When Jerry started their job as a junior developer, they couldnt wait to get to work each morning.
And each evening, even after their 10-hour workdays, theyd still feel energized.
Now, two years later, Jerry looks like the shadow of what they used to be.
Getting out of bed is hard these days, getting to work even harder.
By the end of the day, they feel exhausted and drained.
And theyre already dreading the thought of going back tomorrow and wasting yet another day of their lives.
Personally, I have yet to meet a programmer who hasnt been through at least one episode of burnout.
Yes, they can.
Sure, its the same in many other jobs.
But the intensity ofstaring-at-your-screen-while-sitting-in-a-very-unhealthy-positionis highest in programming.
Even if you find your work mentally stimulating, this monotony can quickly lead to physical sluggishness.
Which sounds easy in theory.
But the declining rates of life expectancy show how hard it is.
Youre chasing deadline after deadline.
Youre probably missing a few deadlines along the way.
Youre expected to deliver everything by yesterday, and nobody cares that humans arent capable of that.
And that sucks all passion for coding out of you.
Youre expected to be a robot that always generates top-notch output and delivers it ahead of time.
But youre human, so you respond with symptoms of burnout.
Still, every day you dread going to work.
The simple thought of it is making you anxious and unhappy.
Of course, your happiness at work is influenced by well your work.
But even more importantly, your happiness isinfluenced by your relationships in or outside of work.
So if youre happy with what youre doing but youre still dreading it, its probably your coworkers.
If youre experiencing burnout symptoms that result from icky coworkers, know thatits not your fault.
You might want to try some of the fixes listed further in this article.
Your project may be wonderful and exciting, and your colleagues may be awesome.
And every time they do that, the old task becomes completely irrelevant.
I know it does to me.
it’s possible for you to be as excited or passionate as you like about your field.
If your work constantly gets invalidated, youll lose your motivation.
Youll start dreading to go there because you know you wont create anything useful anyway.
With time, this can lead to more severe symptoms.
All because your manager has no idea what you should be doing.
Reason 5: Getting paid
Getting paid too little or too much!
can worsen your symptoms of burnout.
Too little pay is a no-brainer for burnout.
(Yes, broke programmers exist!
Which brings us back to reason 4.
But burnout can also worsen when you get paidtoo much.
While a big check sounds great in theory, it can lead to disaster in real life.
Let me illustrate this with my personal experience.
As an undergraduate, I got very involved in programming.
I loved it so much that I never expected any compensation for it.
For years I worked for free.
Even if that meant that I couldnt even afford tomatoes at the supermarket.
This radically changed when I entered grad school.
Suddenly I was being paid.
Suddenly all my bills were covered.
Suddenly I could buy tomatoes without having to think about the pennies.
I was making a living.
But sometimes your project just sucks.
Maybe your project is just a heap of corporate B.S.
with not much substance for a programmer.
Suddenly what had started as a wild passion became a source of pressure.
Pressure to give back the value that I was receiving in money.
But the more you pressure yourself, the less youre going to perform.
Especially when youre thinking about money.
Maybe youre not seeing the meaning in your project because you cant learn anything new from it.
Maybe the project seems way beyond your skills.
You feel that youre unable to master it, and that your manager completely over-estimated your skills.
The task is a mystery and nobody seems able to explain it to you.
This usually stems from mismanagement.
Unfortunately, this situation happens more often than you think.
In any case, from a corporate perspective, your project is your main reason to work.
So if it sucks, no wonder youre experiencing burnout.
Reason 7: Walking the death march
This one is closely related to reason 6.
The death march, in short, is when youre working on a project that is destined to fail.
You start neglecting your family, your friends, your hobbies, and your self-care.
And suddenly youre not caught in a work crisis, but a life crisis.
It is vital to understand that and I cant stress this enough this is not your fault.
Sure, recognizing your own mistakes is vital for personal growth.
But blaming yourself for mistakes you havent made will ruin you.
That doesnt mean that you’re gonna wanna change departments or quit your job right away.
and leave early because you know that your work isnt going to change anything.
