Ask HN: How do you know if you're burnt out or just being lazy?

First, check the essentials: Are you sleeping, eating decent food, and exercising regularly? If not, you may be neither burnt out nor lazy. Take care of this stuff first.

Second, have you spent the last year working so hard that nothing short of a physical illness will make you slow down? Do you regularly push through problems with sheer willpower? Do you crave the next "green" unit test result beyond all sanity?

If so, you're almost certainly burnt out. Don't try to push through it. Take a vacation. Get outside. Allow yourself to be distracted by a pointless and amusing hobby for a month. You can't fix burnout with willpower. You need to take time off and refresh.

If you haven't been mistreating your body, and you haven't been pushing yourself too hard for too long, then it's possible you're lazy, or depressed, or something else. If you think you might be lazy, commit to making some useful progress every morning for 30 days, no exceptions. Or try a Pomodoro timer. These might be enough to tip you over the edge and get you moving. But don't do this until you've ruled out burnout, because it will only dig you in deeper.

Personally, I take issue with the entire "lazy" thing. I find most people who talk about laziness are using it as a way to avoid thinking deeply about their own motivation.

"I am not getting work done, even though I want to. What aspects of this work are bringing me down? Do I have the resources to do this work properly? Can I think of any ways to make the work more appealing? Can I combine it with anything else that I enjoy, like by getting a friend/colleague to look at it? Should I take a break from it and come back to it later? Should I consider dropping the project entirely? Is it actually what I want to do?"

Or "I'm lazy, I should work harder."

I strongly believe that the idea of laziness leads to burnout. Every time you force yourself to do something, you're using up a little bit of your willpower. It's a stopgap, not a strategy, and it does run out if overused.

The primary engine that generates results in your life should be based on aligning your desires, goals, resources and actions. Good self-management looks like good management of others, and I've never heard of a good manager who calls his employees lazy.

The problem with asking about burn-out is that it's a spectrum. Life is full of little "just push through" moments: approaching a stranger, hanging out your washing, sitting down at your desk without opening reddit, being bothered to cook, not deleting your nearly-written comment. Any time you can't do it, your willpower has failed you. If you don't stop to understand why, it will keep happening. And get worse.

For me it started small: missing appointments, not eating well, finding it hard to get through my to-do list, even easy decisions got slowly harder to make. Ideally burnout is kind of self-regulating because as your productivity decreases your opportunities decrease as well. Unfortunately I was organising an event and getting less done only meant having more to do.

Afterwards... it's hard to describe, but even considering any kind of executive function felt like a cross between lifting a car and hearing a burglar walk up the stairs. I don't think I got out of bed for a couple of weeks, and I didn't show up to an Easter lunch with my family because figuring out which train to catch was too hard. Things got better slowly - probably about nine months in all before I really felt right again.

Since then, I've made it a point to think long and hard when I get that "just gotta keep pushing" feeling. Almost every time it's been preventable: the result of poor decisions, overcommitment, badly organised work, lack of reward, or just plain doing something I don't actually want to do. If you're feeling something like that, make "I might be doing this wrong" your first port of call, and only go to "I should work harder!" later.

I saw an interesting human-interest piece on TV over the weekend. It was about one of the cofounders of Cisco. She lives on an 800-acre farm and spends her time being a farmer.

The reporter asked her about her 40-room mansion. What's it like to live there?

She said, "I don't know. I never live there. I live in an old wooden cabin in the woods"

This led to a cute exchange: "Are you eccentric?

"Yes, I am, but only because I have money. Before I was just weird"

I was laughing when she hit me with the real punch line. "I find that if I stay active, thinking, struggling with problems that I am the most happy"

I think a lot of what we might call "lazy" or "burnt-out" is really low-level depression. Are you struggling, thinking, actively engaging in some problem that you love? If so, the words "work" or "lazy" doesn't really mean much. If not, then can you allocate some part of your life where you are?

There's nothing wrong with not wanting to do things you don't like doing. The real question is whether you can engage yourself to struggle and think with some part of life that you encounter. If so, then do that. If not, then that sounds a lot like being depressed to me.

By whether what you do in your downtime is neutral+ or negative.

I think if you can't do the things you love then you're probably burnt out.

If all you want to do are the things you like then you're probably being lazy.

Not fool proof - but a starting indicator.

Burnout is not solved by a nap or a walk, a burn out is not just being tired or saturated with a subject.

You are burnt when you pushed your limits over a long period of time without giving your body and brain enough rest. This means you do not have a quick fix. You cannot quick fix something you have done over months, years. It takes time.

In my personal case, I suffered a burn out (went several times to the doctor, hospital and specialists with scans etc.), because without even be aware of it I was pushing above my limits. I am still suffering from Tinnitus because of it, 2 months after clearing all the other problems.

