The vacation thing is so real. The dread when it's almost over and then coming back and just not feeling any better. I think the most crushing thing is the thought that "well, the vacation was meant to help and it didn't...I guess this is just my life now."
depends what your vacation is. Going to cuncun to get drunk, isnt going to be fulfilling. Ideal vacation is go on nature hikes somewhere. You need to put in work and get exercise, the best antidepressant.
@ecsrepair you missed the point about changing perspectives. Having a "relaxing" holiday will do you the disservice, but if you go on a pilgrimage to find yourself in a remote buddhist temple in the mountains of nepal, will do you great wonder. You need to continuously challenge yourself and not just seek pleasure. If your vacation is just drinking and doing drugs, of course returing to the real world will seem dull.
@@pluto8404 buddy you missed the point again, I will give u one example , consider yourself a fish in a tank , you go on vacation bcoz the water in the tank became dirty , but when you return back , u will have to continue living in the dirty water (burnout) so either you have to change the water in tank(change jobs) or manage your work efficiently so you won't get burn out this is not a good example , but i hope you get the point 😄
I prefer vacation to always be some future date I can look forward to so push until like.. Nov- December ideally. Otherwise, as soon as it's over, "damn, no more vacation this year". All it means practically speaking is other than emergencies, I'm doing similar work from coffee shop or wherever just not having to be in meetings and working more independently. It's basically like democracy, an illusion but a comforting one.
I was just telling my colleague at work that the reason I’ve changed my attitude recently at work - after months of feeling like I’m on the edge of burnout - is because I found channels like yours and theo’s that have reminded me of the joy and beauty of programming. Thanks dude. Little things make big differences.
True. This year, I hit my second tech startup against the wall. Fired all 30+ team members. Then, out of the blue, I started to code again... I've discovered this and other channels. Granted, I started to exercise in January, so, yeah, it probably helps, too. But I can tell that despite feeling failure and rejection (from investors), coding is doing wonders for me. I've recently created a GPT-2-clone from scratch, for fun, to see how far I understand and can push it... And suddenly, I feel so much better than I have in the last 2 years. The bottom line is that when you are a coder at heart, there was once a good reason (other than money) that made you become a coder. You never lose your strengths. You merely forget them, say, because of Scrum madness, company culture meetings, briefings, or a manager who talks only about money, money, money.
I left a $200k (80hr/wk) job for a $65k (40hr/wk) job because I literally hated my life and all facets of it during burnout. I was doing nothing for myself and everything for a company that I knew was never going to be 'capable' because of upper management incompetence. I now have the worlds chillest manager, job security on an incredible level (govt) with a pension and so much free time I'm coding again and even picked up new hobbies like machining and working on my old pickup truck. The people in my life say I'm more fun to be around and that I've become "my old self" again. Burnout is real. Grinding is something we all have to do at some point to get things done but grinding for grinding's sake is moronic.
Hearing that his burnout lasted 2 years honestly makes me feel better. It's been about 3 years for me and I always thought burn out was this temporary thing like 1-2 months. I feel lazy, I feel like an imposter. I just can't get motivated to do anything except side projects
I had multiple similar experiences. Working on my mindset helped a lot: What is the story you tell yourself about the world and yourself in it? Why do you the things you do? Fostering gratefulness helps a lot. Seeing hardship as a challenge to improve your skills and mindset. Being proud of your skills and attitude. Helping others flourish. Self care. Keeping healthy boundaries.
I quit and went to work for a company with a healthier environment. It took two years to completely shed the weight of the burnout, but now my outlook is better. Additionally, channels like this helped motivate me to do side projects again, but I had to get out of burnout first, and that takes time, rest, a good environment, and some sun on your face
I'm in a similar situation, all the people that did the original shitfest of code already move on from the job. and now we're like dodging mines trying to not die
Really helps to hear that even someone who seems super passionate about programming also has struggled with burnout. Going through some weird periods of life right now with depressive episodes and it's made it difficult for me to want to keep learning & programming as much, which in turn makes me feel bad about not being productive.
Productivity (and happiness) are a byproduct of a focused, healthy and well rounded life. And leading a life that allows for happiness and productivity is the hard part. Caring for your mind and body is a necessary precondition.
Thanks so much for sharing your story - very similar to mine. I had severe burnout that got worse and worse by the end of covid. I eventually quit my job, and went full stop for almost a year, playing golf every week. Just like you, the "vacation" didn't help, and I took my bad mentality with me, even to something like golf, and it started to become a point of frustration too. That was mentally really hard to take ... golf had been my favorite hobby, and to see that become something negative left me feeling pretty hopeless. As I stepped back into working, I found that picking up a side project that I wanted to work on just for me (no hard goals or timelines for commercializing it), insulating my identity from the job, and realizing that the results don't really matter that much in the grand scheme of things, helped me to enjoy the process of creating again.
Thank you for sharing your story. I recently went through a crappy situation (very different circumstances though), and also had the same outlook on my job (there is a lot changing there too). I was able to pull myself out by doing exactly what you mentioned: side projects (that reminded me why I went into software engineering), as well as some networking. I realized that I need to focus on myself so that I can grow into the engineer I want to be. By refocusing the mindset, I can spot opportunities to develop myself and my team. Thank you for everything that you do, Prime!
Your previous comment about working for companies who view software as a profit center aligns well with your ability to affect change at Netflix. I imagine that working for a company that does not enable you to find meaning in company improvement making burnout recovery impossible.
When Prime says to start working out, also don't start doing 2 hours of high intensity cardio to the point where you are too time short and drained to do anything productive afterwards, balance
I hope this job gives you a sense of purpose. You help a lot of people in a lot of different ways. My favorite thing about you is, for lack of a better way to put it, your spiritual awareness--You do a lot of inner reflection and it shows. I think a lot of people are drawn towards you for that reason whether they know it or not. You are so silly and playful yet very sincere and straightforward. You share your flaws and the struggles you've gone through with us. You're a great role model in how to approach life and the struggles that come with it, but most of all how to approach our own human flaws and shortcomings. You help a lot of us feel seen and less alone on this journey we call life. I love you from one silly human to another, and I SEE you.