Or you start putting in 14-hour days in the belief that this way you could turn things around.
Your apathy is because of demotivation and leads to more demotivation.
Youre basically removing the fuel that keeps your fire going.
Both of these are natural responses.
As before, just know that if the project isnt going well, itsnot your fault.
Youre an excellent programmer and youve probably proven that on other projects.
If this is going wrong, its because of the circumstances and not because of you!
Fix 1: Be compassionate with yourself
I know this sounds lame.
But hear me out.
Burnout isnot your fault.
It is not a symptom of weakness.
The pain youre experiencing is not from being an idiot.
I stress this so much because Im a culprit of this fallacy.
Being compassionate with oneself is something that Im still learning.
But the one thing Ive found is that this helps:
Be your own best friend.
This doesnt mean you shouldnt keep in regular contact with your besties.
But attempt to treat yourself like your best friend.
How would you talk to them?
Self-compassion, I have found, is an incredible hack for gaining more self-love.
And that leads to you guessed it more happiness and productivity.
A position better than Einstein, even!
It was ideal; it was perfect; it was absurd!
The other offers had made me feel worse, up to a point.
They were expecting me to accomplish something.
[…] I laughed at it while I was shaving, thinking about it.
You have no responsibility to live up to it!
I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be.
Its their mistake, not my failing.
From Surely youre joking, Mr. Feynman, by Richard Feynman, Copyright 1985, pg.
Feynman wasnt exactly coding.
Ill be irresponsible like Mr. Feynman and do whatever the hell I like.
One thing that can help reset your motivation is incorporating routine tasks.
I like to start my workday with something easy, almost trivial.
The task should be useful, but the main object is to get a tick off my todo-list.
I then slowly go from the easiest to the hardest parts.
It sounds like procrastination of the difficult stuff.
Im surprised quite regularly about how much I actually get done by doing the easy things first.
Fix 4: Reflect
Set some time aside each day to practice some reflection.
Everybody has their own technique, and youre free to develop yours.
I use a reflection matrix that I fill each evening:
I separate active events from passive ones.
An active event is a direct consequence of what I did.
A passive event is something that happens without me doing anything.
This helps me realize that not everything is in my control.
In the I like category I write things that Im grateful for that day.
This builds my feeling of accomplishment and my mental resilience.
This way Im being proactive against demotivation.
And the I wish category contains things that could have been better.
you might reflect using a journal, or by talking to a friend, or sending emails to yourself.
Also, the backlog will be fun to look through later, believe it or not.
By reflecting, youre looking back on your past success.
And youre realizing that every so often, youre not in control of things.
This has helped me a lot in coping with symptoms of burnout.
Fix 5: Get a hobby
Youre a programmer.
When youre not at work, youre either sleeping or coding for fun.
But when you face serious burnout, you might not feel like touching a computer at all.
And now youre faced with a big fat emptiness in your life.
Be proactive about that and get an activity going on the side preferably one that doesnt involve computers.
It could be a sport, or music, or cooking, or interior design.
Find something that youre interested in and do that on a regular basis.
One thing that helps me is having a hobby that is useful in a practical way.
For example, at least once a week, I like to cook something delicious.
Its easy for me to keep that up because I need to eat anyway.
A hobby helps stabilize you so that a work crisis doesnt become a life crisis.
Fix 6: Set non-negotiable boundaries
This one is for those who over-compensate when theyre burnt out.
As paradox as it sounds, getting free time can require some discipline, too.
Not only does it help me wind down, reflect and get a good nights sleep.
It also gives me something to look forward to during the day.
The important part is that these boundaries arenot flexible.
You might be afraid that youll seem lazy.
Funnily enough, this is not the case.
A person with clear boundaries makes the impression that theyre in control of their lives.
Fix 7: Advocate for yourself
This links directly to the above.
What you need should be well-reasoned otherwise, your manager might think youre too demanding.
But its still better to come off as demanding than being too shy to express what you want.
The others cant read that off the tip of your nose.
So if this article teaches you one thing, it should be that youre not an isolated case.
This article was written byAri Jouryand was originally published onTowards Data Science.
