One thing I've never really recovered is the passion I had for side projects. Worse than that, I can't actually think of anything worth building, or even tinkering with, which is sad, as spending some of my free time on side projects was something I really enjoyed.
If you've found yourself in a similar position, how have you dealt with it?
I know how this feels. After a few bouts of burnout over my ~20 year career, I'm not convinced we fully recover from all of it. I think each bout leaves some permanent damage, along with increased risk of subsequent bouts. I made a similar comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22164678
The best general advice I can give is don't push anything. If you're not feeling motivated to engage in a side project, no problem, don't pursue one right now. Give things time and see how you feel after 2-6 months. Other general advice - reduce work hours if you can, exercise regularly, and relax. Morning/evening walks combine the latter two well.
Learning something new can also help combat burnout fogginess. I've found courses in something of interest work well (search Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, etc.). What I like about these is they're smaller in scale and more self contained than an open-ended side project. They allow you to commit time and energy in small chunks and at your own pace, but still leave you with something valuable in the end. E.g. over the years I've taken courses in Vue, Svelte, TypeScript, and a couple math refreshers. All enjoyable and worth while IMO.
I am in mid 30s now (single; kinda by choice; with no financial liability) and it feels like it’s some kind of fake life I’m living at work even though I know that people one forth of my skill have lived it through and make it through 55 and all.
I considered switching caterers like studying public policy etc or sometimes just doing a one year MBA from somewhere but even the thought scares the shit out of me (thought of MBA I mean). I like history, literature. I often fantasise about working in film making (industry) (not something to do with computers though). I had done woodworking and I had really liked it. Then I dropped.
I am slowly trying to make peace with it. Trying to get into some nice MNC for 6-7 years and kinda stick around and then a stock of things after that.
Why I’m not exploring other fields is because one thing I don’t want in my life at this stage is not earning a living - bills and saving for emergency (in this country you gotta do that; there’s no healthcare).
I think I’m not alone like this. There are many people like me. Or that’s the hope. Maybe I’ll make it somehow.
I think I should meet some kickass career counsellor or make a long post on some subreddit. I had tried here once. In fact that’s how I had created this account.
I’d suggest a good therapist to try to understand what you really want out of this one life - I am in the same boat right now, thinking about what I want to do next whether in work or in life. I tend to prioritize lifestyles over specific work/career related goals, but I often get sucked into spending all my energy at work. This gets me paid, and well, but I tend also to burn out after a time when I don’t feel like I can focus on other things.
I for one hope there’s something out there that really calls to me more than programming jobs, but if not or I can’t find it then hopefully I’ll be able to find a life I find worth living regardless.
Negative experiences tend to produce learned behaviors and reactions that we’re not aware of. These can be overcome, but it takes effort to identify them and implement deliberate changes in our behavior. There are various ways of doing this from self-guided books to professional therapy. It’s not exactly “damage” in the sense that it’s permanent or unaddressable, though. Viewing it as such can hamper recovery.
What I meant to convey, is that w/each bout I felt successively weaker and more sensitive to toxic patterns or conditions recognized from prior bouts. When experienced, I found they took me to bad places more easily (mentally, emotionally, etc.), and for longer durations. I felt less resilient.
And not just compared to who I was before each bout, but also when I inquired, or compared myself, to teammates next to me going through the same conditions. They often didn't feel as affected or concerned. Is that b/c they never experienced burnout? Is it b/c I have, and am more sensitive to it or have lingering effects? I don't know.
But that's what I meant - I feel each bout with burnout takes more out of you, in a way that makes you less resilient to subsequent bouts.
I guess veterans etc. who suffer throughout their lives with it just aren’t sufficiently resilient?
I'm in a somewhat similar situation to you, but replace the 3 years with 10 years. I had many periods of 'minor' burnout along the way that I ignored or ploughed through, which in hindsight was a pretty big mistake.
Around August last year I just couldn't continue. I wasn't sleeping, I was frequently run down, and I was self-medicating more and more with drugs and alcohol. It eventually got to the point where simply opening my laptop would elicit a fight or flight response.
I was lucky enough to be in a secure enough financial situation to largely take 6 months off. If you're in a position to do this, I highly recommend it.
I uninstalled gmail, slack, etc. from my phone. I considered getting a dumb phone, but settled for turning off push notifications for everything instead. I went away with my girlfriend for a week and left all my tech at home except for my kindle (literally the first time I've been disconnected for more than a couple of days in probably 20 years). I exercised as much as possible and spent time in nature going for walks, etc.
