another white-collar job, some shits needs to be done, most of the time with coorporating with other people.
If the article defines burnout correctly, i think it is inevitable due to the alienation[]
Here are a few big insights that have really helped me:
- You never have to feel like doing something to start doing it. This insight is so strangely freeing. It really got me out of my head and the loop that I was in berating myself about motivation.
- The act of doing something is usually what creates motivation to continue. Tell yourself you'll spend 30 minutes on whatever it is. No matter what it is, I always know I can survive 30 minutes of it. However, 90% of the time, the timer goes off, but I don't feel like stopping. I've found my grove and I keep going.
- Procrastination isn't poor time management; it's poor emotional management. Be gentle with yourself. Know that you can be scared, frustrated, or angry but don't have to let those emotions define you. CBT works really well here. Don't define emotions as "good" or "bad". Define them as "useful". If the emotion you feel isn't useful, acknowledge it, but realize it's fleeting and let it pass on. Some people like to visualize emotions as clouds drifting by.
"And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy."
(My grandmother, who survived the Great Depression on a farm, had the Desiderata posted on her wall. https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html)