In my experience burnout means that you need change in one way or another. That could mean a different job, project, sideline project, hobby or something else. Out with the old, in with the new. Burn out is caused by excessive routine. Work typically causes burn out when there is a lack of overall progress.
It's not routine, that you can deal with. It's pointless work, or work perceived as pointless. Prof. Jordan Peterson mentions guards making prisoners carrying wet bags of salt to some place, that would then send them to some other place, etc until they were back at the starting point. It wasn't the hard work that broke them, it was the pointlessness of it. You see it a lot in devs working at places that run on "constant crunch". It's not the crunch per se that burns them, it's the fact that nothing is done to change what leads to the need for crunch. Once you have no hope of it improving not matter how hard you go at the current issue, you burnout.
For me at least, some of my "burnout" was probably a severe nutritional issue. Adding more forms of protein to my diet (not just chicken) solved my energy issues, and gave me the energy to start making progress on my emotional burnout (which was more nuanced). Keep in mind that during this time, I was working out, lean, outwardly healthy, and had normal blood pressure. Moral of the story, if you have low energy, it might have a medical component. If you can afford it, get a doctor, talk to them, maybe get some blood tests done. If you can't, learn the basics about nutrition, figure out the common deficiencies and try diet & supplementation changes.
@@VudrokWolf Pray tell, what did he say previous to his return from his addiction treatment that you found "not well thought through"? Did you even bother to read his books and see his university lectures? Because i get this exact take about Prof. Daniel Kahneman too, yet nobody seem to have read his books or listened to his talks or even have a clue about his work either...
On vacation, I was actually surprised recently at how much energy I lost after getting back from vacation. This was the first time in my life I had less energy after a vacation than before. I don't know what changed in my state of mind. I was actually very productive in the plane back, but as soon as I got home, my soul left my body. Maybe it's part of getting older that you can't use vacation as a vacation anymore, I don't know.
Wow. This really resonated with me. My first burnout crash STARTED with coming back from a 2 week vacation. I was "only" working 40 hours a week and still could barely get through the day because the work itself was crushingly frustrating. After watching this I took some time to say "fuck it" and in my off hours start learning something that actually interests and excites me. Creating & learning without the pressure of delivering something is starting to make a difference. Thanks for sharing your story!
I appreciate you opening up about your journey through burnout and how you eventually overcame it. I'm currently experiencing burnout myself, but in my case, it's caused by the complex dynamics within my in-law family. While I've dealt with work-related burnout before, this situation is impacting me more deeply, affecting my passion for programming and my overall enthusiasm for life. Your story gives me hope that I, too, can find a way to navigate this challenging period and rediscover my zest for the things I love. Thank you for the inspiration!
When people had to plow fields or die, they didn't plow alone. They worked, ate, slept and partied together. They were a village, a community. And if someone was toxic they were kicked out of the village because if they didn't kick toxic people out, the village would collectively starve.
As a person who grew up in a village (Poland, late 80s - early 90s) -> lmao. Villages are essentially the exact equivalent of a "corporate family". Very very fake friendliness which shows its true colors as soon as you differ anyhow from the rest (race, orientation, music taste, style, education level, literally whatever). Nothing to do with toxicity at all. At best they kicked "unproductive" people out, but that includes people that could not contribute due to various illnesses and also those that did not agree with the local cause (e.g. serving some church).
Man, I've been burnt out for a while now at my current dev job. Something in me snapped one weekend and just impulsively threw a tailored resume at SEGA of America. They're not even hiring devs right now but I figured "What's the worst that can happen? Maybe I'll try it again a few months from now if I hear nothing." Shortly after doing that, I found your channel and started watching a bunch of your videos. I think the combination of knowing I have a tangible and desirable goal I'm making consistent (albeit small) steps towards, and your videos about imposter syndrome and watching you talk about your experiences have really helped me start to come out of the burnout. It also helped me not just like programming again, but like *my* programming again. :)
Thanks for sharing your personal story. I'm prone to depression and burnout. The escapism when it gets bad again. The energy finally coming back and feeling excited about developing (or even normal everyday things) again. Having people that can support you through it, or can help you get out of it and push you through it, is a privilege to be grateful for. The hardest part is that mindset shift, seeing negative things but being satisfied instead of thinking of the shoulds. Switching from the negative mindset to the positive mindset. Definite test of patience and maturity. Keep up the good work. Thank you
Great video - need to watch this often to remind myself. Especially the part of "why did I start doing this in the first place?" - I really can't remember why I got to coding in the first place. I remember my first project, but I can't remember why I went with it.
This lines up with something HGGG said recently, which is that often the solution to burnout is to take on more work, but make it work that you are excited to do
I think transforming "chores" into "satisfactory work" or even "purposeful work" is aided by several things: - Changing from a mostly external focus of control to a mostly internal focus of control helps a lot - Being grateful for a challenge instead of being spiteful because you need to endure hardship - Finding some kind of meaning in your work (seeing people flourish, creating the best product, learning the most you can, ...) - Being proud of "doing a good job" by your own definition
Thanks for sharing this. I am also someone who simply finds the joy in programming and I always feel a bit down when my freelance jobs die out, or other hobby projects. My fulltime job is sometimes such a bore. Every company is the same. "We do agile". Translates to: we eventually grow big enough to start using Jira and then all the teams must incorporate the same workflow, process and practices without question and management will impose idiotic rules in every single repository in that organization because they read that "it leads to better outcomes", but in actuality have no idea what it means or stop to think of it in a specific context. When you can't change the ways you work to improve, that's when my eye starts to twitch a little bit.
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve been in this phase of being satisfied for a while. It sucks. But like you I realize I come alive when I’m building things. Think I will commit to doing this way more.
Nobody says you will solve the problem in one night. It just didn't work that way. Take your time to prepare yourself and your "will power" to do it, the point is to do not try to do.