I've been back at it part time for the last few months. Gradually I felt the feelings of burnout being replaced with feelings of boredom, which is hopefully my brain's way of saying that it's starting to repair itself and ready to slowly return to work.
I'm still nowhere near back to peak productivity, but I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that I may never get back there. I'm 36 and probably would have dropped dead of overwork by 50 if I kept up the tempo of the last 10 years anyway.
I'm not 'cured' by any means, but I believe things are slowly getting better.
My advice to you is to be kind and patient with yourself. Try not to stress about not having a side-project, and instead just focus on self-care for a while. Someone posted this on HN a few weeks back and it really hit close to home for me: http://www.robinhobb.com/blog/posts/38429
Anyway. Five years on, haven’t worked since other than very lightweight consultancy. Live in the woods.
Still wake up at 0430 every morning in a panic. Still grind my teeth. Still flinch every time I hear my phone. Incapable of being kind to myself.
There’s a point of no return, beyond where the brain damage is irreparable. You can learn to live with it, but you can’t ever get rid of it.
And yeah - very powerful piece of writing. She's a published fantasy author and I'm going to try one of her novels (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77197.Assassin_s_Apprent...)
I think my biggest since issue was - and probably continues to be - very poor work/life balance (no hobbies, basically no social life outside of work, etc). Obviously it's hard to disentangle cause and effect, but I suspect a prerequisite for getting burnout is having a mania or hyper-fixation on work.
For myself: the drive, and the creativity, only come back if I stop working for an extended period of time (weeks). I need a lot of idle time and some boredom before I feel creative again, let alone want to touch a keyboard, but if I wait long enough it always happens.
I promise you the creativity and desire is still there. It could be more that the current job (or something else) is suppressing it, and less that you haven’t recovered something you lost.
For me it was first weeks, and then months. And as for the last time, took six years.
If you don't enjoy side projects any more, don't force it.
Better side projects would be something offline like improving your personal fitness, learning a new (non-computer) hobby, leveling up your cooking skills, and other real-world skills.
Forcing side projects on top of a day job is a recipe for returning to burnout.
Video games allowed me back into the mode of thinking without any sense of external requirement. It was all on me to decide how deep I went and for how long. Eventually I played until I achieved boredom after over 900 hours. (Not all at once! Over months.)
From that point of boredom I could see how much energy I had channeled into something pointless, and realized I had recovered. Then I started channeling that work into home renovations and other tangible efforts. Even coding for family projects!
But I never got the motivation back to code for profit again. I’m done with that part of my life.
It is hard to know what you want if you don't know what you are and what you want to be. During my six months long seek vacation I had a very small side project because for me the issue was not the technical aspect but the stress that you always had to perform. I was working for a mobile gaming company and on top of your job you had to play, find bugs, join stand-ups, communicate on slack... This was all fake for me and stressed me out to the point of no return. In the end it was just faking enthusiasm.
I am not like that. I love what I do, but when I am off I am off and please leave me alone. Some companies push you to always have an opinion and what is the problem with not having one from time to time? What is the problem with just doing something else in your free time? If I want to have a side project I will. If I don't, I will be doing something else.
To cut my rant short what really helped me was to recognise my problem and through professional help I could accept myself for what I am. Don't overdo, take your time to know where you are and where you want to go and get back when you are ready. If it helps reduce the amount of working hours and try to enjoy you free time.
Though, as it turns out, software is eating the world, and every analog hobby I've picked up eventually wants to become a computer hobby. You can choose to resist this entirely, or give in a bit. The analog part is still there waiting for you whenever you're tired of starting at rectangles.
(Example A: FM synthesis ideas should obviously be reimplemented in python... Oh wait, super collider exists, and now this cheap USB game pass I had lying around is an FM synth. But I've still got a small pile of synths to play with.)
(Example 2: Birds are cool. Eventually I found my way into bird song id with machine learning, but I can now always justify a long walk in the woods as field research...)
Oh but now if I want to find a publisher in this era of a totally saturated market the game should look nice, so I should spend some serious time on the graphic design and sell sheets and writing up the game rules and designing graphics to put in the game rules and making and editing pitch videos...on my computer.
Oh and it's really hard to find enough playtesters to play the game or publishers to look at the game (especially during the pandemic)...unless I make a digital version on Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia, and playtest on the computer.
Oh, people are getting used to certain things being automated for them like the setup in Tabletop Simulator, so now I'm expected to... write code in Lua to automate player setup or handle round cleanup and make things easier and faster.
