I hit some bad burnout last year, and it's become hard to think hard about anything ever since. Like a defense mechanism has been installed in my brain preventing me from hurting myself like that again. When I have to think hard about something for work I have to push past that and then I feel an intense dissociation while I do.
I learned this week that "occupational burnout" [1] often results in the brain developing a trauma response to the idea of returning to the same job/tasks, which is why people will sometimes entirely switch careers. It absolutely is the brain trying to protect itself.
Not all forms of burnout results in trauma responses, but they all require extended recovery. Burnout is preventable, but once it has been reached, the damage has been done and rest is required. No joke: 3-6 months is the usual recovery time.
Paths to occupational burnout:
- No mental rest from work. "Taking it home with you." Often skipping breaks to keep focused.
- Jobs that require high amounts of mental processing for long periods (customer service, development, troubleshooting, multitasking, urgent-response).
"Brown out" is the stage when you're still capable of functioning in spurts, but your brain/body is sending warning signs (that we have been taught to ignore).
3 to 6 months is interesting, it almost exactly lines up with my experience of leaving work for a bit. at around three months, i mostly stopped feeling like shit and angry about some of the things that happened. i felt like i was a baseline. at around 6 months i started to feel actually good.
also at 6 months im trying to get back to work and the interview process and job market sucks so im feeling miserable again haha
If you ever wanna chat I'm in the same boat. Just keep your head above water and try to think positively. Playing with ChatGPT and the dirty cheap OpenAI APIs has helped me a lot =)
Oh, I just meant, I'm also looking for jobs, the market sucks, interviews go fine and then I hear nothing back. I'm just doing my own thing and I empathize is all I meant!
Oh and in terms of ChatGPT, I just meant it's something fun that I use for other interesting projects due to how flexible the composability is (LangChain, etc)... not so much directly as a therapist-bot if that's what you were asking.
What are the warning signs? The paths you described kind of describe things I do. Sometimes they are necessary and I am taking steps to prevent them. At the same time I worry I already shut down the warning signs.
Sometimes I wonder whether "burnout" or "occupational burnout" describes something I have experienced in college. It was not a spectacular or intense thing, just losing interest in my subject completely and avoiding getting started with exercises, even though I was decently good at my subject and loved the hours and hours I spent studying.
The usual, some combination of sleeping difficulties or sleeping too much, constantly being annoyed by nothing in particular, brain fog, forgetting things, procrastination, difficulty reaching a flow state, general disinterest in certain or most things, acute anxiety/stress response to thinking about things that should be done, increased "self-medication" with alcohol or other drugs, comfort eating, or alternatively forgetting to eat, loss of appetite.
This is me since... at least high school. Probably earlier, but my memories are spotty. Almost all the things you mention present, often acutely, in relation to anything that is "to be done" - be it work or personal. Anything can trigger it, the moment it stops being something I do on a whim, and becomes something that I plan or is expected of me. No underlying medical condition to attribute it to. What to do then?
Yes. Treated for depression in my early 20s, but it only reduced those issues a tiny bit. Diagnosed with ADHD in my 30s (thanks to many comments like yours over the years on HN, which eventually made me talk with a doctor again); treatment was much more effective for the symptoms in question, but they never completely went away, and occasionally come back to bite with vengeance. I currently consider the effect of that treatment to be somewhere between "close, but no cigar", "you're holding it wrong" and "lulled into false sense of security".
One thing I observe being unstated for many mental health conditions is that the duration is often life.
Or that without fundamentally changing the set and setting of one's life, one can expect, on average, approximately the same metrics now as tomorrow, and so on and so forth.
Therapy and medication help, for some people, some of the time.
> Sometimes I wonder whether "burnout" or "occupational burnout" describes something I have experienced in college. It was not a spectacular or intense thing, just losing interest in my subject completely and avoiding getting started with exercises, even though I was decently good at my subject and loved the hours and hours I spent studying.
I think this is my experience right now. I love CS and almost all my classes were great, but now it's like I can't study, I can't will myself to work on a class' project, etc. I have an exam that I have been avoiding for months and it's blocking my other classes that require this exam to take their exams
The fact that you use the past tense means you got past it? If so, I'd appreciate any advice
I felt the same with Electronic Engineering in my final year - because I had realised that what I was learning was so academically focused that it was almost useless in the real world. I forced myself to finish that last year, but I think that effort destroyed my love for electronic design work (fortunately, I fell into a software job instead, in part because I got my degree).
Perhaps if you can get out in the real world then you will find real problems and those will likely motivate you (if you are anything like me, anyway). The most motivated students I recall were already working, and they picked and chose relevant academic focus that could help them with their design work (i.e. they could get some value from the academic system). Even though work is often depressing in itself (varies on a huge number of factors).
Edit: perhaps relevant: I was depressed due to a relationship. She ended the relationship with me, and the next day I was long-term happy. Turns out situational depression is a thing, and that it is entirely different from clinical depression (which doesn’t fix itself in a day - exception fast bipolar?). If you feel unhappy, sometimes you have the ability to fix the situation that is making you unhappy!
I've never conceptualized of burnout as trauma, but this makes a lot of sense. The best definition I've read of trauma is, "an event or series of events that overwhelm a persons' ability to cope." Almost like tearing a muscle by trying to lift something that's just too heavy to bear.
But if burnout is trauma, is taking a break from work really enough to resolve the trauma? I ask because that seems insufficient in the case of other traumas, e.g. undergoing physical or emotional abuse, surviving violent accidents, etc.
> But if burnout is trauma, is taking a break from work really enough to resolve the trauma?
Apparently it isn't, much like in case of physical trauma. GP mentioned people switching careers.
I know a person who got burned out when their boss tried to make them do 2D and later 3D design for the company, on top of their normal assignments, because he didn't want to hire a new graphics designer after the last one quit. Said person gained basic proficiency in some CAD software, Photoshop, Corel, and then burned out on 3DS Max, to the point of having strong physical reactions at the very though of it, even many years later. It's a psychological wound that can't heal, and it closed off 3D graphics as a line of work for that person. Trauma is one of the words we used when talking about it over the years.
It took me a year to recover from burnout. Don't underestimate the recovery phase. I was at the point where any cognitive effort caused very similar effects to what you would describe, kind of like the mental equivalent of having lifted weights to failure but with an instantaneous onset. I suspect every case is unique, but I'd suggest thinking very carefully about how you can take an extended break from work.
The key distinguishing what I felt with burnout from just being mentally tired is that no problem, no matter how hard it was to solve (or even if I failed miserably at solving it) has ever caused me to instanteously feel 100% mentally exhausted. By contrast, when burnt out, even fairly trivial work tasks would trigger this.
I would love to take an extended break, but unfortunately it's not really possible at the moment... I'm living in a VHCOL city, and have an expensive chronic disease as well that means I can't really afford extended time off. I don't have any family members that I could fall back on either.
So in the meantime, I'm kind of just putting in the minimal effort at work, not doing any side projects, and going on lots of really really long walks. That seems to be slowly helping.
What I found helps is spending as much time outdoor as possible, preferably in the sun and in the wild nature, especially if they're light hike. Try to do that at least half a day every weekend.
Long walks help. Also therapy or just a long talk with someone you trust, work wonders. Just intensely and suddenly realizing that the situation is not your fault and that other people go through periods like that, takes a big weight off your shoulders. It's exactly that weight that makes you tired soo fast.
fwiw, I'm in the same boat. My parents are retired, though still here. The strategy you mentioned worked for me, although it takes longer. A year instead of six months.
I have read more about being able to use short and long term disability, which might help, or be a viable part of a strategy. If you do this, I'd recommend having your own insurance and not using your state or companies disability insurance.
Yeah about a year sounds right for getting to the point of merely facing the tasks again. Personally it feels like there is a permanent anchor on those tasks. In that, yes you can do them again but you will never get back to the same speed or skill with it ever again.
It has been a little over 2 years since I left my job from burnout, now I am doing something completely different and a lot less intense. But I don't think I could ever go back to what I once did. I have permanently blowen out half my cylinders. ;)
I don't think so, but your comment sounds super familiar. I think we may have chatted about burnout before on another thread on HN?
I did once have an experience with nitrous oxide where I heard something similar and subsequently had a pretty major shift in my thinking process for awhile.
I do distinctly remember reading about this particular metaphor, but can't for the life of me remember where and in what context. Hopefully someone here can recall?
> Like a defense mechanism has been installed in my brain preventing me from hurting myself like that again.
I consider this a feature not a bug. Now go focus on important things in life: money, sex, and exercise. Don't overthink. Learning another state management method in new generation of Angular, unwinding a mess created by CV-driven FOMO hysterics, acrobatics in Java design patterns... they're all not worth it.
Came to post this. Life gets much better when you stop thinking of your body functions as bugs. They're features.
Your body learned that 'working really really hard for this resulted in very little tangible reward' and then probably concluded 'i will not work very hard for long periods of time without seeing reward'
Probably the hardest part is understanding that 'i made a number in a database increase' is not actually a reward.
> Life gets much better when you stop thinking of your body functions as bugs. They're features.
Counterpoint: this is like considering various peculiarities of software from 1980s to be features in 2020s. Yes, our bodies are well tuned. To an environment we've lived in until our ancestors, thousands of years ago, boarded a metaphorical rocket ship, and left it flying under constant acceleration.
