Burnout

Thoughts from an encounter with burnout

A while ago I realized I was burnt out and had to get some thoughts out. This post was written over a long period of time as a longitudinal timeline of, and reflection on, burnout.

11:23 on a Tuesday

I'm sitting here in front of my computer watching the cursor blink in my editor. I can't get myself to write the code that needs to be written to ship the stupid feature no one asked for and certainly no one needs.

I'm pretty sure I know exactly how to write the code for the feature. I could probably even write it all out in one go, top to bottom and get it right the first time. It's not a matter of difficulty, it's not that I don't understand my tendency to procrastinate or how to overcome it. I know (at least for me) procrastination is triggered by emotional aversions. I know this piece of work is checking 7 out of 8 boxes on that list, but so has every piece of work that I've done for the past two years. So, most importantly, I know I'm fully capable of just getting through it. After all, I believe that getting work done even if you're not in the mood to do it is one of the indicators of whether you're a professional or an amateur. But still... there's a problem in there. Do you see it? I don't know if I saw it until this morning.

This morning is when it hit me that I'm burnt out.

The wave of realization and acceptance washed over me, quenching the burn so instantly that I immediately switched off my work laptop and started writing. This post is that outpouring.

I'm no rookie to burnout. I don't say that proudly either. I know people who wear their burnout as a badge of honor, but that's always bothered me. Maybe if I were a better, more self-aware, empathetic, and fulfilled person I could have lived my whole life without getting burnt out.

Still, it's hard to ignore that very real fact that experience is exceptionally valuable. Could the intense effort that lead to my acute burnout earlier in my career in part be the cause of my later successes? I certainly learned at a pace incomparable to other periods of my life.

It's also undeniable that pain and suffering are part of the joy of our humanity, our mortality, our very purpose — there would be no light without the dark. But you shouldn't dwell in the dark too long lest you lose your way. The abyss gazes back and if you’re not careful, its desolation tries to colonize you.

The defining characteristic of my previous encounters with burnout was the acute nature of the pain. There was a period of obviously unsustainable, intense effort that lasted too long and broke me. I knew I was broken, I disconnected from the pain, and waited to heal. And the healing did come in time.

But my realization this morning that I was burnt out was a surprise to me. There was no period of intense effort that I knew was leading to something bad. There wasn't a big project or a deadline or a personal reason to burn the candle at both ends. There was only a sudden realization that everything has been too fucked for too long; that the feelings I had staring at my editor were the exact same feelings as before.

I've been shoveling radioactive shit for too long and now I have radiation poisoning.

I think this is going to take a while to go away.

02:04 on a Saturday

I wish that I could ignore the train wreck around me and just collect a paycheck. Life would be easier that way, but for some reason my broken brain won't allow it. I see the pile of shit that everyone is pointing at, complaining stinks and ask why no one has used the hose sitting right here to wash it away.

Me: Hey, I was wondering if we could meet for a minute to talk about what you meant when you told me I should "drop everything you're working on to make the app integrate with Google, PowerPoint, and Salesforce".

Them: You've been very negative lately.

Me: Ok... I just don't really understand what we need to deliver. You also said this had to be done by the end of the week. It's Thursday afternoon and this is the first I'm hearing of it. Our whole team was working hard to finish what you asked us to deliver this week.

Them: I know exactly how long it will take to build this. I've been working on this for a long time now and know way better than you. It'll be super quick and easy. It shouldn't take more than a few hours, we just need to integrate with Google, Excel, and Jira.

Me: Wait, your message to me on slack here says "Google, PowerPoint, and Salesforce", not "Google, Excel, and Jira" which — gets cut off

Them: Your performance has been really disappointing. If you don’t shape up soon you’re going to be on a PIP. I was expecting more from you boy.

Me: A PIP? Can you tell me what I need to be improving on?

Them: It’s negative questions like these that you need to work on.

Me: Begrudgingly shuts up and starts putting on gloves to sift through Mt. Shitsburg.

Them: Why are you bothering to put on gloves, we don't have time for that. Your performance has been really disappointing. I'm expecting more *gestures arms vaguely but wildly around with no clear meaning*. If you don't do more, you're going to be fired soon.