Or, I don't really want to spend thousands of hours on hundreds of playtests to make sure this game is balanced / no first player advantage / etc...so I'll write Python scripts to model the gameplay and run a bunch of Monte Carlo simulations to analyze the data.
I almost spend more time on the computer than not for this analog hobby nowadays. Especially when working on games that are past the initial pen and paper and basic components phase.
When things largely moved online for the pandemic, it was a great opportunity to reach publishers I normally couldn't without going to a convention overseas, and yet I lost almost all motivation to work on board game design that year. Still had some great ideas for my designs, but I couldn't get myself to do much more than write those ideas down.
Eventually just started coding video games again. Figured if it's going to end up on the computer anyway, might as well make a video game to start and not have to have a publisher in the first place.
Avoid competitiveness and "getting ahead" -- pursue mastery the same way a zen gardener does. It's very enjoyable to be good at useless things.
For purely code stuff, I tend to learn a new language when I don't want to program anything. I particularly like ones with non-mainstream philosophies as they provide a different perspective on the craft. I don't do much with the languages I learn but it usually kicks me back into regular coding.
I developed back pain cycling at some point, which turned out to me coming from right hamstrings. Regular stretching solved it immediately.
And a bike fitting is a thousand percent worth the effort. Cycling is a bit weird in that it's a low impact sport, but uses very repetitive motions. If things are well adjusted, you can ride bikes til you're ninety. And if they're not, you can slowly exacerbate bad pressure on the knee until it's a nightmare.
You can reduce stressful problems by automating them away. So I would just start with your own problems, going step by step and focusing on low maintenance and immediate benefits. I would set very low expectations and always be aware of the risk you are taking for your health. Maybe you will get better in the future to push something to the next level. Worst case, your own life got easier.
Contrarian opinion here - maybe it's okay to leave the side projects behind. I don't work for a FAANG, but have had several senior and lead developer positions at mid-to-large companies for the last 20 years. As I moved in my career I took on increasingly challenging projects at my day job, and quite frankly there was nothing I could do in my free time that would be close to the challenge or variety of some of the larger projects I have worked on. By the end of the week I just had no brain capacity for more tech stuff.
I have consistently spent 10% of my work time on new training (whether it was company policy or not) to ensure that my skills have kept up to date, and I use that to introduce new technologies to the company when it organically fit the companies needs.
I would suggest experimenting with some new hobbies (preferably something athletic to offset the office work) to see if anything interests you. You may have reached the point in your career where your day job is enough "tech stuff".
The best things I've found to cope with burnout are tasks that can't be optimised, are unimportant, and low-medium intensity. Just going for a walk is a good way to start, as is helping friends and family with things they need to do.
Spending months in front of a TV watching Star Trek doesn't help, nor does attempting to invent a new, marketable product. It has to be somewhere in the middle.
I’ve represented my country and competed abroad. After burning out racing, I weirdly couldn’t enjoy it as a hobby anymore.
Perfectionism was definitely a factor. The main thing for me was the lack of learning new stuff.
When you’re a beginner, the initial steep learning curve can be really fun. Then it flattens out once you’re an expert.
Maybe you could build a side project in a new language - or even step away from coding for a while and learn something completely different.
I think it's okay for you to not be interested in doing side projects anymore, there's a lot more to life and the world than programming; and, if your heart wants to venture outside of it, then let it! You might find another, wonderful passion :)
And after 2 years of surviving, I feel that I lost a lot of time
Side note: People in tech have weird expectations put on them, as if the day job isn’t enough, you have to constantly prove your cred doing a million side-projects. All apparently open source so any random can grab your work or alternatively so you can be seen to "give back". My dentist, doctor, plumber, carpenter friends etc don't have this issue.
I was not really burnt down but I noticed I started to loose enthusiasm for “The Craft” (of programming). Surprisingly, what reignited the spark was starting to watch and interact with people livecoding on Twitch. I don’t know what it was, maybe watching people doing THEIR side projects in a playful and relaxed environment make me rediscover the fun aspects of programming.
Trying to have fun over getting results.
Maybe getting into some different things that involves new people and subjects.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4911781/?report...
This is a good overview of the topic, including definition (see below), charactristics, causes, and aspects.
Burnout is a psychological syndrome emerging as a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job. The three key dimensions of this response are an overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.
I'd recommend the treatment section as well, beginning:
The personal and organizational costs of burnout have led to proposals for various intervention strategies. Some try to treat burnout after it has occurred, while others focus on how to prevent burnout by promoting engagement. Intervention may occur on the level of the individual, workgroup, or an entire organization. In general, the primary emphasis has been on individual strategies, rather than social or organizational ones, despite the research evidence for the primary role of situational factors.