@@shimokitazawa1217 In my experience solutions come with more knowledge, experience and a high enough level of frustration that you are willing to change your mind and take a risk in acting on it. So you need to cook for a while, then it clicks and you act on it and then mostly it works. This needs time and some kind of aha-moment or fuck-it-all-moment :)
the quality and depth of these videos is amazing. I cannot fathom someone from 20 years ago knowing today the quality and content available for free like this to learn programming. its like everyone having their own personal senior dev to learn from... even if in their real world jobs, they are doing some boring IT stuff. keep rockin
I didn't experience severe burnout yet. I've had down periods where I struggled to get motivation for anything, but these never lasted more than a month. But I've had a depression, and how I got out of it was rediscovering the joy of entertainment, which is pretty much antithetical to what happened to Prime on the work axis. I'm a big anime watcher, and instead of just watching anime from the ongoing season, I remember just going back and rewatching sukasuka. I never rewatch anime, but that time I did. It made me cry, and feel extremely sad. I went to sleep sad, then the next morning, I was fine. It was a weird experience, definitely unusual. I got better by making myself sadder.
Really great stuff in here. Especially about vacation. People just need to remember this was his way and not the only way. Do what works for you. I'm gonna try to switch my perspective
i discovered your channel a few weeks ago, was there the other day when lex fridman asked the question about neovim, and now i saw this video. you are awesome man. thank you
I'm dealing with extreme burnout right now 😪 Last week I told my PM that I need a month off starting immediately. I'm not super confident that i will get over this before the end of July but I'm seeking out anything i can. There is a big part of me that says to quit and move to SE Asia for a couple years, work on myself and execute on some side projects. Right now I feel like every day and every task is a fight and all we do is create more tech debt.
In my experience and in the experience of others I've talked to, a month might not be enough... I'm no expert but with extreme burnout a big problem might require big solutions. A MASSIVE change for me has been not only some more significant time off, but making some real life changes to focus on sleep quality, diet changes etc. as well as doing some "side project" things that are important for me and that mostly nobody else would care about.
@danbumbarger4732 💯 agree, I'm hoping that a month will give me a little bit of strength to make it to the next rsu vest before I quit but that's in Oct and and I honestly can't imagine making it that long at this point. I've always prioritized money over everything else, and I'm at the point where I'm starting to realize I have nothing (but money) and maybe the most important thing is actually relationships and who you surround yourself with. In any case for July I'm focusing on mental health and getting therapy, spending more time outside, reading, prioritizing sleep, and exercise while also doing some self reflection to figure out what exactly I'm looking for in life.
I've heard a great analogy about burnout once. Someone told me when I was on the verge of burning out as well. Maybe I was a little burnt out already, I guess. The analogy is this: "if your phone battery is dead, you don't put it on a bed on the beach, or on the sofa, you put it on a charger". Same goes for people. Rest or time off is not going to charge you. You need an activity that gives you positive energy. Preferably doing work you love, or at least used to love. So finding a way to do so is the key! Great that you found your way.
I've never had a vacation, but I needed to hear this today. I feel bogged down in a decade of legacy before I started at my company. Anytime I try to improve the situation with more modern techniques the pasts poor decisions come back to bite me, which inevitably grows the scope of the project so progress on my actual task is slow. Which makes me feel like my job is at risk because I expose so many problems. I need to look at it like I'm solving the problems not causing them, maybe I should expect problems and try to account for them before they happen. Thanks bro.
If estimating work in sprint planning or something, id estimate 3x more if expecting refactoring, and 10x if refactoring "safely" (unit/functional tests inc.), due to integrating with legacy. Gotta be real. And sometimes that still wont be enough time... but at least everyone, including yourself, is more in line with the truth.
@@josda1000 That's good advice. I generally 3x what I expect I could build something in if everything goes well, but never account for what goes wrong, and if it's a big task it generally has some troublesome areas. I always stay upfront with my scrum master when I hit issues, but still it's hard to estimate what the impact will be before actually getting knee deep in the problem. I'm constantly working on it and trying to reign in my expectations, 10x sounds like a lot, but gives me a bit of peace with where I'm at.
I’m so blessed that I live in the mountains of the USA and landed a job as a junior app dev. Found a house and a wonderful spouse. Love my life. Wish everyone could be in my position. Good luck to everyone on the struggle bus.
I can't believe there was't any screaming into the mic for a full 15 minutes. Thanks for sharing, keep taking ur meds, they really do help it seems. Love this topic btw. The point that "take some time off" does NOT help with burnout STRONGLY resonates with my personal experience.
This hits hard. I went through burnout for years in a completely different industry. What broke me out of it was spending years learning web/software development and working on side projects.
This was probably one of my favorite videos from Prime. Had a similar experience with burnout, but in my case what helped me get out of it was getting a new job.
Nice video, I have been burned for last 5 years wasn't ever realizing it. Games, Vacation, Restaurants were making it way worst. Slowly getting out of it now just simply by working more and really looking at things as opportunities not as chore as you said. Perspective makes huge difference at the end you pick urself who you are, social media is also influencing us that life should be easy which is not true, you should work hard and enjoy the results of your work otherwise there is nothing to be satisfied about.
One definition of burnout is extreme effort with little to no reward or recognition. In your case you might have started getting recognition through the charity and streaming efforts. I'm climbing out of the pit of burnout and haven't figured out the redemption part of my story yet, but having stepped out of a work environment that was toxic for me has done wonders for at least putting my feet on the ground again. Just wanted to put this out there for anyone experiencing more severe burnout...
I am right there with you Primeagen. I didn't realize I got burned out until way later. I also had some medical issues never diagnosed and it really burned me on so many levels. It took many many years to get through it and also proper medication to just begin the healing.
On the point of a job not providing purpose. My job really does as a UI developer. The software I work on is an integral part of keeping the road infrastructure in a state maintained and functional. Recently us devs went out and met with the boots on the ground and saw how it all connected. It was great.
Yes, I've had a different sort of burnout than what he describes: I'm 100% self-taught and have yet to land a dev job after 1.5 years of near-daily coding. I do have a job where I am able to do some programming however. My only burnout has been from overworking myself with zero tangible reward (yet), and it doesn't help that half the coding channels (NOT this one) on YT are just doom and gloom, good luck finding a job, etc. I'm definitely not just in this for the money, I do love programming, but I don't love practicing DSA and doing boring stuff like css media queries, and I hated the grind that was required to pass my AWS developer associate cert. Thankfully my burnout periods thus far have been brief and were satisfied by a vacation or some gaming breaks. But as more time passes and I fail to even land an interview, I know I'm growing closer to some sort of real burnout. Part of me wants to just say F it and spend 100% of my coding time on fun stuff only like game development, which I have not at all been focusing on since it's one of the hardest industries to break into.