In certain aspects, we're quite far from the environment we evolved in, and evolution has lost the ability to keep pace some time around when it granted us with ability to develop a language more complex than a few grunts.
fair call, if you're body-primary you'll see the environment as broken and in need of fixing. but if you see the current environment as the source of truth or what you'll need to adapt to survive long term, then yeah you'll need to fix your body.
this reminds me of the men in black scene [1] where Will Smith moves the table. you get to decide what kind of person you are
I tend to see it as a dance - humans have unique ability to transform the environment to better suit their needs, but sometimes it's still easier to just adapt the body[0]. Both these things are unique to humans anyway[1] - all other life on Earth is "environment-primary", i.e. environment is the source of truth and living things adapt to thrive, except they adapt by breeding imperfectly and dying unevenly. Thus, arguably, neither is more or less "natural" than the other - we're the only ones to have the option to fix things - be it our bodies, our environment, or both.
--
[0] - Related concept: "society is fixed, biology is mutable". The flip side of the well-known (if annoyingly overused) adage, "you can't fix social problems with technology" is that if your problem is a social one, you've already lost. Social problems are unsolvable by direct approach; literally anything else is easier than getting people to coordinate at scale, when it means enduring a short-term personal loss for a long-term distributed gain. If you have that kind of problem, pray there's a way to medicate, industrialize, capitalize, code, or CRISPR your way out of it.
[1] - Unique at the scale we're talking about. There's a huge gap between us and the next animals best skilled at adapting themselves or the environment.
tbh i don't think this feature is outdated. it's just your body telling you that doing someone else's bidding intensely and unendingly isn't healthy. it's good to recognize that.
But this is exactly where our environment differs profoundly from the ancestral one: most of us live in a society closed over resource production. We still need food and other means to survive, but now there are no freely accessible sources of them - we're all gating access to resources for each other. Which means I always have to do someone's bidding if I want to live. I have some choice of whose bidding I'll do, but this means that I'll eventually reach a point where changing the person whose bidding I do is less effective than just doing more for the current one.
I am a socialist, so I think that this is your body telling you that you have a political problem that you are sensing individually.
It's true this kind of thing can crop up even under the best labor conditions, but much much less frequently. Startup founders do run into it and they own their work product.
Still if workers get a significant share of the total value they produce and have good control of their working conditions (and can change projects easily), I suspect this will get a lot better.
> Now go focus on important things in life: money, sex, and exercise.
I read this list as: requires stable employment, requires stable employment, is torture. The first two items... are not something I can focus in lieu of my job, they're literally the point of it (I long ago gave up on the idea of Finding Fulfilling Work That Is Also Your Passion And That Is Net Good For The World).
As a comment on exercise: I also see exercise as torture when I'm doing it wrong.
For me, I needed(/need - this is not a solved problem) to find a way that works for me, and also take it in the tiniest of little bites.
I tried for years to get into running. Never worked. I hate running. I tried to go to the gym, but all the classes went way too hard for me and my local didn't do "just show up and lift", only classes. I tried riding a bike, but I could never find a way to do that where I wasn't dodging cars, rain, hills and heat.
Finally last year I bought a rowing machine and a heart rate monitor. I put my headphones on, listen to a podcast, and focus on keeping my heart rate in a specific zone for a certain amount of time. If it's hot, I turn on the AC. If I get sick of it, I stop. I dont have to dodge cars, so I can completely dissociate and listen to the podcast so long as the number is where I want it to be.
It's great and generally not torture, which is nice because apart from team sport it's literally the only way I've found that isn't.
Running was torture for me and I hated it. But after a year of running 3 days a week, suddenly I noticed I was enjoying it and looking forward to it. Been running for nearly 40 years now. It's one of the best parts of my day.
Of course, I run in quiet areas where my mind can drone off and think about interesting things.
I've tried running around the park, I've tried running around the track, I've tried road running, I've tried cross country running, I've tried treadmills. Every time, I keep it up for a couple of weeks and then I get horrible shin splints. Or I bust my ankle, or I can't commit the time to do a good loop because it's winter and dark all the time. One way or another, I stop, and I don't go back to it for another year. I've learned to stop fighting it. I just don't like running that much, and I'm ok with it.
The point is, I mistook my dislike of running, cycling and HIIT for a dislike of exercise for basically my whole 20s, and it turns out that's not true at all. I just had to figure out the version that worked for me.
I get shin splits on grass, artificial turf, unpaved tracks and treadmills. I've had it looked at by a podiatrist, and he recommended stretches for my tibialis anterior. I do them before I play sport and they generally work if I'm only playing once a week, but much past that and I'm in pain again.
Increase your cadence to at least 170 strides per minute. More if you can. This forces you to lower stride length. Overstriding is a main cause for shin splints.
Also try to think about your hips when you run. An anterior hip tilt will put excess stress on shins and quads. Tense your glutes when running to keep hips level. Imagine you are carrying a bowl of water in your hips and try not to spill!
Also weak glute medius will cause knee pain and potentially shin splints. Try strengthening up the glutes and shortening stride length.
These are great tips! I've had issues with weak / under-activated glute medius for years, but I didn't think about that causing the shin splints. I'll give the 170 stride a minute tip a try.
Thank you. I'll consider getting a machine then. It seems like might just work. I did some serious amount of exercising in the past with VR glasses, but that was inconsistent because of space constraints, and became nearly impossible after our first kid became self-propelled.
For me, all common forms of exercise feel like torture when doing them, or when thinking about doing them, or both. Most of it isn't even for physical reasons, just a combination of anxiety, procrastination, and the kind of general sports aversion you develop when you get prescribed glasses when you're 7 y.o. and thus go through 10+ years of schools not being able to effectively participate in team sports during PE classes...
100% with you on the anxiety and procrastination. The anxiety for me was driven in part by "people can see me suck at this", so I put the machine in my home office - with a door.
As for buying a machine, I highly recommend going to a gym during a quiet period if you can find one that will let you do a trial or a day pass. Then you can try all the machines and find the one that you think sucks the least. Rowing is good because it does loads of muscle groups, but ultimately that doesn't mean anything if you hate it.
E: the thing that changed the game for me was a good hr monitor. Smart watch was full of crap, and just listening to my body made me go way too hard too fast.
I hate using exercise machines. Everything about them. Running outside I see the sun, feel the wind, splash through the puddles, say hello to others, check the Little Free Library, tell the ditch diggers that they're digging in the wrong spot as legend has it the gold is buried the next street over, it's all good.
To add detail onto my reply to your other comment then: these things are the things I hate about exercising outside!
The sun is too hot, the wind is too cold. The puddles are a twisted ankle just waiting to happen. I don't want people to see me running - it makes me self conscious of every part of my body and my running form. I don't want to check the little free library during my exercise - that's a break in my flow.
On a machine, I don't have to worry about any of that. I just go, and when I reach my time goal, or I don't feel like it anymore, I stop. I can close my eyes if I want to without worrying about falling over. I can make all the exertion noises I want to if it's hard. I don't have to walk all the way home if I go too hard too early by mistake and get a stitch.
And the best bit is that your way and my way are both totally valid ways of exercising. The important bit is not how we exercise, the important bit is that we exercise.
Meanwhile, I go to kung-fu training and get pretty annoyed when I have to skip a class once. Sports can be wayy more fun and I wouldn't worry about the social aspect so much - adults can behave better than teenagers.
Maybe not. I put a ridiculous amount of effort into that last project last year. I saved it from disaster, which saved a bunch of people's asses that had fucked it up over and over.
Nobody really noticed. My raise this year didn't keep up with inflation. I could have let the project fail like it should have, rather than burning myself out. Maybe I would have received some of the blame, but chances are I'd still just be making the same amount of money if I had just cared less.
It's often necessary to make sure they notice, by telling them. A good method is to email your manager a weekly summary of what you accomplished, including extra hours you spent on it. This is especially worth while if you're working remote.
That's a classic story in a corporate world but I fail to see how is it relevant in the context :) We were talking about 'thinking' being required but nobody said it was sufficient.
I was mostly approaching it from the angle of how overworking and overthinking isn't really necessary to make money. And how doing so can actually lead to burnout.
Not what I was saying. Being the person on a team that kills themselves to get a project across the finish line isn't the secret to making money. It doesn't even get you recognition for your efforts most of the time.
> It doesn't even get you recognition for your efforts most of the time.
You've gotta toot your own horn. Relying on others to do it for you is a surefire recipe for disappointment and disillusionment. Think of it like a business. If the business does no marketing, what's going to be the result? Bankruptcy.
I've known many bitter people who did something great, and nobody knew about it because they thought it was unseemly to write papers about it, present about it at conferences, etc.
Woodworking using only hand tools can be a remarkably space-efficient and neighbour-friendly pastime. I started out that hobby making little projects, mainly using a few unpowered tools (plus a cordless drill) in an area the size of a small writing desk.
Definitely possible. The nosiest thing would be banging on chisels, I've seen a hollow chisel mortiser recommended as a power tool well suited to apartments if you're not going all in on hand tools: https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/shop-machines...
What we describe colloquially as burnout has a lot of parallels to mild to moderate clinical depression. So much so that they both respond similarly to the most effective treatments. There is no singular cure, but a consistent regimen of exercise, bright light exposure, and social activity can produce incremental improvements over time.