I've felt this too. The most soul-destroying part was that as a maker and tinkerer, building is what gives me joy and fuels my engine.
If you're in the US, explore your company's FMLA policy. I was able to take two months of unpaid leave last year after being diagnosed with severe depression & anxiety caused by stress in the workplace.
I also started going to therapy once a week, which helped switch focus from short-term survival to long-term personal growth.
Towards the beginning, I felt at fault for allowing myself to grow cynical. Reading books like "The Truth About Burnout: How Organizations Cause Personal Stress" (Christina Maslach) helped me identity the stressors in my corporate environment and move away from these.
Other folks have covered the suggestion to treat yourself as a personal project for awhile. When you're ready, giving back to your community (or just random strangers) can be healing as well. I took the money I'd usually spend on tech side projects and started paying off people's credit card debt and buying books/groceries for perfect strangers.
Eventually start building back on yourself. Focus on something you haven't for a while. Call back an old friend with which you have lost contact but didn't want to. Focus on your family, do some sports. Read a book.
Eventually the passion will comeback and you will have your energy again.
As humans we live in cycles, it is normal to break up once in a while.
Don't forget to sleep. Sleep what your body feels like it
Having time off, ideas came back.
It’s weird because one of the ideas, easy multi computer website test automation in the browser using a JavaScript tool, could save large organizations a truck load of money in product reliability and release management. Still silence.
The closest I get to actual feedback, when somebody is feeling generous, is to instead suggest some vaguely related prior existing tool or application. While I understand somebody might think they are being helpful with that it’s actually not. Saying the ideas are garbage is helpful. Suggesting an unrelated alternative that doesn’t solve the same problem is a negative like fining a crime victim for reporting a crime.
The documentation is a little unfocused, but the pitch is good. If we assume the pitch is the primary purpose, simplifying the user experience should be the top priority. There’s a bunch of tools that have tried to solve the “throw file at Mom” problem, but I haven’t seen one work without putting my files in someone else’s server.
I’m not sure how you differentiate this from Plex, WD myCloud, OneDrive, or Google Drive. That’s an important factor considering how easier some are and how powerful others are.
You built a desktop UI in the browser to share files? That’s a bit much for anyone to take a serious look at. It’s the same problem as documentation and this post: needs more focus.
If you’re enjoying making it, and it does useful things for you, have fun! But I don’t see it getting much feedback or traction due mostly to lack of focus, but solving some of the technical limitations would make it much more broadly applicable and would help as well.
If you really want one, I recommend doing something physical, with your hands. Like woodworking, cooking, pottery, whatever.
That seem to be a good counterbalance to the thought-heavy tech jobs most of us on HN have.
Writing software without purpose is boring. Writing software to earn a living frequently aligns with business objectives, but not your own. It can absolutely wear you down.
Before worrying about your love for software, find your calling. What you want to breathe into the world. Whether you use software or not to get there won't matter.
And it's totally fine if you don't do any of this. Life doesn't have rules, and you don't have to fit a mold.
Things radically changed once again in 2019 when I did my first ayahuasca. That somehow almost completely eliminated my "tech PTSD" and I went back to tech a month or so after.
It's been 2 years now, I have a remote job and side projects that I can't wait to work on when I wake up.
All of my side projects from the time are extremely uninspired.
I experienced something similar after moving to college from my hometown. Obviously the food was much different to what I had at my home. This led to me having cognitive and physical issues for 5 years that I stayed in the dorms. I used to feel like a zombie, no motivation or enthusiasm and a host of other symptoms. During my internship in my final year, I was diagnosed with something similar to IBS.
The solution was just to be conscious about what you eat and how it makes you feel.
The food at my internship was of such poor quality that it made me feel drained for many hours after eating. This was what prompted me to get checked seriously.
Am I better now? On average yes, but never like I was before moving to college. I eat a very restrictive diet. Semi permanent damages to one's system is not uncommon for people diagnosed with IBS.
[1] https://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new-cholestero...
Learn to relax. Go outside, hike, sunbath, swim, read good books ( literature ) or try to volunteer.
As a result, I'm super familiar with that cold, dead, leaden feeling of not caring about anything, not really able to feel any of the excitement and buzz that I know, intellectually, I should be able to feel. It is taking a long old while to return back to a position of health, and while that's happening the only thing I've really had to draw on is grit, determination, and a sort of psychotic single mindedness.