I'm in the time + vacation part of my life right now, and you're right. Living through it, the time just doesn't really help but I feel like it's necessary to go through it to see and experience that "hey, this ain't working."
I absolutely love and appreciate the reality of real life that you share with us. Not pretending that everything has been rainbows and unicorns for you allows us all to have realistic expectations that not everything will always be “fine” and to have hope that things can get better with resilience and sometimes some outside help.
What has really helped me a lot is realizing that my early childhood life made me into an external energy absorbing empath and people pleaser, so now I've learned to put healthy boundaries and to put my own well being above everything and anyone else, and to listen to my gut 100% of the time, and learn to say "no" in a polite but firm way. This saves me all the energy I was wasting on pleasing others, and in return now I feel empowered and have enough energy to do what I like and enjoy. Hope this helps someone.
What helps so much with taking burnout PTO at my company is that all my work is offloaded. If I’m gone for a week all my projects are handed off. When I come back, I jump in totally fresh. It helps so much and I’m very fortunate that my company and line of work allows for this
Been there. I had burnout start to set in but kept going 2 years past the absolute cutoff date where I'd promised myself in advance I'd step away for a few months to recover as I had done twice before. Energy and work performance kept declining until I woke up one day and *_couldn't_* go in to work. Clinical depression was my reward. It's been 3 years of not even being able to enjoy basic things I used to love and recovery has been slow. I'm still not at the point for a return to work and only very occassionally am up to any sort of brief recreational social activity. Disrespecting that promise to myself was not worth it. Not at all worth it. Moral of the story is treat burnout as the serious warning sign that it is.
I took 9 months off after i got laid off at my last job. I was burned out. Now that I’m working again, I miss being unemployed and doing whatever I wanted all day…
@@Denimy0 You must not have hobbies that can be done at home. I like to computer program, create art, play piano, guitar, drums, compose music, home gym and build robots with rasberry pie + assembly language. When I was unemployed my days literally flew past because I couldnt decide which hobbies I wanted to do first. I guess people like you are just made for the 9 - 5 work lifestyle.
the hard truth about any personal crisis is: time is not gonna heal anything, learn something about it, yeah, that`s gonna heal something... That's why vacations endup getting things worse, but doing something new, a side project, more work, endup healing the burnout.
So happy you talk about that ! That exactly how I handled Burnout. So much people on my family was keep try to stop me working on my personal project. Because for them it was to much. They was not understanding why a do this
I've had a very similar experience. I had a few work projects where I worked around the clock to meet unrealistic deadlines and felt I wasn't rewarded for my hard work -- I was just avoiding punishment. Combine that with problems with my personal life and it got to a point where opening up a code editor gave me intense anxiety. So I just started playing video games for a while because that's a place where you get instant rewards for doing well. Eventually I knew I needed to get my head back in the game and worked on some side projects that were actually fun. My personal life improved and I enjoyed my work again. But it wasn't the hard work that burned me out -- it was the disconnect between work and reward.
Working full time and going to school full time. I have never hated coding so much and it sucks because I used to enjoy it so much in high school and I remember those feelings but it has not been the same. Basically if you can focus on just going to school, then just go to school, try your best not to work so much
Utah entrepreneur here, there are great jobs in Utah right now. my uncle is cofounder of silicon slopes and he says everyone’s looking for workers right now. And because of the whole Mormon thing, it’s a pretty good place to raise a family.
For me this satisfaction/dissatisfaction comes from whether i am closing in on my goals or not. And the closer i get to the goal the more of a swing happens I should save this video for after a run out of goals or they become unrealistic
I've been in active burnout for the last five years, and at the lowest point I worked at a place where every constructive suggestions to fix something broken was shot down as the mere suggestion that something might be broken was "spreading negativity". I don't know if that job in particular could have been salvaged, but it did highlight the importance of soft skills in being allowed to work on the more satisfying tasks of solving real problems instead of being stuck creating more of them for the sake of not rocking the boat.
Vacation also might lead to you actually having time to think about how much stress you have and suddenly feel burned out. If you are just working your ass off and are functioning and fall asleep exhausted as soon as you hit the sheets, you have no time to reflect how good or bad you feel. Have seen it with a few folks. But I also agree, amount of time spent working doesn't seem to be directly correlated with burn-out, at least for me. If I work long hours, but also achieve a lot, times are actually good. The issue is, if you work hard, but can't see a light at the end of the tunnel, that your sweat will lead to accomplishment.
The way i deal with burnout is in my notion board. I keep track of my progress and i have pretty long backlog of things i could try, i could learn etc. When going through a rough patch I can still find something, anything that i can do and keep moving. So instead of video games being a distraction, this notion board is. It also helps in defeating impostor syndrome, theres tangible evidence for it! I know what I know and I also know what I still dont know. When i discover something i wasnt even aware of, i happily add it somewhere in my board. Prime calls things like that "busy work", like bookkeeping, but i say its a productivity framework that works for some people.
I love your drawings during your long explanations, Prime, I love it. Very well drawn too. Thanks for the video, I'm currently on my millionth burnout phase, but this too shall pass.
Same for me. I founded a side hustle without earning a single cent during the last 18 Months. And I love it and I can appreciate my actual job much more. I thought I need more free time - but in the end only more work was helping me :).
Oh man, please express my profound condolences to your wife. That kind of experience can be absolutely terrible for a woman to go through. It's unbelievably, profoundly sad. I personally know of one very wonderful woman who sort of gave up on the idea of having children after a miscarriage. It's so devastating. Again, I'm so sorry.
Vacation resets your brain, so you may need to boot up WORK.EXE again in it. And it's as if brain boots from floppy disks. It takes a lot of time and energy, and brain tries to avoid it at every turn. Another thing I noticed is that rushing, trying to do mental work when it's not ready yet just increases brain's resistance and bad feelings. Sitting doing nothing and gently recollecting work thoughts bit by bit seems to work best.