I was pushing above my limits because it was a bit above but in all parts of my life. A stressful year, then when everything went back to normality, I was simply left smashed. I was annoyed because I finally reached the "life is good again" state, but my body simply said: "you gave me a hard time for a year, now I need to rest". This started end of August, I am still recovering so to speak.

So, you feel it could be a burn out? Take a close look at your life, what is not running as it should, then act. But again, no quick fix, it takes time.

Do not hesitate to contact me privately if you want/need.

If you have to ask yourself this question, I think there's a chance you might be suffering from the kind of self-esteem issues that often plague bright people. Take a peek at this Wikipedia article on the "Dunning Kruger Effect" to have an idea of what I'm referring to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Have you generally been a hard working person your whole life but are now going through a tough spell where it's hard to find motivation? If that's the case you may be burnt out, or perhaps you are working on something that deep down inside you don't really believe in. Maybe you need to listen to that intuition, rather than beat yourself up and think "I'm the problem because I'm lazy."

I went through a pretty major burnout cycle in my career a few years back and was lucky enough to be able to afford to take a lot of time off - nearly two years - and dedicate it to just working on open source. Nearly 3 years later I suspect that financially it was a poor decision: I'm still majorly suffering the consequences of that lack of income for 2 years. But I was able to recover my passion for work and now have a job that I'm enthusiastic about, and willing to work my ass off for, even though it pays less than I had been making before.

At the time I quit my job I wrote a short post on it, take a peek and see if it resonates at all. If it does, you're most certainly not lazy.

http://njclarke.com/posts/why-i-quit-my-job-to-work-on-open-...

Laziness is a virtue

FOr me, if I am burnt out I just take a nap or go for a walk. If I am lazy, I keep browsing my fav. websites(HN, reddit) again n again..F5 comes handy here :)

I would say that burnout is about not caring. About not finding enjoyment and satisfaction in the work that you previously did. If you find yourself reacting with far less enthusiasm to the same sorts of tasks that in the past you found exciting and interesting that could be a big sign of burnout.

Burnout is about stress and not necessarily about "overwork". You can get burnt out on a 40 hour a week job or even on a 10 hour a week job. Spending a half of your waking hours every weekday immersed in an ocean of stress is quite sufficient to screw your brain up and burn you out. Software development can quite easily be (and is typically) a very highly stressful job. On top of the normal stresses of coding you have the typical saga of trying to determine and meet the right specs, you have the drama of trying to chase bugs around at the same time you're trying to get work done, and you have immense schedule uncertainty and schedule pressure on top of everything. And that's the average case.

My advice, for whatever it's worth, is to try to find a way to reduce your stress as much as possible. Maybe find a position with less responsibilities that pays well enough. Then spend your free time slowly re-acquiring a passion for tech by taking on small, highly rewarding projects.

Short answer? Go see a Psychologist. I know a lot of people are naturally averse to this (I was, at one point) but I've realised that a good psychologist is really just a good hacker - someone who's read a lot on the subject at hand (personality and the psyche), is motivated to help you, enjoys it, and has found a way to make money doing so.

In one hour with a good psychologist, they will generally be able to give you very good guidance on what you are feeling. It's not magic, it's just the power of having an informed, objective observer in a situation that encourages you to be open.

Otherwise, ask the people closest to you - your spouse, GF/BF, etc.

A lot of the answers are subective, that's b/c, as individuals, our tolerances vary so much. So regardless of what we say, you're still likely to experience burn out (if you haven't already). I know when I'm burned out when I have no motivation to sit in front of my computer. Unfortunately, the last time I felt that way I quit my high paying job and spent the next several months in a horrible place - mentally, physically, and emotionally. So at some point you'll realize your personal limits. With that said, my reason for posting isn't in regard to the before part, but rather the after - I've found that once you experience burn out, you're more susceptible to it in the future.

That's usually a bad thing; obviously you won't want to experience burn out again. However, sometimes it can have a positive yield in the long run. I've found that after my burn out experience, I've raised the bar in terms of the type of work I'm willing to do and how much crap I put up with. For example, I've always been passionate about home-run level customer service. As a consultant, that belief usually meant that I bent backwards anytime a client asked me to. I still have that belief today, but I tend to push back if they ask me to do things I won't be happy maintaining for the life of their product, or if it'll involve trying to hit an unrealistic time line, etc. So post burn out, I'm definitely more protective of my limits and happiness, I just wish I would've been this way sooner.

lazy: procrastinating an activity with something that is more fun

burnt-out: no activity provides enough fun to procrastinate the current activity

If you have to ask this, you are burnt out. If you were lazy, you wouldn't ask.

This is a great question. For me, my "acid test" would be: "is the task that I feel like doing now DIRECTLY related to my goals/projects/objectives?". Several successive "no's" over a long period (like constant "no's" over a few days or weeks) MAY indicate burn-out. A few successive "no's" in isolation MAY indicate laziness, or it may indicate that you're just not in the right state of mind to be doing the particular task you've assigned to yourself.