I'm now in a much MUCH better place than I was before, but I've been able to keep pursuing my side project (and hopefully eventual startup), and able to keep making some kind of progress ... but it's really only been sheer bloody-mindedness that's kept me going. (I'm hella stubborn when I want to be).
Happily I'm feeling a lot better now, and progress is definitely picking up again now that I can actually smell the victory that's so tantalisingly close to being in my grasp.
1. A student once asked his teacher, "Master, what is enlightenment?" The master replied, "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep.". Maybe you're still hungry or tired?
2. Richard Feynnam and his spinning plates story deals specifically with his burnout: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2291773
3. Refill your creative tanks. Expose yourself to experiences -- e.g. take a hike in scenic nature, or maybe travel to Rome for a week (edit: haha, not so easy these days!). Re-read books and listen to music that worked for you when you were younger. Some experiences won't resonate with you, but some might -- and that's why you're doing this.
4. Some passions / hobbies / occupations burn out for good. Don't be sad about that. I had it myself, and I have a friend who changed his career completely after a burnout.
Even with all the above, burnout can be rough, especially at first. I wish you well on your road to recovery!
I changed jobs and have been working the longest time on my current side project. One of the most important things is that I don't need to do it today. I can have a week of leave from my side projects if i want.
It's working on it consistently that works, without overworking myselve.
Question is: what do you care about?
Is it about the technology it earning money from them? If you want to earn money from them without caring about the learning part, it's not actually a passion.
I'd describe my burnout as 50 percent PTSD, 50 percent taking everything too seriously. Every time I'm feeling down, tired and burned out, I find something in there that helps me let go a bit. Good luck with everything.
What I think you need is a meaningful, collaborative effort.
It doesn't necessarily have to be anything "useful". You just need a community with a common goal.
Volunteering seems to work great here, but I've seen people pick up co-op games, team crocheting or collaborative art.
It appears that the real recovery is the friendships you made along the way.
Seems like you’re putting the cart before the horse. I’d only start worrying if I actually had something I wanted to build but couldn’t muster the gung-ho to do it because of burnout.
As it stands, it just seems like you have better uses for your time.
I see a lot of comments here have already echoed this same sentiment.
Also consider getting involved with an existing project if you're having writer's block. Lots of stuff out there in need of some help.
You could just keep making money at faang until there’s an idea that calls you.
It’s a great big world outside of software/tech.
I have loads of side projects, er, hobbies that have nothing to do with software/tech/startups.
Many of them are best done outside.
I joke that one of my hobbies actually repels tech.
- Stop using social media. People posting how excited they are will drag you further down
- Give yourself time. Don’t force it. Time will mend things
- Go out into Nature. Leave your phone at home
Go running, lift weights, do calisthenics, join a team sport.
Whatever. Pick something you enjoy of course! Just go out and do physical stuff for the pure fact of physical stuff.
Is it maybe about accepting a permanent shift in your mindset? The body made it very clear to you that your priorities did a lot of harm. I can't find how peak productivity is humane and wouldn't strive for it (again). If this involves a change of everything than this is it.
Edit: Peak productivity is different from peak performance. Take care what you really strive for.
One thing that's helped in terms of coming up with ideas, for projects that are more on the digital art side, has been thinking about how the realm of comedic media is stale. From there, what could I make with my current skillset and that would make friends, others, and myself legit laugh at and engage with. Through dwelling I came up with a 3d mocapped Joe Biden avatar whose voice was cloned using a speech synthesis library along with a cloned lexicon using gpt2. Had it streaming on Twitch and connected the chat api as input for it to respond to, enabling users to interact with it. Some of the stuff it spit out was pretty wild.
In terms of ideas for utility projects, I've found it helps to think about something you enjoy using in your hobbies, but that you wish it was improved upon. Personally, and oddly enough, I enjoy learning about and observing candle chart technical indicators (not the line/triangle drawing type of thing. Just isn't my thing and can easily lead to confirmation bias), but use apps that either charge a high premium, invade user privacy, crap UI, cap number of indicators used, and/or don't offer much in terms of charting options. So I decided to build my own app that answers those issues and am currently getting close to releasing... somewhat lol.
Just think about what was taken from you during those troubled times, whether it was sense of humor, joy, etc, and think of how to get back what was robbed of you. Cliche to say, but it takes small steps at first, and from there the ideas/execution will snowball.
In my experience, side projects require much more mental effort than initially thought. At different stages of life, we have different levels of available bandwidth.