Had quite similar experience when my brother passed away. Software didn't feel right but after some time I refocused my efforts to embedded programming and EE where I found my passion again
Last vacation I was on, I was stressed going, stressed while I was there, and stressed about going back to work the entire time. They cannot fix something broken, they can only enhance something already healthy.
Going through a massive burnout and depression for the past 4 years, related to my PhD research. Well, the thing is almost finished, hand in next month, and I hope I’m going to get better
This is what I'm trying to do with learning Go and posting videos about it on YT - that gives me joy of coding again after I think 2 years of not having much fun from coding anymore.
I think most of my burnout comes from doing too much of one thing for too long. I love learning how to solve problems, though once I solve it I don't want to keep solving it I guess. I need to move on to something new or else burnout sets in relatively quickly.
The plowing a field analogy is because while you were plowing your field every year, year after year. You were still a part of a community that you had strong physical, mental and emotional ties to. You guys could share in your struggle and plight, and even work together to try and make it better. I find in IT that this would be the best outcome, but every department is off doing their own thing, which does contribute to the whole, but it's not the same.
The problem with vacationing as an American worker they’re too damn short. Not long enough to really recharge while long enough to feel like you’re just getting more behind.
I dont work long enough as a software dev to be in danger of burnout but when it comes to work I dont really see it as chores. Not because it isnt anoying sometimes, there is only so much C#, Azure Deployments, SQL, webhooks etc. you can do until it gets repetitive. But its because of the environment I work in, I like the office and the people there, this is what keeps it from being a chore, not the actual workload.
I had to pause this caused it was so surreal for me. Exactly 3 mins in and my story is almost perfectly aligned except me and my girlfriend broke up. But that wasn't the kicker, even though it was a huge contribution; it was a failed attempt at starting my first company. This lead to 6 - 12+ hours of league of legends a DAY, drinking all the time, drugs, porn, etc for 2 years non stop. Coding again just to code and falling in love all over again then finding my own version of purpose is what saved me as well.
being used to not doing anything on vacation is for sure a thing. I've been using my vacation time to not only recover energy bnut also work on learning things which I don't normally have the time to work on. It's great. But also it requires energy for it as well. So some days I don't do much of anything besides taking care of the home and others I work on something all day long. Finally at the end of my vacation I'm feeling like I can have fun playing games. Because I got all of my 'need to do xyz' out of my system.
definitely vacation is the worse things to do, I agree.. I've quit my job after a week.. couldn't handle that shit anymore... and that was the best move I ever made.. but this is my personal case. keep strong out there everyone 💪
Went through a beginning burnout end of last year. My company granted me a few month working less hours (80%) while keeping my payment. I used the time to start with learning Zig and starting game development again after I left that field in the 90s. That helped a lot and just as Prime said, finding the fun in coding again was, what helped. And of course getting treated that well by my company. You could offer me double of my current payment as a company and I would reject it.
Burnout for me was when I realized how anything I did didn't seem to have an impact or matter that much. Rather I burned the midnight oil or I did the bare minimum: the next day, the next month, the next year: it always seemed like I'm running in circles as nothing I was assigned ever was even used even 1 quarter later. It literally felt like I wasn't given engineering tasks, but rather tasks that looked like engineering tasks but really were just busywork. If nobody truly values your work why do it?
I've had odd issues with side projects. As an example, when my sister died a couple of years ago, I took a week off for grievance, and while taking that time off, I started a new project -- and I found it energizing! I continued that project for a few weeks after I went back to work, but between work and family, I gradually lost the energy to continue my side project. I've had this burnout experience over and over again, where sometimes I burned out, sometimes the startup I was working for would burn out, sometimes both would happen at the same time. It's only been a few months since I have come to understand this, but I was very likely suffering from *autistic* burnout during these times -- I lost energy to work on side projects because of my largely-subconscious efforts to "mask", and gradually I lost energy to do the work I was doing as well. I'm still in the process of figuring out what I need to do next, now that I understand this about myself -- but it's been a gut-wrenching process. I have the impression that I cannot just go back to the 9-to-5 grind, yet I don't know what I need to do instead. I *do* know this, however: there have been days where I wished I could *never* see a computer again ... and during those days, I'd spend lunch time designing ternary logic computers! I love mathematics, and I wish I can get back into that. With computers, however, I cannot say I love programming the way I love mathematics ... but I *nonetheless* know that programming is probably the *one* thing I'm driven to, even if I don't like it at times! The good news is that I can do mathematical things with computers ... the bad news is that it's been so hard to find that kind of work, and get paid to do it ... So, yeah. Life is never easy, is it? But it has certainly been an adventure! (Incidentally, right now I'm figuring that I likely need to take regular long breaks. What should I be doing during those breaks? Try to avoid all but close-friend-and-family social interaction, and focus on a project!)
When business is booming to the extent that I'm too busy to enjoy my job, verging on anhedonia, it becomes challenging to imagine a future where I can love any kind of work again.
For me I was seriously considering a job outside of tech, because I didn't see how to keep it up. Then I started o learn Kotlin and Odin pretty much at the same time. And there was the spark again Especially Odin+raylib reminded me of my teenage years with Turbo Pascal. I just had fun coding again.
Thank you for this, I am overcoming kinda depression with burnout and I completely lost my skill in coding. I am living in other country that I am coming from, but still within EU borders. But I got stuck in some company for money, but the projects are not developing at all, hence I think that starting something outside could help.
I think a bit of break is still a good thing when it comes to burnout. Too much of it, however, modifies your expectations in a bad way. I personally got out of burnout by taking a step back and doing things in my own pace. By that I don't mean programming only when I feel like it. When burnt out, you always don't feel like it. Instead, I got out by programming what I want using the tools I like, learning new stuff, and doing stuff that is somewhat related to computer science even if not exactly programming (i.e. networking).
The vacation thing is so real. The dread when it's almost over and then coming back and just not feeling any better. I think the most crushing thing is the thought that "well, the vacation was meant to help and it didn't...I guess this is just my life now."
depends what your vacation is. Going to cuncun to get drunk, isnt going to be fulfilling. Ideal vacation is go on nature hikes somewhere. You need to put in work and get exercise, the best antidepressant.