It's worth mentioning that it's very important to consider energy levels too. Not all tasks are equal, so for instance, it'd a be a silly idea to embark on a 3-4 hour coding binge at 1am, when I know that if I had a good sleep and was wide awake, I could get the same work done in maybe 1-2 hours with a higher level of quality. I'll do some lower energy work instead, or I might even decide to call it quits for a day, wind down and just read a book - and I wouldn't consider it laziness at all. At all costs, I want to keep the quality of work up - even if it means not doing it right now. I know myself, and I trust myself that I'll get up the next morning and hack and slash away in a much better state of mind, and produce better quality work (most of the time!)

For me, forcing myself to do work that my mind just isn't in the state to do is a fast path to fatigue, unproductiveness, burn-out and "far out there's not enough time in a day, the universe is against me!"-type delusions.

Make sure you're healthy, if it's an issue with you.

I was fired for being slow. I was falling asleep at inappropriate times, and was generally feeling stupid, to the point that I hated myself for being stupid and lazy. This was particularly hard working in a company that constantly touts the superior abilities of its employees.

When I was finally fired it was an emotional relief. I ultimately got treatment, and I don't feel stupid or lazy anymore, but I haven't fully recovered from being fired.

I'll not discuss "burnt out" vs lazy.

However I have met the brick wall with a certain amount of velocity myself (12 years ago and counting) and I think the difference between being too tired too work (literally falling asleep at work, throat thickens, certain parts of you body starts acting on their own, dreaming with eyes open etc) and burned out is that the burnt out thing didn't happen until at some point I realized this is not going to work however hard I work. (Coworkers were already preparing for a bankruptcy by stealing from the company.)

A few more details:

  - Wasn't my company but a close relatives. 
  - For me the symptoms were: Crying without reason when no one could see me, people asked why I was depressed although I didn't feel that way.
  - What helped me out wasn't no work but rather working at a place were I could get stuff done and take the night off. I worked at a farm with a friend of mine that summer and I was supposed to get paid but I never turned in my time sheets. Instead I have said "thank you" to him a couple of times afterwards : ) And I had free food and a bed.

Since then I have worked hard. Even harder I think (Those symptoms from tiredness that I mentioned above I've expericed later). What has saved me from another burn out is two things:

  - Learning to say "No." when I somebody asks me to do something that is a complete and utter waste of time. And "No." once more if once doesn't cut it. 
  - Doing whatever I do to be recognized by God, not humans. (This being HN where even top contributors gets downvoted for mentioning the G word, -feel free to read that in a way that pleases you.  )

Unless you're elbows deep in someone's chest cavity during a triple bypass, whatever you're doing can wait. Take a day off, leave your phone and ipad and laptop at home, go somewhere else.

This happens to me every few months. Go do something totally non-technical, simple, and enjoyable. Last week I drove from Chicago up to Wisconsin to enjoy crisp country air, an array of cheeses[] (ack. no technical stuff...) and I got to yell at some sheep. I didn't check my email, text anyone, and I tried desperately not to think about my projects that had me on the verge of a melt-down.

Trust yourself to know; working more/harder is rarely a good choice. If you take a day off and you're still tired and don't want to work, take another day. And another. If, after 2 or 3 days, you're still right where you started, you're probably working on stuff you hate.

If you're just burnt out on working on what you enjoy, a couple days (or even a week) off will make all the difference

Look for "decision fatigue", it's a theory saying that people who have to make a lot of hard decisions, usually at the end of the day are so tired in their mind that they can't get themselves together to decide anything.

The interesting thing is that it's usually seen in poor and uneducated people, not big bosses that supposedly has to make alot of hard decisions. It's more the "shit, how am i going to pay my rent this month"-questions that tires your mind. The theory was that because their minds, unconsciously, are so hogged up with these questions they can't get themselves together and change job, start studying, etc and thus get stuck in an evil circle.

Don't know if this applies to you but make sure you have all your basics together before you start diving into more tough areas.

It takes energy to be disciplined, and a belief that you're going to get something good out of it.

So burn-out can lead to lack of discipline, both because it saps your energy and because you stop believing that you're going to get something worthwhile out of it.

If you don't suffer from chronic depression but are depressed, you may be burnt out. I feel a person starts the cycle of burnout by forgetting that excellence is a habit, not an act. It's easy to fixate on the magnitude of individual iterations of a habitual activity and forget the importance of consistency and sustainability. This common confusion in humans may stem from the fact that our brains evolved to optimize for short-term rewards and respond only to short-term danger. The magnitude of your individual actions is trivial compared to how often you act.

My simple productivity hack: be happy with doing less--but very frequently and very well.

