I think there's one fallacy there... you can easily burn out while still engaged in your work. Or rather, you can be fully engaged in your work, happy about it, feeling great and on top of everything, and yet still get to a point where your body and mind just can't take anymore, and then you crash and burn for a few days (or longer, depending on the way your mind works), where you feel totally disengaged and don't do anything productive.
By the time you realise that you're not engaged in your work anymore, imho, you've already crashed.
Absolutely true. I hit that point earlier this year.
For a while, I was filling every waking moment with something "productive". Going to class during the day, working on the startup at night, listening to economics and political podcasts during my commute, and filling any spare minutes with writing or learning the guitar.
After a while, I just couldn't get anything done. My language learning slowed to a crawl, my coding output dropped, and I developed a wicked case of writer's block. My brain just... stopped. Thank God my wife's a patient woman, because I understand I became rather difficult to live with. The painful part was that I didn't feel "burned out". I loved everything I was doing, but I became frustrated because I just couldn't get things accomplished.
Sanity was regained only after I cut back. I canceled almost all my podcast subscriptions, reduced my startup work, and actively took some time off. "Noprocrast" helped too. :) After a while, productivity eventually came back.
Since then, I've been careful about tackling too much at once. I think the brain has a buffer that deals with all the stimulus that you deal with in your daily life. If you take on too much, the buffer gets full and performance drops to a crawl. Taking time to occasionally "clear the buffer" is critical to maintaining a healthy and sustainable lifestyle.
That's burnout? I just take that as a normal work routine - I'll work really hard on something for a week or two, then do nothing for a couple days while I recharge. I figure it's more productive than an arbitrary 5-days-on-2-days-off schedule, and it lets me make better use of the downtime, since I'm more inclined to try something completely different when I really don't feel like doing anything productive than when I'd rather be working.
My cofounder was the same way, and our downtimes never seemed to be synchronized, which was a good thing because it meant there was always someone going full steam ahead.
It's burn-out if you don't realise that you need to sit back and relax for a few days to recharge, and keep ploughing on regardless. Once you learn how to manage this burnout cycle, it becomes a feature rather than a bug, as you describe. If you try to keep going, though, a couple of days of downtime can easily turn into weeks of morose can't-be-arsed-to-do-anything-ness.
This is a really good article that does a great job of outlining burnout in the design and development industry, and reiterates why I got out of the service side of it in favor of: startups. Service-oriented design/programming just doesn't do it for me on that level as very few companies are setup for trickle down benefits if the service-agency produces a big win for XXXXX client.
Artists (programmers & designers) are very much alike in that we tend to get very obsessive-compulsive about our work. That being said, I switched over to startups realizing that if I'm going to work this hard then I want to be on the end that receives the big reward if we knock it out of the park (mental, personal growth, fiscal, etc). And unless deep down you feel very passionate about it, working at that intensity can be short-lived.
Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to find intellectually deep, non-interpersonal-communication work which does not involve programming in some way, without extensive re-credentialing. I'm working on it, though.
You can keep programming, there are many specific disciplines inside software development / programming that are intellectually deep. Getting into them is hard, but the reward is infinite.
Instead of thinly veiled insults, say what you mean to my face. Do you believe that despising the nonsensical constraints of today's programming languages marks one as stupid? Pray tell how.
Ok, that's fair. It was a cheap shot. Sorry. Here is what I believe:
- There is great intellectual depth in theoretical computer science. This field includes facets that are very close to programming, such as algorithms, and those that are one layer removed, such as complexity theory. These deep subjects are implied by any kind of programming.
- If you believe that today's programming languages have nonsensical constraints, you should explain what those are so that we can all benefit from their removal.
> There is great intellectual depth in theoretical computer science
No one will pay me to do theoretical computer science. The odds are similar to those facing someone seeking to be a concert violinist in a national symphony orchestra.
> nonsensical constraints, you should explain what those are so that we can all benefit from their removal
I find forced syntax to be a nonsensical constraint, and prefer to use S-expressions. Most people are happy in their chains and do not wish for their removal.
I had a similar problem as the same you are having now... I was a successful game developer (considered by many as one of the field leaders in my country), but I started getting bored. After a lot of trouble, I could manage to start working in machine learning and other related areas of what used to be known as AI. I'm really happy to be working on this now, and I have a lot to learn. Almost every day I work in an interesting challenge, which is very different from what I used to do.
It was not so hard to leave my previous field, which I was bored of, but to get a chance to work on this new field. I got to do this by doing a slow transition, first doing work that was halfway between game development and different areas of AI, and every time pushing forward my objective. It took me a lot of time to do it but now I'm very happy with the results.
If I can give you my advice, investigate the many areas related to programming that exist, investigate what companies that you didn't even know that existed do, and find something that you really wish you could do too. Then start moving in that direction, one step at a time.
I'm not by far as successful in the new field as I was in my previous life. But hey, I'm having a lot of fun. And with time, you get your knowledge and experience back again.
One step I used to help lower my stress level and fight burnout was this:
Never check statistics and analytics outside of the office.
I used to be a mouse slapping that cocaine-delivery-bar in my cage: I'd get up from my reading chair every 15 minutes in the evening to click "refresh" in my browser.
Good stats? On top of the world!
Bad stats? Obsess, dwell, worry, calculate.
There's time for that - do it in the office.
If I'm already putting in a 10-12 hour day, there's no need to take that crap home.
I take it a step further. Do not open up a computer when you're at home, or even watch TV. I have found that starring at a screen for all hours of the day is incredibly draining.
"XXX as been designing on paper, wood, plastic, metal and that ‘ol web thing for around 15 years, most recently as principal at Wishingline, working with clients such as PayPal, Masterfile, and Toronto Life Magazine while somehow still finding time to write, take pictures, perform and release records and actually have a life away from the internet. "
By the time you realise that you're not engaged in your work anymore, imho, you've already crashed.