What definitely does not help is using stimulants to try to push through. I feel like I’m seeing more and more social media posts from people who deepen their burnout by trying to use excessive caffeine intake (or stronger prescription stimulants) to try to ignore the warning signs and push on.
Caffeine easily creates a negative feedback loop where you consume it, then get less and lower quality sleep, and therefore need more caffeine to function at the same level, so you sleep even worse, and so on.
The main fixes I’ve found for myself are:
- Get a lot of exercise and sunlight (if possible) to counteract the caffeine’s effect on sleep.
- Resist the urge to have more caffeine than usual when tired. It works well as an enhancer to a well-rested brain, but when used to compensate for sleep deprivation, it’s counter-productive.
Second point is a great call out. I used to keep shoveling caffeine when I was younger and ended up having huge sleep problems (surprise) and a 26+ circadian rhythm. I’d quit for a month, then be back on it.
Eventually I figured out that a solid blast of cold brew in the morning and none the rest of the day worked better —- almost like medicine. Like you say, if I feel I need more then it’s a lifestyle problem.
i sometimes drink a single cup of tea in the morning now, but back when i was pushing hard, i would just buy cold brew concentrate and drink an espresso-sized amount in the morning. it was very effective at jump-starting the day and was strong enough that i didn't ever feel the need to keep consuming. it wore off by noon and that's when i would break fast and get some lunch. then i'd do non-demanding tasks in the afternoon.
i think a lot of people drink cups and cups of coffee because the first one just isn't strong enough. get a strong buzz first, get your shit done, and then let it coast down. probably why many europeans start with a strong espresso and asians drink less-caffeinated tea throughout the day. drinking coffee all day long seems like a solution in search of a problem.
I love coffee, but I've determined that consuming caffeine negatively affects my sleep even 6-8 hours later. I agree with your fixes, though my own rule is simply to not consume anything caffeinated after 15:00.
How do you determine whether you have been burnt out?
Because for me stimulants have helped against the symptoms that are described for burn out. By that I mean things like lack of motivation, helplessness, frustration, anxiety, incapability to feel pleasure, cynicism, sense of failure, self-doubt, etc.
While stimulants have a withdrawal period, I prefer to have an option to be productive and motivated for a certain amount of time and then when I don't have to do anything, it's fine to comedown as opposed to being constantly in that depressive state of mind.
Because stimulants remind me that it's possible to feel motivated, essentially. Otherwise I would never feel motivated. It would be a constant grayness.
And I can learn from the mindset I was able to have while being under the effect.
I also do few weeks of breaks to reduce tolerance and dependency when times are easier.
Not everyone is equal. For what you say , talking everything at face value , you may have something that stimulates treat such as add/adhd and that may also mean more prone to depression or it’s slower burn dysthymia.
There are many confounders. To the extent the problem is caused by depression, the negative feedback loop of stimulants leading to poor sleep can actually have net positive effect (possibly only short to mid term, IANADoctor, this is not medical advice), because sleep deprivation seems to (in my experience, anecdotally confirmed from various sources) shut off depression symptoms faster than it shuts down your cognitive power.
Related: see also Ballmer Peak[0], which is particularly funny because the effect is, to a degree, real.
I'd say though that not all stimulants necessarily mess with sleep. I've been mostly using methylphenidate and it only messes with ability to fall asleep for the few first days when I'm back after a break. I do not have ADHD however, at least according to diagnostic tests. I have had depression and anxiety diagnosis though.
I do, and I'm prescribed methylphenidate (though I'm currently on a break). I agree, they don't mess with ability to fall asleep except early on (for me, it was literally on the first day, but man I was losing it after trying and failing to fall asleep the whole night). But they do let you get away with sustained 3-4h/day of sleep. Which eventually comes back to bite you.
How do you decide on your breaks? I have prescription too, but I usually use everything up within 70% of the time period and then 30% I have a break, which was not intended, but this is what I've been doing anyway. In a way it's good to have these breaks at least to understand dependence and tolerance.
So each month I have a period of a little over a week of break.
I didn't say the break was intentional :). I run out, but I figured I'll just wait until the next appointment and see how I take a prolonged break, because it's been years since I did a break longer than a day. The problem is, as a father of two small kids, my family life and professional life are in fierce competition for my mental faculties, so I never feel like I can "afford" a break. I do recognize it's an irrational and self-defeating thought, but if that realization could impact my behavior, I wouldn't be on stimulants in the first place ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
RE my break, I maybe had only a day of "withdrawal" that was more of a little panic mode, that lasted until I realized I'm really managing just fine, only maybe slightly less so. Week later, I was still managing fine - though everything was noticeably harder, and I was only compensating with habits developed since starting the treatment (and perhaps novelty of such long break itself).
Counterpoint: honeymoon in Turkey and while I was brimming with energy on my way back, the moment I sat down to work again, I crashed to even lower level than I was before leaving for the vacation.
I've found something as simple as a daily calm stretching routine goes a long way towards keeping the mind+body on board with everything else I call on it to do.
Not that I'm some new-age meditation and yoga solve all problems type at all.
But stretching in particular is a surprisingly effective mind+body exercise because there's all these safeguards in place to prevent carelessly damaging your muscles and joints. When you increase your flexibility and condition your mind+body to allow reaching these extended positions, it's like you're earning the trust of the system. It's not purely a physical flexibility thing, there's a huge mental component.
That seems to translate into greater self-trust elsewhere, be it pushing physical limits of endurance/strength or constant long coding sessions.
Same. I feel completely stupid, and have to strain even for the most basic code. It's like I know the high level of things, but to actually force myself to write the code, email, design the workflow, or get engaged in meetings feels like an impossible feat.
I've been pondering changing my job, but I worry that I'd be just a low performer in the new place.
Funny you should say that, I recently started to use it to push through the tedium. Nothing critical, nothing IP revealing, no copy-pasting - just "Ok, how do I do X using technology Y", or "Write me a function that does X with Y".
Changing the problem from having to figure the simple but tedious thing myself, to having to review someone else's solution, is like switching to a less obstructed track. > 50% of the time, ChatGPT is wrong in some way. But it's also close enough, and/or mentions some magic phrase or a hitherto unknown to me library function, that it's both interesting and motivating.
Same for me. I see it as the combination of 5 things:
1. It lowers the activation energy of getting started; for me motivation tends to come after action, and it gets me to that point.
2. It taps into the intense drive of "someone is wrong on the internet!" as per https://xkcd.com/386/
3. It's a new and different way of working so it doesn't trigger the same mental scar tissue.
4. It's vaguely social and high-status (delegating tasks, correcting and reviewing), as opposed to feeling solitary, so it tickles different reward centres.
5. More gets done for the same effort, so the cost/benefit equation is better and the feedback loop tighter.
Boost B1/B2/B3 vitamin supplementation, take NAD boosters like Niagen or NMN, NAC, potassium and alpha-ketoglutarate to get your neural mitochondria back into shape. Sodium-potassium pump consumes 75% of neuron's energy and too low potassium or too weak mitochondria interferes with it. Too strong mitochondria with low potassium makes it worse as well. NAC is to get rid of metabolic waste, AKG is to make cells more resilient.
Supplementation can also work wonders. There is literray almost zero downside to it except wasting money. So if you have some money to waste, start experimenting.
The above advice is solid, but I would add number of others. CoQ10, C in multiple forms, ALCAR, D, Bromelain, concentrated fish oil, etc.
Vitamin B1 won a Nobel Prize in 1929 and solved a major generational illness in Japan. Lack of vitamin B3 has the same symptoms as schizophrenia (look up pellagra) and many people are misdiagnosed with it instead of tested for low brain B3 or genetic defects leading to lower absorption of B3.
What is amazing is you dismissing the entire domain of the science with a single unsubstantiated sentence. Feel free to read some schoolar journals and research papers, rather then popular zines, if that is not too much trouble...
If you could fight deficiency with a mind, we would not have deficiency disesases.
Experience is highly overrated. Some stuff may work for you some not, depending on your current state (dynamic thing, daily changing). Many stuff you can't experience but you must measure.
Science is important. In accute phase response deficiency is the norm, as one example.
Psychological issues often stem from mitochondria not working properly, i.e. neurons not having enough energy to work well. Fix mitochondria and many psychological problems disappear.
Fixing psychological issues with supplementation can sometimes be like trying to apply a bandage to a cut on your nose while somebody repeatedly punches you in the face. You should apply the bandage, but it's not going to do much good until you stop getting hit in the face.
what makes you think that your mitochondria isn't working properly. reading this it sounds like your throwing a bunch of supplements at something and hoping something else happens. it doesn't sound very scientific.
I don't think that justifies saying its often mitochondira. it doesnt explain why in the first place. it sounds like the depression is caused by an chemical imbalance thing. i dont think you can make sweeping judgements like that and say something like just take some vitamins and youll be cured
OP talked about burnout which is seen as a lack of mental energy. Mitochondria would be the first thing to look at when it comes to energy as it's a "power plant" that makes cells work.
You already expressed you don't understand what causes burnout and what experience is like. It's not just mental energy. Go read about mental health and how people actually experience. I'm not here to educate you
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and flamewar comments? You did that quite a bit in this thread and unfortunately have been doing it elsewhere too. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Did someone go through my post history and just flag a bunch of posts?
This guy is giving out mental health advice based on not understanding what he is talking about. I think that is dangerous and isn't a place for being polite.