Right in the feels
@ecsrepair you missed the point about changing perspectives. Having a "relaxing" holiday will do you the disservice, but if you go on a pilgrimage to find yourself in a remote buddhist temple in the mountains of nepal, will do you great wonder. You need to continuously challenge yourself and not just seek pleasure. If your vacation is just drinking and doing drugs, of course returing to the real world will seem dull.
@@pluto8404 buddy you missed the point again, I will give u one example , consider yourself a fish in a tank , you go on vacation bcoz the water in the tank became dirty , but when you return back , u will have to continue living in the dirty water (burnout)
so either you have to change the water in tank(change jobs) or manage your work efficiently so you won't get burn out
this is not a good example , but i hope you get the point 😄
I prefer vacation to always be some future date I can look forward to so push until like.. Nov- December ideally. Otherwise, as soon as it's over, "damn, no more vacation this year".
All it means practically speaking is other than emergencies, I'm doing similar work from coffee shop or wherever just not having to be in meetings and working more independently. It's basically like democracy, an illusion but a comforting one.
I was just telling my colleague at work that the reason I’ve changed my attitude recently at work - after months of feeling like I’m on the edge of burnout - is because I found channels like yours and theo’s that have reminded me of the joy and beauty of programming.
Thanks dude. Little things make big differences.
:)
@@ThePrimeTimeagenwe love you
(even if you are an LLM) ❤
@@TheMulletGen 😅😅😅
True. This year, I hit my second tech startup against the wall. Fired all 30+ team members. Then, out of the blue, I started to code again... I've discovered this and other channels. Granted, I started to exercise in January, so, yeah, it probably helps, too. But I can tell that despite feeling failure and rejection (from investors), coding is doing wonders for me. I've recently created a GPT-2-clone from scratch, for fun, to see how far I understand and can push it... And suddenly, I feel so much better than I have in the last 2 years. The bottom line is that when you are a coder at heart, there was once a good reason (other than money) that made you become a coder. You never lose your strengths. You merely forget them, say, because of Scrum madness, company culture meetings, briefings, or a manager who talks only about money, money, money.
I left a $200k (80hr/wk) job for a $65k (40hr/wk) job because I literally hated my life and all facets of it during burnout. I was doing nothing for myself and everything for a company that I knew was never going to be 'capable' because of upper management incompetence. I now have the worlds chillest manager, job security on an incredible level (govt) with a pension and so much free time I'm coding again and even picked up new hobbies like machining and working on my old pickup truck.
The people in my life say I'm more fun to be around and that I've become "my old self" again.
Burnout is real. Grinding is something we all have to do at some point to get things done but grinding for grinding's sake is moronic.
This is very true. No job should stop you from being yourself, and sometimes a change is needed. I'm glad things have worked out for you. :)
Hearing that his burnout lasted 2 years honestly makes me feel better. It's been about 3 years for me and I always thought burn out was this temporary thing like 1-2 months. I feel lazy, I feel like an imposter. I just can't get motivated to do anything except side projects
Apply for another job. Life's too short.
I had multiple similar experiences. Working on my mindset helped a lot: What is the story you tell yourself about the world and yourself in it? Why do you the things you do? Fostering gratefulness helps a lot. Seeing hardship as a challenge to improve your skills and mindset. Being proud of your skills and attitude. Helping others flourish. Self care. Keeping healthy boundaries.
I quit and went to work for a company with a healthier environment. It took two years to completely shed the weight of the burnout, but now my outlook is better. Additionally, channels like this helped motivate me to do side projects again, but I had to get out of burnout first, and that takes time, rest, a good environment, and some sun on your face
do side projects, you’re probably feeling restrained of creativity
Primeagen has such a way with words "I did six years in the Bay Area." That's how you call a prison a prison without calling it a prison. So poetic
as a foreigner I was really confused and I thought Prime did 6 years of actual prison called the Bay Area
I now know why my Netflix TV app crashes all the time
Lol burned!
It's clearly because prime quit
I'm in a similar situation, all the people that did the original shitfest of code already move on from the job. and now we're like dodging mines trying to not die
@@_jn0298 documentation? never heard this word in my life.
XD
Really helps to hear that even someone who seems super passionate about programming also has struggled with burnout.
Going through some weird periods of life right now with depressive episodes and it's made it difficult for me to want to keep learning & programming as much, which in turn makes me feel bad about not being productive.
Productivity (and happiness) are a byproduct of a focused, healthy and well rounded life. And leading a life that allows for happiness and productivity is the hard part. Caring for your mind and body is a necessary precondition.
void myLife() {
const bool x[2] = {!false, !true};
while (0x0
Thanks so much for sharing your story - very similar to mine. I had severe burnout that got worse and worse by the end of covid. I eventually quit my job, and went full stop for almost a year, playing golf every week. Just like you, the "vacation" didn't help, and I took my bad mentality with me, even to something like golf, and it started to become a point of frustration too. That was mentally really hard to take ... golf had been my favorite hobby, and to see that become something negative left me feeling pretty hopeless. As I stepped back into working, I found that picking up a side project that I wanted to work on just for me (no hard goals or timelines for commercializing it), insulating my identity from the job, and realizing that the results don't really matter that much in the grand scheme of things, helped me to enjoy the process of creating again.
Thank you for sharing your story. I recently went through a crappy situation (very different circumstances though), and also had the same outlook on my job (there is a lot changing there too). I was able to pull myself out by doing exactly what you mentioned: side projects (that reminded me why I went into software engineering), as well as some networking. I realized that I need to focus on myself so that I can grow into the engineer I want to be. By refocusing the mindset, I can spot opportunities to develop myself and my team.
Thank you for everything that you do, Prime!
Sometimes just getting your eyes off yourself and thinking of ways to serve other people is a huge game changer as well
Your previous comment about working for companies who view software as a profit center aligns well with your ability to affect change at Netflix. I imagine that working for a company that does not enable you to find meaning in company improvement making burnout recovery impossible.