This is how to tell the difference between exhaustion and burning out: you get exhausted if you pushed hard, you burn out if you pushed hard for a wrong reason. If someone claims they can fix burn out by taking a walk or a getting a nap, they're not burnt out. You are burnt out when having hard time not just doing your work, but also when trying to recuperate. Basically, that "wrong reason" depresses you, making recovery very hard. If you are lazy due to overall fatigue, the next day you'll go back to work like it never happened; if you burnt out, the "next day" never happens.

If you wanted to take a scientific approach you'd need to be able to do something like the following: (A) measure your actual work output and (B) some way of measuring your 'maximum expected output capacity'.

if A much less than B you are being lazy. if A is close to or equal to B then you are burnt out.

[The short answer of course is, if you are reading Hacker News you are being lazy]

As an aside; Pivotal Tracker - the feature / dev tracking software manages to define output using average number of work blocks completed over the past X weeks. How you measure your maximum expected output capacity might be more tricky to define.

I know myself, and I'm usually quite disciplined. If I have to ask, I'm burnt out. Are you normally disciplined? If so, then if you have to ask, you probably are burnt out.

Rest isn't enough to deal with burn-out. Something needs to change: work habits may need to change (for example, maintain separation of work of home), change the project you're working on, start another hobby, make an effort to be more social, etc. If you take a week or two off, then come back to the same ol' thing, you'll be in the same place.

Perhaps you have hit a batch of work to do that mind just can't be convinced is profitable no matter how hard you try?

This might be a personal startup that you know is already defeated, or a client that asks for a never ending series of changes and revisions that you aren't getting paid for, or a well-paying client whose project keeps growing and getting farther and farther from launching?

Just a thought.

It may be a sign you're not working on the right things. Seriously consider why you don't want to do the work.

It may also be that you're overwhelmed. You can use LazyMeter to focus on one day at a time, and measure your productivity to see if the problem is laziness or signing up for too much. http://www.lazymeter.com

My own experience suggests you are truly burnt out when you are no longer capable of doing work in the face of dire consequences like missing mortgage repayments and feeding your children.

Of course, this feeds back on itself, with further stress causing even more difficulty in fulfilling one's obligations.

I think it starts with one question: Am I dreading sitting down in front of the computer today?

If yes, then you're definitely just burnt out. If the answer is no and you're not producing then you're being lazy.

I never really know until it passes. When I'm burned out, I often think I'm being lazy, but when my energy returns, I look back and see that I was really burned out.

I think if you are asking yourself that question then you are not truly burnt out. Anyone who's had a serious burnout knows that there is no confusing the two.

If you wake up and you're not excited to get started on the challenge(s) that your work will bring, then you're burnt out.

Another question to ask yourself is "is this question the right one to ask?" It could represent a false dichotomy.

As animals we're built for a fast effort/reward loop. Look at most people and how they operate -- they desire immediate gratification.

Something that makes us special is the ability to push out that loop and make long term plans. Not everybody is able to do that.

I can count, to the specific decisions, among my friends, what things they decided to do in their lives where they had a choice of a long term plan that would have yielded great fruits, or a short term plan yielding immediate gratification (but with long term problems stemming from that) that ultimately ended up with them being impoverished, without health care, unable to get better jobs, save up for retirement, etc. As an external actor I know exactly where they made those decisions and what they chose instead.

But I can't really blame them or think less of them for how they ended up in their circumstances. They are simply acting the way we as animals are built -- they are acting normal.

In every case, I believe that the difference between a long-term planner and an immediate gratification fixer is willpower.

Doing something like what many people do here, starting up a company, takes extraordinary long term planning - it's not normal. A simple observation of large groups of humans shows that it's abnormal behavior. It takes mountains of willpower in most cases since we don't see the immediate benefits of what's likely hundreds or thousands (or tens of thousands) of hours of work. The payoff, if there even is one, is an abstraction that even the smartest and most dedicated can have trouble using to reconcile their labors.

What you can try to do instead is find clever hacks to reduce the friction it takes to get a task done. For example, reduce your problem into very small steps. That way you feel a faster reward for your labors -- even if it's just the feeling of accomplishment at getting another step out of the way. Use lots of small arrows pointing to your goal instead of one big one.

Or try giving yourself an explicit reward for making small milestones, something proportionate to the magnitude of the step. Eat at a favorite burger joint, or hike a favorite trail, or watch a movie you really want. Whatever floats your boat.

You might even try a program of personal denial, don't allow youself to have certain pleasurable things unless you make a milestone. Pull at both ends, the "work hard play hard" system.

In other words, make the effort/reward loop as small as possible to help keep you motivated. This is especially important during tedious/grinding parts of your work that are often mistaken as burnout when in fact they're just boring and you're really desiring a reward at the end of it.