Yes, I did, because you've been breaking the site guidelines. We need you to follow HN's rules regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to them going forward? We'd appreciate it.
Even for unsubstantiated health claims and telling people to go and take unknown supplements? Would you prefer a comment like that gets flagged?
I get the guidelines for inconsequential topics, but pretending something is valid when engaging with something that could be harmful seems like its elevating its legitimacy. In this case there is plenty of reading to do on the topic of burnout causes.
I guess the simplest answer from you would be the answer to this question. If i posted something encouraging people to not take vaccines, how does that discussion get handled? Does every comment and thought really get treated equally with curious responses? I guess to me it seems fair to, be short direct and point out the misinformation even if it appears to be flaming
is why suggesting taking supplements to cure burnout and dropping an irrelevant link to a study about mental illness is uninformed and what I said isn't unsubstantive.
I'll hit report in the future then, thanks for the back and forth and explaining.
Oh wow. I had the same thing, I hadn't actually heard of anyone else with the same issue. Basically got a panic attack/heavy anxiety/vertigo feeling sometimes when sitting down at the computer to work. It was a year ago, luckily I'm doing better now. Or well, I now hate technology, computers and programming. Shame to lose what you once loved like that. I hope you are well.
While I am not full luddite (I mean I am on here!) - I fell into a similar funk. I just do not really care for the higher level stuff of computers and technology any more. I love the potential of what we can do with computers but I am also starting to feel that we need to make that connection between the higher mental state of pure information that we use them for today and move more into a state of them interacting with the real world in simple fashion.
This is probably a part of my Stallman streak in me but am also more in line with Jaron Lanier. See the potential and then get disappointed by the results.
But I am so much more into my cooking, premaculture, just chilling with friends or even by myself down by the river. Yeah, I still have a 9 to 5 job but that whole 'tech' angle is just gone. There are occasional little sparks of interest but they rarely last longer than a half hour.
To bring it back to tech in the real world, the idea of a computer monitoring and controlling a little glass house out the back of my house is really cool. But this is something an Ardiuno could do. A lot of things I want to see tech do in my own daily life can potentially be done on an Amiga 1000. I am still into tech but the lens through which I use it has changed a lot.
I had this after my physics undergrad. When I went back to get a masters in material science my brain just would not do even simple fractions.
Luckily I had a friend who knew I was capable of it and pushed me a bit to get through it, but it was exactly like a trauma block. Well doing quantum chemistry research as an undergrad with a crazy Russian professor will do that to yah.
I mostly got back to being capable of doing the math problems again. I had to retake one course and went on acing the final for it with a 98%, etc.
Years later I've largely recovered, but I still shy away from basic arithmetic in front of others. However, I was able to get back to where I can solve math problems and even find it fun on the rare occasion I get to.
In some ways I have a deeper intuitive understanding than I did as an undergraduate, despite my faculties not being quite as "quick". Actually I rarely need to solve an equation to get enough of the answer I need to solve many problems.
In Andrew Huberman’s podcast, I heard the first X minutes of concentration are the hardest, as the brain resists getting in that state. He says that deliberately fighting it, helps improve it (lower the resistance).
I’m paraphrasing, and I don’t remember the specific episode. But look it up because it might help start turning it around for you.
I think this may be helpful advice for regular work, but not somebody suffering from burnout. During burnout, the brain puts up a much much stronger and persistent layer of resistance to concentration, in order to try to protect you from the pain that occurred while working in the past. Pushing past that is much harder, and can lead to additional blowback.
Sorry, my bad. He was not talking about it from a “psychological” standpoint. He was citing real hormone changes in the process. So it might be a bit more complicated than what I expressed.
it me O.O ive been trying to refactor my health habits to identify a proper solution. hikes, runs, lifts, good dieting, sleep. gave up alcohol. results vary, its not all doom and gloom, but burnout is real
I had the same experience and I think I'm back where I used to be. A year later.
I think the key is to take an extended break from work or whatever caused the burnout. Other things may be helpful, but for me this is the only thing that really helped.
when you’re anxious it becomes hard to think for yourself, and it becomes very easy to let the anxiety make decisions for you. Anxiety can impair creative thinking and lead to decision-making based on survival instincts.
A stressful gauntlet of trying my hardest, only to be met with failure, which generated self-loathing and hopelessness, eventually resulted in an emotional "snap". It wasn't gradual; I think I felt it the minute it happened. It was sudden. It was, "Oh, suddenly I can't bring myself to care anymore." It was like dropping a heavy load onto the ground and finally being free.
It felt exactly like "a defense mechanism has been installed in my brain preventing me from hurting myself like that again". From then on, I had much more self-compassion, regardless of how things turned out, and I felt emotionally decoupled from my performance or self-perceived intelligence. (Disappointing people still hurts when it hinges on those things due to the personal connection, but impersonal metrics like grades or money or whatever ceased having an effect.) I couldn't work or focus as hard as I did before, when I self-flagellated myself to with shame and insecurity. That seemed like a potent fuel source, like coal or gasoline: powerful but dirty/unhealthy long-term. ;p
I don't feel like I have that anymore. I can't really "push through" using it. But I'd say I'm only debuffed like 10 or 20% -- not by a HUGE amount, and what motivation I marshal now feels a lot more sustainable and grounded in my actual, day-to-day well-being. I think learning and striving from a place of self-security and self-compassion feels a LOT better, even with that debuff. (Compared to from a place of "OH GOD I GOTTA DO THIS OR I'M NOT AS GOOD AS THAT PERSON OR GOOD ENOUGH FOR THIS OH GOD OH FUCK[0]".)
So, oddly, for me, it felt (and feels) great.
>When I have to think hard about something for work I have to push past that and then I feel an intense dissociation while I do.
I don't even feel capable of pushing too far past beyond my boundaries. I simply don't. It's kind of a like high-functioning depression for me, where the "can't get out of bed" factor kicks in at like "175% of your typical day's workload". I still "work hard" on things, and people regularly say I do or say that I'm working all the time, but I only hit like 150% max.
For me, it's also been several years while only a year for you, however. Maybe that changes things!
Also, the "coal" and "gasoline" of insecurity were probably coming from ego. I think that's what broke: my ego. If your starting point wasn't "I have to do this because my ego tells me I should be able to so my self-image is completely wrapped up in it", like mine was, that might also change things.
There are three ways to flush acute glutamate buildup from the brain:
1. Exercise. The brain can direct glutamate to be used as an energy source to dispose of excess amounts. Glutamate naturally flows by diffusion from areas of high concentration (in blood vessel wall cells) through the blood vessel wall into the circulating bloodstream, where the concentration is lower.
2. Eat a tuna sandwich or drink an energy drink. Vitamin B6 is a a coenzyme in the synthesis of the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA from glutamate. Thinking jobs is also coincident with rising popularity of energy drinks from 2000s onwards.
The Economist is most likely regurgitating Nature:
> “We’re still far from the point where we can say that working hard mentally causes a toxic buildup of glutamate in the brain,” says the study’s first author, Antonius Weihler, a computational psychiatrist at the GHU Paris Psychiatry and Neurosciences. But if it does, it underscores the well-known restorative powers of sleep, which “cleanses” the brain by flushing out metabolic waste.
N acetyl cysteine is a supplement that does.... A lot! But it's also a glutamate mop.
And what does it turn into after it combines with that glutamate?
Good question!
Glutathione. Amazing.
There's a lot more to it than that of course, glutamatergic dysfunction and, well, nearly any neurotransmitter is so complicated (this is more a general statement to the comment thread readers at this point).
I had not known about the diffusion of glutamate as an energy source! That's very cool and news to me. I'd like to learn more about that at some point soon.
Depending on how much context switching I do in a day, it can really vary how exhausted I feel at the end of a work day. I get to a point where someone might tell me to remember 3 things at the grocery store and I’ll remember only one.
I should note that depending on the level of empathy or understanding of this situation, and argument can ensue after this further piling on the stress.
So I think things like this are really important to understand, and appreciate. This is real!
> Depending on how much context switching I do in a day
I always tell my wife that I am pretty tired because I was thinking too much, she finds that hard to belive because her job involves moving around and so a job where you sit all day is not tiring.
Remind her that she remains in much better shape than you because of it. She even retains the mental sharpness to try to call you out on it.
Once she's spent a decade behind a desk, the mere thought of doing anything will sound exhausting to her too. It's unnatural and physically deconditioning. The mind being the only "muscle" you exercise makes its unavailability doubly crippling...it's what gives your physical half its marching orders.
She may be dead on her feet at day's end, but if she saw a car coming at her she'd find the adrenaline to respond and move. Myself, I'd struggle to move past "is that really a car driving down the sidewalk? But cars are supposed to drive on the stre--".
Your last paragraph reminded me so much of an XKCD, haha.
In the past I've done a lot of landscaping work on the side, as well as development remotely. My old man has a landscaping company and obviously needs the help at times.
I gotta say also: if you spend your day cutting/pruning a hedge, cleaning the property up - you actually get to look back at all of that and go "Hell yeah, that looks awesome". I never get that feeling of accomplishment with the dev work. In the past, sure - when I've built something big. But it's just not the same. I can't really explain it more than that.