When Prime says to start working out, also don't start doing 2 hours of high intensity cardio to the point where you are too time short and drained to do anything productive afterwards, balance
I hope this job gives you a sense of purpose. You help a lot of people in a lot of different ways. My favorite thing about you is, for lack of a better way to put it, your spiritual awareness--You do a lot of inner reflection and it shows. I think a lot of people are drawn towards you for that reason whether they know it or not. You are so silly and playful yet very sincere and straightforward. You share your flaws and the struggles you've gone through with us. You're a great role model in how to approach life and the struggles that come with it, but most of all how to approach our own human flaws and shortcomings. You help a lot of us feel seen and less alone on this journey we call life. I love you from one silly human to another, and I SEE you.
In my experience burnout means that you need change in one way or another. That could mean a different job, project, sideline project, hobby or something else. Out with the old, in with the new. Burn out is caused by excessive routine. Work typically causes burn out when there is a lack of overall progress.
I like the “lack of overall progress” that’s the problem with me to feel burnout
It's not routine, that you can deal with. It's pointless work, or work perceived as pointless. Prof. Jordan Peterson mentions guards making prisoners carrying wet bags of salt to some place, that would then send them to some other place, etc until they were back at the starting point. It wasn't the hard work that broke them, it was the pointlessness of it.
You see it a lot in devs working at places that run on "constant crunch". It's not the crunch per se that burns them, it's the fact that nothing is done to change what leads to the need for crunch. Once you have no hope of it improving not matter how hard you go at the current issue, you burnout.
For me at least, some of my "burnout" was probably a severe nutritional issue. Adding more forms of protein to my diet (not just chicken) solved my energy issues, and gave me the energy to start making progress on my emotional burnout (which was more nuanced).
Keep in mind that during this time, I was working out, lean, outwardly healthy, and had normal blood pressure.
Moral of the story, if you have low energy, it might have a medical component. If you can afford it, get a doctor, talk to them, maybe get some blood tests done.
If you can't, learn the basics about nutrition, figure out the common deficiencies and try diet & supplementation changes.
@@ErazerPT PJP xD I would only believe half of what he says, he is not that good of a thinker.
@@VudrokWolf Pray tell, what did he say previous to his return from his addiction treatment that you found "not well thought through"? Did you even bother to read his books and see his university lectures? Because i get this exact take about Prof. Daniel Kahneman too, yet nobody seem to have read his books or listened to his talks or even have a clue about his work either...
wtf it's not about paradise city
game-agen, let's go!
Welcome to crash fm a gen
On vacation, I was actually surprised recently at how much energy I lost after getting back from vacation. This was the first time in my life I had less energy after a vacation than before. I don't know what changed in my state of mind. I was actually very productive in the plane back, but as soon as I got home, my soul left my body. Maybe it's part of getting older that you can't use vacation as a vacation anymore, I don't know.
Wow. This really resonated with me. My first burnout crash STARTED with coming back from a 2 week vacation. I was "only" working 40 hours a week and still could barely get through the day because the work itself was crushingly frustrating.
After watching this I took some time to say "fuck it" and in my off hours start learning something that actually interests and excites me. Creating & learning without the pressure of delivering something is starting to make a difference.
Thanks for sharing your story!
I appreciate you opening up about your journey through burnout and how you eventually overcame it. I'm currently experiencing burnout myself, but in my case, it's caused by the complex dynamics within my in-law family. While I've dealt with work-related burnout before, this situation is impacting me more deeply, affecting my passion for programming and my overall enthusiasm for life. Your story gives me hope that I, too, can find a way to navigate this challenging period and rediscover my zest for the things I love. Thank you for the inspiration!
When people had to plow fields or die, they didn't plow alone. They worked, ate, slept and partied together. They were a village, a community. And if someone was toxic they were kicked out of the village because if they didn't kick toxic people out, the village would collectively starve.
those were the days
Yep… just that one simple trick was how it was handled
CONFIRMED: Exiling people into the wilderness prevents burnout.
@@ForeverZer0 Medium article incoming.
As a person who grew up in a village (Poland, late 80s - early 90s) -> lmao. Villages are essentially the exact equivalent of a "corporate family". Very very fake friendliness which shows its true colors as soon as you differ anyhow from the rest (race, orientation, music taste, style, education level, literally whatever).
Nothing to do with toxicity at all. At best they kicked "unproductive" people out, but that includes people that could not contribute due to various illnesses and also those that did not agree with the local cause (e.g. serving some church).
Man, I've been burnt out for a while now at my current dev job. Something in me snapped one weekend and just impulsively threw a tailored resume at SEGA of America. They're not even hiring devs right now but I figured "What's the worst that can happen? Maybe I'll try it again a few months from now if I hear nothing." Shortly after doing that, I found your channel and started watching a bunch of your videos. I think the combination of knowing I have a tangible and desirable goal I'm making consistent (albeit small) steps towards, and your videos about imposter syndrome and watching you talk about your experiences have really helped me start to come out of the burnout. It also helped me not just like programming again, but like *my* programming again. :)
Thanks for sharing your personal story. I'm prone to depression and burnout. The escapism when it gets bad again. The energy finally coming back and feeling excited about developing (or even normal everyday things) again. Having people that can support you through it, or can help you get out of it and push you through it, is a privilege to be grateful for. The hardest part is that mindset shift, seeing negative things but being satisfied instead of thinking of the shoulds. Switching from the negative mindset to the positive mindset. Definite test of patience and maturity. Keep up the good work. Thank you
Great video - need to watch this often to remind myself. Especially the part of "why did I start doing this in the first place?" - I really can't remember why I got to coding in the first place. I remember my first project, but I can't remember why I went with it.
same. that sucks
This lines up with something HGGG said recently, which is that often the solution to burnout is to take on more work, but make it work that you are excited to do
I think transforming "chores" into "satisfactory work" or even "purposeful work" is aided by several things:
- Changing from a mostly external focus of control to a mostly internal focus of control helps a lot
- Being grateful for a challenge instead of being spiteful because you need to endure hardship
- Finding some kind of meaning in your work (seeing people flourish, creating the best product, learning the most you can, ...)