11:23 on a Wednesday, many months later

I wrote the preceding sections at a time when I was experiencing prolonged burnout (as opposed to the previous times of acute burnout) for the first time. Writing them helped me realize and express the feelings, the frustration, and the causes of my burnout. But I would caution the reader from drawing too many conclusions from them. They’re filled with vitriol and their purpose is to cut not to heal. Even after all these months, when I re-read them I get a bit anxious. I can feel my body reacting to a perceived threat. I learned my lesson physically. And that’s why I’m going to keep them here and share them with the rest of my thoughts. They’re a keen reminder to me and paint a picture of the way burnout affects us all. They also serve as a real-time record spanning my entry into — and now exit from — burnout.

If you only want to know what the cure is for burnout then here you go — remove yourself from the situation and touch grass. It’s really that simple, but unfortunately simple is not the same as easy. For many people, it might even be impossible to simply “remove yourself from the situation”. The reality of our society, our jobs, our financial precariousness can put us in situations where burnout comes and there’s no way out. Anne Helen Peterson put this best in her amazing essay How Millenials Became the Burnout Generation. (Seriously, just go read it if you haven’t, it’s way better than whatever this post is.)

Financially speaking, most of us [millenials] lag far behind where our parents were when they were our age. We have far less saved, far less equity, far less stability, and far, far more student debt.¹

I count myself supremely fortunate that I have the flexibility and privilege in my life to address these types of problems directly when needed. I haven’t experienced the precariousness that others my age have — the tech industry pays well in exchange for the low price of burning you out.

I read her piece well before this recent encounter with burnout but I still owe her the credit for my epiphany of what was happening. Somewhere in my subconscious I remembered what she said about prolonged burnout.

The problem with holistic, all-consuming burnout is that there’s no solution to it. You can’t optimize it to make it end faster. You can’t see it coming like a cold and start taking the burnout-prevention version of Airborne. The best way to treat it is to first acknowledge it for what it is — not a passing ailment, but a chronic disease — and to understand its roots and its parameters.¹

You can see why the first step — understanding it’s happening — was such a catharsis for me. Without that realization triggering my understanding of the root causes, I wouldn’t have been able to even begin to combat it; and combat is such an accurate word for how it felt.

But what caused it for me? In a word, alienation. Alienation from any kind of responsibility or autonomy over what I do, how well I do it, or the outcomes (good or bad) it causes. I was alienated by a group of careless executives and “leaders” who laid so plain and bare that they were leeching off of the people who could and did make them rich, contributing nothing and taking so much in the process. The drum of their ineptitude beating more constantly and loudly than anyone could bear. The carelessness with which these supposed “leaders” inflicted their unexamined, un-researched, and unsupportable whims on we who enrich them with the sweat of our brow and the shortening of our lives.² Their constant shifting of “priorities” that were based on nothing but vibes. The psychological damage of being forced to make myself and my team build something horrible for our users that they don’t want or need. The constant shell game of metrics and measurements that are declared good even when they aren’t. The ripping up of months of well-researched work and planning without even an attempt at a justification.

Just do this, just do that, it’ll be easy, what’s taking so long?

It was a prolonged battle.

12:29 on a Sunday, many more months later

I'm sitting at my desk on a quiet Sunday afternoon and I'm hacking on some updates for my site. It dawned on me today when I felt the desire to do this that I'm back in a good headspace with coding. It took a long time to get here, but I've been able to reclaim the joy in programming, building things for me without any expectations for what it will be in the end or even whether it'll ever be finished. Removing the need for the code to be perfect isn’t easy for me, but it’s deeply freeing when I can manage it. Pride in my work can be the pride of precise, elegant, simple code, but it can also be the pride of building the thing instead of being trapped in decision paralysis.

There’s also a quiet satisfaction in doing well at work, no longer for the sake of the work, or company, or personal success, but because it feeds my family literally and figuratively. Doing well allows me to have more time with them. Doing well allows me to have less stress and show up for them as my best self when I finish the day.

Being better for my family will always be worth doing even if I work for petite techno-bourgeoisie vampires who only get richer. Let them have their greed, distrust, and Machiavellianism.

I have my life and those I love and I wouldn’t trade with them for a second.