A couple of years ago I wasn't really paying attention where I was and I was on top of a 10m high Macrocarpa hedge that's... about 120 years old. Anyways, I fell off that straight down on to the footpath. Fortunately there was another (much smaller) hedge in the way that was about 100 years old too and that broke my fall except I parted the hedge so to speak. (We fixed it, wired it up and it grew back together). I managed to get up and walk away, I was very very lucky. Damn though I was wired up so much for the rest of the day, I felt like I could've done 50 marathons!
Since then I have stayed away from doing anything like that - because I am a software engineer really, I just have some skills in landscaping with certain tools but at the end of the day for me personally, getting say an injury from a fall or chainsaw would be devastating to my actual career.
If I spend all day programming (8hr)... I'm really buggered and I simply cannot even brain. Cook dinner? Ugh no.
If I mow lawns all day and get home (6-7hr), I'm like "oooh what should I cook for dinner, I'll have this cold beer while I do that and ..." it's like COME ON BRAIN.
A day where I’m constantly dealing with incoming random crap that has me context switching all day leaves me exhausted and unhappy.
A day where I can shut that out and focus on a couple things intensely usually leaves me feeling energized and happy and like I actually did something productive.
I think a good manager tries to keep his team mostly in the second camp, but sadly means spending more of their own time in the first.
>I get to a point where someone might tell me to remember 3 things at the grocery store and I’ll remember only one.
Too real. If someone gives me two or more items to get I tell them I'm not going without a list. If it's the end of a day, whatever I'm trying to remember just gets pushed out after fifteen minutes.
I also communicate this to people I work with since I'm not always in full ownership of what needs to get done. I am highly capable of deeply working on several wildly different things per day but if I get pulled around too much, sometimes for great reasons, then I can't maintain the energy for as long as I would if I fully owned my work. I think it's a compromise I have reluctantly (yet happily) made: sometimes allowing this to happen and being individually less productive in order to remove bottlenecks for the org.
My biggest issue is when I use 100% of that context-switching capacity at work and then have little to give after work. It's cyclical that I do this well, then poorly, then well again. But it does feel like I'm doing this significantly better than I was 3-5 years ago.
I don't even remember the alphabet completely from A to Z, because in my country they added K, W and Y some years after I had learned it as a child lol, so I never get the right sequence. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I show my students that cognitive abilities declined significantly with lack of oxygen. I have them do jumping jacks while reciting the alphabet backwards. There is often a 50% decrease in speed when they are working out.
I can recite the reverse alphabet almost as fast as forward without the added stress. While working out I can do it with a10% decrease. This leads me to believe that the additional stress can be compensated through drilling.
> do jumping jacks while reciting the alphabet backwards
That would be one more classroom nightmare for me. The only way I can recite the alphabet is by singing that stupid song I learned in grade school. To do so backward, I would first have to sing forwards until I reached the next 'backwards' token, for each and every letter, so jumping jacks or not it would be at least 50% slower.
Even with the song I sometimes get stuck, but I also have a dyslexic mind and absolute hate any alphabet exercises. I would absolutely hate your class (but not you necessarily) and would spend my time in there counting down the school year to never have to go again.
On the one hand I wrote down the whole thing easily in (I think) less than 30 seconds.
On the other hand I wrote Z25 (uh-oh) and I couldn't spot my mistake until I had the computer write it down too. All the letters were there. But I wrote down 16 twice and I didn't spot the error even afterwards because I was too focused on the letters.
I tell my wife, "My brain hurts, I'm going for a walk." There does appear to be only so much paper shuffling my mind can do when working on programming problems before it requires the drawers be emptied or whatever it is the walk induces.
I've a hypothesis that a lot of the actual work is done in the background.
Focused thinking about a problem just sort of spawns new threads (some of which get OOM-killed if you keep spawning more). The process seems to need not actively thinking about the problem for the jobs to actually resolve.
It's like thinking about the problem triggers the background calculations to start, it doesn't actually perform the work.
Then you get that famous "aha!" in the shower or when you're off on a walk or whatever.
The background processing can still happen while sleeping too (which is useful to use).
I went through the Navy's Nuclear Power program a lifetime ago and that was often 16-18 hours of instruction and study (and exercise) per day to do well. When you recognize that you're at that point of mental exhaustion you can sneak in something like a 30 minute nap to power through the remainder of what you need to achieve that day...
My general approach was to physically write down and do some checks to verify that I understand all of the material (reinforced memorization) and get as much in per day like a sponge.. and then sleep on it. The retention was nuts (was top of my class) and it kind of just becomes habit at some point.
I think the odder thing is that if you just keep doing it for decades you notice the missing information too. Those loose associations are still there for sure but the brain can only pack in so much at a given time or some such.
This seems to match my experience. I'll pile on a hypothesis of my own:
When we encounter a new problem, our brain spans a decision tree of assumptions from the closest known solution to a similar problem. The area around this tree is searched depth-first, which often brings good results (e.g. thinking about whether you'll put some threshold value at 0.2 or 0.25), but it's best at refinement. The more time passes and the more different things you do, the more the search is moved into breadth-first (which makes intuitive sense - the deeper the tree, the more processing power would have to be put towards it). Often times we literally cannot conceive a good solution to a problem, because our brain is focusing on finding the right deep leaf of the wrong subtree!
There's a really great book called Consciousness and the Brain that goes into all the various research around how our brain works, and there is a huge amount that we think of as "thinking" that is totally unconscious to us. As I've aged, it seems like more and more of my thought processes are unknown to me. I just get agitated thinking about things, go do something for a while, then my unconscious "me" is suddenly like, "ok, here's the understanding".
The most productive hours at work for me has either been things I'm doing for the third time OR 15 minutes after I've left for the day after 8 hours of going in circles.
Privately, some of my most productive development has been when my girlfriend and I had separate apartments. I'd spend days working on problems undisturbed at my place, and then I'd go visit her for a few days (bringing no computer).
I always came back to my apartment full of inspiration, with half a notebook full of ideas and plans, which I'd spend the next days implementing, while spawning new background jobs that would mature the next time I was AFK. Rinse and repeat.
Something about this set-up was just insanely good for my productivity. I was much more productive than periods I didn't have these forced breaks away from input.
Indirectly this also betrays the kind of job where you had the "luxury" of being in a position to be able to take such forced breaks in the first place.
This is already a good situation to be with regard to burnout.
I'd love to do this (and try to when I can), but more often than not it's a balancing act between "rest but fall behind" vs "don't rest but catch-up".
While there's some element of privilege involved, I wouldn't have been able to ever work like this if I wasn't willing to take risks that many would consider too much. But the pay-off from taking those types of risks also (sometimes) ends up opening doors for more unconventional career steps.
I'm grant funded for the next year, and after that I have some savings to live off that may last another year or so (maybe less if this inflation keeps up), but after that I haven't got a singular clue where my money is coming from.
But I also don't have kids, and don't want any either. If I had or wanted, none of this would be possible. I'd definitely choose the golden handcuffs in that counterfatual.
Same. This is why it’s so important to go to bed late at night when working on a bug instead of grinding it out. I’ve found that when I wake up, I almost immediately have more ideas on what to do instead of beating the same dead horse I was at 3am.
It is absolutely more work especially in the beginning. Personally, I don't find doing work some huge burden to be avoided. I like doing things. Mileage may vary.
I agree the notepad could absolutely be straightforward win for some. However, the OP describes writing the ideas down as a "problem." If the OP says writing down things is a problem, I offer that we can't legitimately propose that same solution as a "win."
I really wish I had a good way to just get ideas into my phone quickly when on the road. Far too often I think I have some good ideas or make progress in something I thought of earlier, but I have no way to "save" it.
I bought a Bluetooth keyboard at some point that I can hook up to my phone if needed, but I almost never have the keyboard with me :-(
I use Drafts on iOS. But I hate Siri dictation. Too many mistakes which are difficult to correct while walking.
Was thinking Mic > Whisper transcription > GPT to take in a rough brain dump including instructions like “scratch that!” and convert it into the form you want (say, bullet points or action items). Should even be possible to dictate concept maps that way. Or even write Python functions on the go.
Sounds functionally correct. I imagine that if glutamate levels are building up in the brain, then exercise that increases blood flow to the brain while also increasing oxygenation and carbon dioxide removal via increased breathing would help flush the brain and reset the metabolite levels. This might be assited by also relaxing the cognitive functions during exercise, i.e. not thinking about much of anything.
Walking, on a fast pace, is the best stress reliever and mind clearing activity for me. I still think about stuff but usually my mind wanders through unimportant stuff like books I'm reading, movies or even hobby projects. It's so cathartic that afterwards I feel my body a bit numb and the fog in my brain is gone.
I found about this after covid lockdown where I'd go for 3h long walks.
I’m reading through the comments carefully because this is something I think about literally every day (and I mean literally, not figuratively). For my health and performance, yes, but even more so for the health of people around me (employees, family, friends, etc.).
I remind myself that I have no idea what other people are thinking - only what I think of their actions, the signals from my senses. That may be a weird way to work, but for whatever reason it helps me slow down and reason more carefully about the nature of situations.
As for my own habits, I find concentration and focus addictive. I don’t burn out from thinking deeply and working on intricate solutions. The more I do the better it feels and around the spiral I go. Unfortunately the further I go the less “room” is available for other, often more important, things. So I’m also constantly reminding myself that my brain is a machine that adapts so I need to be careful how I use it. If I train my brain to resist certain tasks by rewarding it for avoiding them, it will become harder over time to perform those tasks. And vice versa.
Are you saying that you don't suffer (or at least consciously feel the effects of) cognitive fatigue? If I am interested in something, I like to focus on it for quite a while, but after enough time passes, I just can't any more. I do think that there are some people who can naturally last much longer doing cognitive work than is the norm, though, much like some athletes are natural ultramarathoners. So perhaps you are one of those people.
I have exactly the same. Unlike some friends, I don't seem to get a negative feedback loop to focusing. When I do it, I want more of it - to the detriment of showering, sleep, food, romance, etc. I really like the modelling of "if I train my brain to resist tasks by rewarding it for avoiding them, it becomes harder to perform them".
I have sometimes found myself into that situation. I have to be careful not to overthink where to put my "brain room" for that day, otherwise I carry this overhead burden that rumbles all day long, questioning if I should be putting that effort elsewhere.
Definitely, brains are fun. They can be your best ally and worst enemy.
Recently got burned out for the first time. Context switching and constant hard thinking were a direct cause. I unofficially took on a chief architect’s role doing design and planning for a huge project, was doing some managerial work assigning tasks and mentoring younger team members through it, and was writing code as an individual contributor.
I just wanted it to succeed so badly, I took on an absolute ton without any systems in place in my own habits and daily life to protect me. I would be in a conference room tracking ten different threads of work day in and day out. Making decisions for every component, directing people, debugging…at first I felt like a god. Everyone was looking to me, we made more progress in six months than the last two years, meetings would get cancelled because I couldn’t be there to make a decision (should have been a massive red flag but it fed my ego).
But the way I work is to put my head down and get addicted to a problem in some sense. I can’t stop until it’s done. I think of these as loops in my brain, and I deeply need to close them. It is both a strength and tremendous weakness. As I climbed to principle engineer and above, this was a huge boon. A few weeks of nonstop coding, then crash for a couple weeks till the next tasks come along. But at a certain level, I stopped having clear cut tasks. The work had huge scope and was totally open ended. I was doing quarterly planning and this quarter’s work wasn’t done yet, etc.
I got lost pushing to be “done” and it never came. One day my brain started hurting all the time. I started crying when I had to think about work, out of nowhere…really scary for me who always thought I was rock solid even after months of long days doing nothing but thinking hard. I tried to push through, ask for more money to soothe my pain, the company offered me a sort of break. But I had to quit cold turkey.
Now I am taking a real break and the thought of that work makes my body tense up. I get tearful again. I am going to take a lot of time to build some workout habits, some set hours of the day where I will never “work”, and do some emotional digging into my loops.
Thanks for sharing! It is so nice to hear everyone’s stories.
Exercise helps a lot in my experience. I also got stuck in a position of "Context switching and constant hard thinking" for a long time. Just stepped back and let it burn because it was also an "unofficial" position.
I appreciate that. I tried to leave some ammo for those who had been in the trenches with me, but also had to just let it burn so to speak. Hope you are in a better spot these days.
> But at a certain level, I stopped having clear cut tasks. The work had huge scope and was totally open ended.
This hits home for me, and I believe is a huge source of my burnout right now. It sucks, because I like my job and don't want to leave, but at this point I feel pretty broken and unable to perform like I know I can.
Thanks for sharing. Perhaps it’s useful to share that if I had started earlier, I may have gotten more leeway without leaving. Asking the company for a break, literally saying “this is too much for me now.” When I started, it was too late. Good luck friend.
I've been coming to terms with the reality of this recently. I had a concussion and post-concussion syndrome last year which meant my brain got tired extremely quickly for a few months. In order to get work done, I had to pay close attention to what kinds of cognitive tasks would end up being debilitating and make sure to take lots of breaks.
I'm mostly recovered now, but I'm more self aware about cognitive fatigue and how to structure my workdays to avoid it. It's decreased my general level of stress measurably.
It's a function of how much stimulus a task involves, how much disambiguation you have to do during the task, and how much context you need to load to perform the task (and how different it is from previous tasks).
e.g. video meetings are more stimulating than audio meetings because you have more sources of input, and you have to stay alert in real-time. A single email is less stimulating because you can process those in your own time and space out if needed. But a morning full of answering emails is worse than a single video meeting because each email involves loading new context into your brain.
A sibling comment addressed disambiguation already. It's just a lot of work to take input, process it, be aware of context and goals, and get to sensible output. These days, I tend to allocate time just for planning. Executing plans is easy and I can do that when I'm tired, but planning takes a lot out of me.
I'm sure the cognitive impact of exact tasks is different for everyone depending on what your brain is used to. e.g. I'm very introverted; maybe meetings are less work for others.
For me, it's disambiguation. Of course, in many jobs, drilling down to the real ask, the requirements, is a big part of the work that needs done.
If I'm given a clear "this is how you'll know you're done", I can often figure out how to get there and fly through my work. But give me "we think we might want to do this, get started" and I'm exhausted before I even start.
"Thinking" is only one thing that the brain does, and it is actually a very small part of its job. All brain activity causes the brain to get tired and burn out to the point that it needs rest. Try driving a car around a racetrack competatively, even in a simulator. Talk to a ballet dancer about keeping their balance for hours. Talk to a soldier under fire hour after hour. Talk to a pilot trying to negotiate with ATC all during a weather event. All brain activity, even the basic biological stuff we don't classify as "thinking", causes the brain to get tired and eventually lapse into a survival/maintenance mode to handle the stress.
The driving one reminds me of how absolutely brain dead I feel after riding a motorcycle for 8-12 hours in a day. Nevermind that my body is rocked from the wind all day but just being able to do basic math or have a conversation with the person at the front desk of the motel I’m staying at becomes difficult. Any sort of sustained concentration obliterates your brain over a long enough time period.
Even driving a car can have similar effects after driving for 8-12 hours sans the wind and elements exhausting the body or the uncomfortable motorcycle posture
The wind and the posture aren't as much of a problem as the mental strain of riding a motorcycle. It is simply more difficult than driving, the constant gear shifting, cancelling turn lights manually and always being in a kind of defensive posture where you assume that you are invisible and someone might run into you.
I've always gotten into a kind of flow state while riding a bike. The exhaustion after hours of riding felt very similar to studying or coding all day.
Would the amount of brain power to do activity X decrease as you get experienced at it though? Not to zero of course (the long drive is tiring even for an experienced driver).
After falling on hard times post failed-startup/implosion/burnout (years ago), tried getting back into coding/hacking/sw dev last summer. I reached out here on hn, and was given help (thank you to everyone who helped: as my survival was in question, your help truly got me through). Did a few projects, did a ctf, and my brain started hurting and I imploded again.
I finally got another laptop a few months ago. Local guy brings me his Flutter codebase. Good chance to learn a new tech. It was going ok: I was superman for a few days learning the flutter/dart tooling, solving dependency hacks, getting it to compile, fixing bugs, and then, Bam. Can't code any more. Backed away.
Now, still burned out and homeless, but trying to start (another) hackerspace. Good distraction from the ashes of devastation.
I am unsure if I can write software for any sustained period of time ever again. It's scary since that's my only marketable skill and I'm still homeless and constantly scrapping for food money.
Some backstory: Despite repeated insistence from peers, skipped investing in bitcoin and ethereum at their beginnings and repeately thereafter, instead plugging away non stop on a dead SaaS product for a startup for years, which slowly failed; lost my partner, the life I had built, reputation, assets. Probably dealing with some trauma burn-in from this.
As for last summer, I distinctly remember the headaches from participating in the CTF. I had to, you know, think! Cool, solving tasks. Then, Bam! Splitting headaches.. :(
I still wonder if there's some zen place where one can focus intensely on a problem while remaining calm and at peace - never was able to find such a state of mind..
It sounds your brains need some serious rewiring. I wouldnt worry about coding or focusing intensely at anything, just start exercising, doing hobbies and hanging around / making friends. Maybe a job that is more hands-on. You need to reprioritize and let go of the past failures. Therapist would probably help as well, but best is to learn to how to help yourself first.
I am outdoors 24/7 besides time in public food establishments, I bike 12-15 miles daily and am in good physical condition, I am starting a hackerspace, I speak to a therapist, and I have long since let go of past failures. I have done and still do hands-on jobs for food money.
A month or so ago, I was offered a prestigious cybersecurity job interview but declined. It would not be sustainable for me.
Very intense screen time gives me splitting headaches and I am generally unable to re-engage with coding.
Well, it seems the conclusion is like in the old joke. "Doctor it hurts when i do this." "Stop doing that."
Just my outside perspective. I've had headaches as well from intense coding but those came from overexposure to blue light. I dialed down brightness, set up a red shift mode after evenings and used shield protector for a while. Went away after few months.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I still would love to re-invigorate passion for coding as I had in my 20's. If I am in a better situation to try again, will keep in mind your experience regarding blue light overexposure.
For what it's worth, I knew a guy who was in a similar situation to you, struggling in and out of a career he'd done for decades and was previously great at because of burnout. He fully gave up with his career in the end - bought a van and ran a landscaping business for a couple years (didn't work out but he doesn't regret it) and now he organises music festivals on people's farms and seems happy. He's not particularly wealthy (but not poor either, lives out in the countryside in a lovely big house) but seems to be doing really well.
It depends. If you haven't coded for a while, been homeless (= probably sleep deprived) and then do (making this up) a couple of 10 hour sprints on coding, especially with no rest it will hurt most people.
I recommend 15-21 minutes naps. After a period of adjustment, they work like magic in resetting mental fatigue. And, bonus points, if the nap period is always the same (21 minutes in my case), you will wake up before the alarm. Speaking of the alarm, I suggest using an alarm that gradually increases in volume, starting from zero.
any advice on falling asleep quickly? I love naps but most times it take me 30+ minutes just to fall asleep (+ feeling groggy when I wake up) so a 15min nap would often take an hour of my day
I do 15-20 minute "naps" on a regular basis. I find them to be equally refreshing regardless of whether I actually fall asleep. If I do fall asleep, it's normally only for a minute or two. As far as I can tell, the refreshing effect of a catnap doesn't come from sleeping, but from spending at least a couple of minutes in that weird twilight state that precedes sleep.
That doesn't quite solve your problem, so here are a few things that help me fall asleep quickly:
1) Try to plan your naps so that you avoid stimulating activities immediately beforehand. If you try to nap right after gaming/doomscrolling/social media, your mind will be abuzz and it'll take much longer.
2) Nap in darkness. If you can't turn off the lights, put on an eye mask or pull your hat over your eyes.
3) Stimulating sounds can pull you back into wakefulness. Mask them by listening to white noise.
4) If you have trouble quieting your mind when it's time to sleep, try doing a handful of Vipassana meditation sessions. I found the practice of observing and dismissing thoughts as they arise to be really helpful when trying to clear my mind and fall asleep.
5) Don't sleep where you play. If you watch TV, use social media, or do other stimulating stuff in bed, your mind may be expecting some sort of stimulation (like Pavlov's dog) when you get into bed, which can make it harder to sleep. Either quit doing that stuff in bed, or sleep somewhere that lacks the pavlovian baggage.
One thing that seems to work well for me is to push myself into thinking highly random thoughts. I imagine some kind of boring scene from life. Then I change it up, add content, make it a bit weird. Then after 5-15 seconds of this, I switch to a different random scene. After 5-10 minutes of this, it becomes automatic and I drift into sleep.
I do exactly this and have been doing for some time. It gets me through those demanding days where I need to show results. My “magic” nap time is 13 minutes.
And a single snore can get you fired? I sometimes snore and couldn’t do that. Also knowing it’s culturally not accepted in work environments would not allow me to relax, sleep and recharge.
I always think if I ever built a company from ground up we'd have a set of sleeping pods with 15 minute timers in them and actively encourage staff to use them several times a day. If not to sleep, meditate etc.
This has been my superpower for a ling time. I do not need to fall asleep, just close my eyes for 15 or 20 minuttes. I have used the free sleep/nap app Pzizz since 2008. Having the same sleep-in routine primes my brain for a nap.
Naptime is my favorite pastime. That said, I've also found mindfulness meditation for the same amount of time serves as an equivalent mental reset without the added drowsiness I occasionally get from naps.
A regular work day leaves me noticeably tired, not physically but somehow mentally and it translates to yawning and feeling a bit drowzy. It's like being tired in the head, and sans any bodily aches it feels exactly like a hard days physical work.
For comparison, running an internal combustion engine causes chemical changes in the engine. There will be a reduction of certain hydrocarbons in the fuel tank, and an increase in simple hydrocarbons in the exhaust manifold, as well as a reduction of chemicals in the inlet manifold.
Perhaps in future scientists will find a way to restore the chemical balance in internal combustion engine systems, thus keeping them at peak performance for longer.
(In other words: The Economist's article is rather light on actual useful details. The same kind of story applies to a very wide range of topics. It might be more helpful to read the actual scientific article.
ps. For some reason newspapers/magazines never provide a good reference to the actual article and you end up having to go hunting.)
Unresolved problems eat away at my mental capacity, as if problems are mentally uncompressed in the mind when it's still an unsolved problem, but when a solution is found it can be compressed and stored without continuing to load the problem into the brain.
Once I learn something and it make sense, or solve a problem, it seems like the brain optimizes storage and frees up computational power.
Same. When I'm in the middle of a research topic I find that I have to periodically stop and sort everything out because it gets really hard to me to focus on more mundane work.
> Their eyes were the clue. The pupil initially constricts when participants are shown the two options. The time it takes for the pupil to subsequently dilate reflects the amount of mental exerted. The pupil-dilation times of participants assigned hard tasks fell off significantly as the experiment progressed
Maybe tracking pupil dilation time with your webcam can give you a live reading of how tired you are or how much you're exerting yourself at a given task. I'd pay for this.
Context switching burns people out and geeks don't notice how much they force themselves into too much of it.
E.G: I have a friend that went full nerd on his coding setup. Dvorak keyboard, Full Arch Linux with tiling windows manager. Everything in the terminal, all dev through vim. If it's not a religion, it's at least a lifestyle.
He is very happy with it: the keyboard is so ergonomic, he barely has to move the hand of it. Every task can be controlled out of a few key strokes
Except he didn't notice how much of a burden he put on himself.
Even for very simple tasks I see him struggling because of all the context switching.
If you have to copy/paste something from your web browser to your editor, it may require you to select with a mouse, and ctrl+c, then alt-tab a bit, click on the IDE tab and ctrl+v. Not instant, but this procedure is the same for everything, so it doesn't take much brain to do it.
For him, it's a whole guacamole, because there is a special shortcut to get to the browser, another one to get to the text, then copy/paste, then go to vim with another shortcut, select the proper buffer, paste with a yet another shortcut and make sure he uses the proper mode. Since Dvorak is a different layout than his phone keyboard or his client keyboards, the shortcuts don't perfectly rely on muscle memory.
Every simple task in his setup like that: it requires a lot of effort.
And his whole life outside of the computer is like that too, because he has very high moral standards, so he lives a constrained life in society that is optimized for a totally different life style. However he never cuts himself a slack.
Multiply that by a hundred times a day, a hundred days a year.
He burnt out.
And he has no idea why: all the reasons he gave me were external factor, blaming other people a lot.
But it was not.
He killed himself with a thousand paper cuts, chasing an ideal he theorized in his head but could not only never reached, but could not even assess the real cost on his life.
> For him, it's a whole guacamole, because there is a special shortcut to get to the browser, another one to get to the text, then copy/paste, then go to vim with another shortcut, select the proper buffer, paste with a yet another shortcut and make sure he uses the proper mode. Since Dvorak is a different layout than his phone keyboard or his client keyboards, the shortcuts don't perfectly rely on muscle memory.
I think you are over-estimating the effort. Most experienced Vim users not even think about motions when they use them, it's just the muscle memory.
Nevertheless, I can see how much effort it costs him every time I see him performs those tasks. Because I can see him pause to think of the sequence of the things he needs to do to achieve the result for some very basic stuff.
If you have to constantly think about how to use your pen instead of what you are writing about, it's a problem.
But it's an invisible problem if you are attached to your tools, you will never notice it. It's not possible, your tools are so great, they save you time, they make you more efficient, they are most comfortable.
At this stage it's part of his identity.
I can't say for you, as I don't know your particular situation.
But that's definitely the case for him and for several vim + tiling users that I know.
They spent years investing in this.
They will never say anything but good things about it.
But they wills start working on a project, and spend 30 minute fixing something before they can even start on the task. Then every single step requires planning for the basic moves.
If you look at how they work, the tools are taking a toll, inch by inch.
> But that's definitely the case for him and for several vim + tiling users that I know.
> Then every single step requires planning for the basic moves.
I think you are imagining things, because that makes you feel better. None of this is true for experienced vim users. It's true for novices, but that's the nature of learning. I know you won't believe me, but I don't really care.
> They will never say anything but good things about it.
That's not true either, as every tool has pros and cons, and every vim/tmux/i3/arch/linux user is aware of that.
Look at YT/Twitch for any good Vim user, like Primeagen or TJ Devries, or basically any Vim-related conference talks and you will see that your understanding is flawed.
> Dvorak keyboard, Full Arch Linux with tiling windows manager. Everything in the terminal, all dev through vim
I'm a little confused, because most of these things sound like a great way to reduce context switching / extra keystokes.
I imagine if you're not familiar with this setup, coming from another world, them yes a learning curve will be needed, and that might last for years. I think that'd be just as true with any radically different setup than you're used to.
Meh. I've made my own layout and have been using Linux and Vim for the last 15 years or so. The context switching is barely noticeable and I think you're vastly overestimating the effort this kind of setup demands of you once you get comfortable. It all feels so natural to me.
What's much worse is switching between different types of tasks, like answering emails to coding to helping co-workers to having to jump on a call.
I have a standing desk that I use up about a third of the time. But if there's something that requires a lot of concentration, it always seems to work better if I lower it and sit.
I do the same with the same ratio estimate. The two deterring thoughts I notice are: (1) balancing and shifting around when standing is a little disruptive. (2) I don’t want to interrupt my focus to lower the desk as my body physically fatigues from the standing position.
In other news, physics is the basis for human intelligence.
There are also interesting sub cases of this: exercising self control or will power fatigues the ability to exercise self control.
Making important decisions (as in by a judge judging) fatigues the ability to make important decisions.
“Religions of the World” speculates that one of the keys to Buddhas long and productive life was partially a result of his taking time each day for quiet non-action, each week , and for a portion of each year (the rainy season).
High productive humans are in it for the long haul and plan for that.
Short term, high productive corporations are good at making people feel that everything is a life or death emergency and when the humans burn out, they hire more.
So a better way to relax from mental work (between pomodoros), might be to avoid hacker news and social media, and instead do meditation, naps or walk in nature?
Similarly we’re still using a very slow TFS setup at work and checkins and get latest take forever even for the smallest changes and I turn the frustration into a mini meditation
I remember my friend told me her trick during the SAT was to tell them she was hypoglycemic, because otherwise they wouldn’t let her bring in a small snack to eat. Her logic was that during the SAT, the body consumes so much energy that replenishing sugar is necessary half way through for proper brain function, and they won’t let you bring in food unless you have some sort of issue. But the SAT creates the issue!
I have no idea if she was right, but she did do better than me on the SAT, and she is a doctor now, so suffice it to say I always have a snack when coding. You know, for thinking.
Every full-day on-site interview for an engineering role I’ve done results in me being pretty exhausted, even when there’s minimal technical questions. My theory, which maybe is slightly related to this article, is that thinking through all the potential future things that might happen as a result of choosing this job is mentally draining.
Your brain is evaluating what you might be working on, what the future boss might be like, what your coworkers are like and if any seem particularly compatible or not with you, etc.
Handling social situations is one of the most energy intensive tasks our brain does, I think. Meeting new people, thinking about how to present yourself and how to understand others, is an intense social activity.
I can confirm this. In my case I have to exercise at least every 3rd day to maintain a high mental work capacity, and immediately feel the effect of not exercising on my brain fatigue.
I wonder if GPT4 gets less effective at following directions if you give it too many instructions in a single prompt?
I know it doesn't have any fatigue for the next prompt though. So over time it is indefatigable.
I wonder what a deep integration of GPT-like technology with the cortex via BCI would look like and if that could reduce mental fatigue.
Sometimes I think the next metasystem transition is basically like The Borg except it's a bunch of Mini-Borgs. And at first people will be completely horrified but then overnight it will become normal for a large segment of the population to be attached to an Overmind. I think you would call that transhuman.
Pretty sure there would be serious conflict with the normal humans at that point.
There is a much more interesting article about the subject, "The metabolic face of migraine" [0].
Besides Glutamate levels, a TL;DR is that migraine is a mechanism to trigger a 'brain shutoff' when brain energy levels are critically low. This happens if you there is a deficit between what can be absorbed and what is consumed.
So if you can absorb the energy from sugar, sweets or energy drink do help, as the popular belief goes (caffeine also helps through different mechanisms, including blood flow changes, but can also cause a backlash).
If it's not the case it is suggested to go to a ketogenic diet, to provide an alternative brain energy source (knowing that the transition can be particularly hard as the brain needs to adjust, which is known as ketogenic flu).
TFA advances that glutamate is a byproduct of brain activity and thus its level correlates with brain fatigue.
The Economist article does not link to the original research article [1], and besides adding fluff to the highlights, it makes some outlandish conclusion ("no doubt some researchers will now be looking at potions that might hack the brain in a way to artificially speed up its recovery from fatigue") but it's not clear what comes from the research article. Or, more interestingly, how it is intended to fit in the big picture.
I find that the more sleep I put beyond of threshold of 7-8 hours brings about proportionally more lethargy to my day. If I sleep for 11 hours my day is nearly ruined for heavy mental tasks
"You know, Herb, Johnny can do calculations in his head ten times as fast as I can. And I can do them ten times as fast as you can, so you can see how impressive Johnny is"
I had a similar thought as well. The questions are then, first, how do we think/work in more cache-friendly manner? Do things linearly, plan things ahead, don't branch out on random noise? And, how to minimise allocations? Don't try to ingest more information than what you can fit on your "stack"?
// and don't forget about "stack unwinding" before going to bed
I also discovered a parallel effect that at least in my case is a bigger issue: if you strain while thinking, you can end up engaging head muscles which can fatigue quickly and become painful. For me, thinking hard hurts and I thought it was a brain thing, but now I think it's primarily strain-related tension headaches, which oddly can feel like a brain thing.
So from my experience there seems to be a possibility that when you think you are having brain tiredness you're actually having a physical headache.
Sometimes I’m fried by Thursday evening. I don’t think I’m ever “sick” from this in a physical sense but definitely all cylinders in my brain don’t seem to be firing properly.
Such can be muted with proper nutrition. The brain runs on carbs. Efficient diet keeps blood from being redirected to digestion while still getting energy and nutrition?
Further, acetylcholine and nootropics switch to protein burning (makes more carbs instead of burning fat) when carbs run low. That is, the brain has better and more consistent fuel.
Steady blood sugar, stable digestion, easy digestion, and acetylcholine/protein- based backup fueling, and proper nutrition makes it easier to work through marathons. Same with creating a good work environment.
Many aren't even nutrient sufficient. That is, they have deficiencies and aren't meeting all RDAs. See: CRON-o-meter. Common ones are vitamin D3 (+ K2) and magnesium, net alkaline PRAL score, and more calcium than phosphorus.
I typically (especially on the weekend, since at work I somehow have higher motivation to push myself) go down a "thinking cascade" to adapt to this, where I'd code for some time, then when my brain gets tired go do something involved but not too involved (like figure out how to do something with Linux or whatever, or read a book that is actually useful), then when I get tired of that go read medium-effort stuff, like history or check how to do some project around the house, then when my brain is completely fried I'd go comment on hacker news :)
Or eventually just go exercise and do chores... I find I can reset to the beginning of the cycle in an hour or so.
whenever I had holidays I'd go home from uni and just feel sleepy all day. My family always wanted to go out but would cancel plan because of me. I never felt that sleepy back at uni tho.
5 hours seems to be about the limit of programming one can do without making the next day improductive (at least in my experiece). Walking/running seems to help with that.
I can do more than 5 if I'm able to maintain discipline and work at a normal pace.
Normally though, time pressure or "get shit done" pressure gets the better of me, and my brain goes into turbo mode. After about 30 minutes of that, the rest of the day is more or less standby mode
> "We interpret elevated glutamate levels during working memory task performance to reflect increased metabolic activity and excitatory neurotransmission driven by working memory-related demands."
Practically, it might be beneficial to take cognitive breaks before exhaustion sets in, as well as improve blood flow and oxygen delivery - i.e. get up, walk around, drink some water, meditate for a few minutes etc. on a regular basis. I imagine a full eight hours of solid sleep is needed for a complete return to baseline, although vivid dreams might interfere with recovery.
Has anyone successfully introduced a siesta to help combat this effect during a workday? I've tried to do so in the past, after reading some of Piotr Wozniak's writing on the subject:
... but I'm relentlessly awake in the afternoon. In fact, I've had an issue with taking breaks from work for years now: once I start I have trouble stopping.
what I noticed is that rubber ducking works kind of like doing a DFS instead of a BFS, even when I can barely think, but I know that a few more lines at just the right places solves the problem and I simply can't let it go, (going for a walk rarely does it for me) so speaking out loud what and why is happening makes all the difference
This makes sense. I think hard in my job, and by the end of the day I end up taking the night east - long dinner, a workout, talk with wife. I have many personal “to dos” I’d like to do, but it has been really challenging for me to consistently set time for them during the work week because I’m so “tired” from work.
I do think this is notbunders well because if there is some activities that you look forward to, most times even if you are tired you would want to do it, say a social activity, video games, something to blow off steam, you are still using the brain but a different activity. So tired is selective
I wonder if not thinking hard makes the brain atrophy?
What is the prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases amongst chess grand masters or some other intense psychological activity, I wonder if the studies have been conducted on this.
Anyone who does coding for a living will know this. Personally my average thinking to resting ratio is about 90 min thinking to 30 min resting (ie keeping up with tech news).
I get that with my hobbies vs work. The work is pretty varied so when the work is mentally hard I tend to engage in more brain-simple hobbies, and vice versa.
I think this number will probably stay the same or perhaps decrease a little for the short-medium term, but will most likely explode in the long term to maybe 60% because of the all the AI content. With GPT-# and all of the new mid-tier content thats now floating around, its almost impossible, even today to tell whats actually valuable content, so I've been going online less. I think most people feel the same uncanny Vally feeling when they realise that most of the content the view is not human created.
> [...] these results support a neuro-metabolic model in which glutamate accumulation triggers a regulation mechanism that makes [lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC)] activation more costly, explaining why cognitive control is harder to mobilize after a strenuous workday.
There is no why answered here just speculation. Anyone with sufficient knowledge of metabolism would think a fatigue process and stress process is happening during heavy thinking just that we lack the specific knowledge of what’s happening. This article has one tiny finding and who knows how reproducible the study is, along with a tautological title.
I feel like sugar in general makes me tired and makes it difficult to concentrate. Sometimes (though rarely) I consume sugar in the evening to make me tired.
I can't help but eat candy if it's available, so I just learned not to buy it in the first place.
Sucrose is what bees crave so its pull must be deeply embedded in our reward system. I associate the high sugar consumption with short circuiting the reward system.
I had the same habit. You eat sweets -> blood sugar goes up and you feel energetic. Problem is, it also goes down very fast, at which point you feel sleepy and hungry at the same time.