- Being proud of "doing a good job" by your own definition
Thanks for sharing this. I am also someone who simply finds the joy in programming and I always feel a bit down when my freelance jobs die out, or other hobby projects. My fulltime job is sometimes such a bore. Every company is the same. "We do agile". Translates to: we eventually grow big enough to start using Jira and then all the teams must incorporate the same workflow, process and practices without question and management will impose idiotic rules in every single repository in that organization because they read that "it leads to better outcomes", but in actuality have no idea what it means or stop to think of it in a specific context. When you can't change the ways you work to improve, that's when my eye starts to twitch a little bit.
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve been in this phase of being satisfied for a while. It sucks. But like you I realize I come alive when I’m building things. Think I will commit to doing this way more.
One of the best videos on YT. People need to see content like this. So good.
Every Prime's struggle story:
1) I had a problem
2) By the power of my will I decided to solve it.
3) I solved it
I love it
This generally works for about 85% of all problems
There will always be some that it doesn't work for
lol yeah, where was the willpower these two years? Or did it take two years to actually hit the rock bottom?
Nobody says you will solve the problem in one night. It just didn't work that way. Take your time to prepare yourself and your "will power" to do it, the point is to do not try to do.
@@shimokitazawa1217 In my experience solutions come with more knowledge, experience and a high enough level of frustration that you are willing to change your mind and take a risk in acting on it. So you need to cook for a while, then it clicks and you act on it and then mostly it works. This needs time and some kind of aha-moment or fuck-it-all-moment :)
the quality and depth of these videos is amazing. I cannot fathom someone from 20 years ago knowing today the quality and content available for free like this to learn programming. its like everyone having their own personal senior dev to learn from... even if in their real world jobs, they are doing some boring IT stuff. keep rockin
I didn't experience severe burnout yet. I've had down periods where I struggled to get motivation for anything, but these never lasted more than a month.
But I've had a depression, and how I got out of it was rediscovering the joy of entertainment, which is pretty much antithetical to what happened to Prime on the work axis.
I'm a big anime watcher, and instead of just watching anime from the ongoing season, I remember just going back and rewatching sukasuka. I never rewatch anime, but that time I did. It made me cry, and feel extremely sad. I went to sleep sad, then the next morning, I was fine.
It was a weird experience, definitely unusual. I got better by making myself sadder.
Really great stuff in here. Especially about vacation. People just need to remember this was his way and not the only way. Do what works for you. I'm gonna try to switch my perspective
i discovered your channel a few weeks ago, was there the other day when lex fridman asked the question about neovim, and now i saw this video. you are awesome man. thank you
I'm dealing with extreme burnout right now 😪 Last week I told my PM that I need a month off starting immediately. I'm not super confident that i will get over this before the end of July but I'm seeking out anything i can. There is a big part of me that says to quit and move to SE Asia for a couple years, work on myself and execute on some side projects. Right now I feel like every day and every task is a fight and all we do is create more tech debt.
In my experience and in the experience of others I've talked to, a month might not be enough... I'm no expert but with extreme burnout a big problem might require big solutions. A MASSIVE change for me has been not only some more significant time off, but making some real life changes to focus on sleep quality, diet changes etc. as well as doing some "side project" things that are important for me and that mostly nobody else would care about.
@danbumbarger4732 💯 agree, I'm hoping that a month will give me a little bit of strength to make it to the next rsu vest before I quit but that's in Oct and and I honestly can't imagine making it that long at this point. I've always prioritized money over everything else, and I'm at the point where I'm starting to realize I have nothing (but money) and maybe the most important thing is actually relationships and who you surround yourself with.
In any case for July I'm focusing on mental health and getting therapy, spending more time outside, reading, prioritizing sleep, and exercise while also doing some self reflection to figure out what exactly I'm looking for in life.
I've heard a great analogy about burnout once. Someone told me when I was on the verge of burning out as well. Maybe I was a little burnt out already, I guess. The analogy is this: "if your phone battery is dead, you don't put it on a bed on the beach, or on the sofa, you put it on a charger". Same goes for people. Rest or time off is not going to charge you. You need an activity that gives you positive energy. Preferably doing work you love, or at least used to love. So finding a way to do so is the key! Great that you found your way.
I've never had a vacation, but I needed to hear this today. I feel bogged down in a decade of legacy before I started at my company. Anytime I try to improve the situation with more modern techniques the pasts poor decisions come back to bite me, which inevitably grows the scope of the project so progress on my actual task is slow. Which makes me feel like my job is at risk because I expose so many problems. I need to look at it like I'm solving the problems not causing them, maybe I should expect problems and try to account for them before they happen. Thanks bro.
If estimating work in sprint planning or something, id estimate 3x more if expecting refactoring, and 10x if refactoring "safely" (unit/functional tests inc.), due to integrating with legacy. Gotta be real. And sometimes that still wont be enough time... but at least everyone, including yourself, is more in line with the truth.
@@josda1000 That's good advice. I generally 3x what I expect I could build something in if everything goes well, but never account for what goes wrong, and if it's a big task it generally has some troublesome areas. I always stay upfront with my scrum master when I hit issues, but still it's hard to estimate what the impact will be before actually getting knee deep in the problem. I'm constantly working on it and trying to reign in my expectations, 10x sounds like a lot, but gives me a bit of peace with where I'm at.
I’m so blessed that I live in the mountains of the USA and landed a job as a junior app dev. Found a house and a wonderful spouse. Love my life. Wish everyone could be in my position. Good luck to everyone on the struggle bus.
How old are you
Prime you are an inspiration to so many people. Thank you for sharing your story. Please keep it up and never stop being you!
I can't believe there was't any screaming into the mic for a full 15 minutes. Thanks for sharing, keep taking ur meds, they really do help it seems. Love this topic btw. The point that "take some time off" does NOT help with burnout STRONGLY resonates with my personal experience.
This hits hard. I went through burnout for years in a completely different industry. What broke me out of it was spending years learning web/software development and working on side projects.
This was probably one of my favorite videos from Prime. Had a similar experience with burnout, but in my case what helped me get out of it was getting a new job.
Nice video, I have been burned for last 5 years wasn't ever realizing it. Games, Vacation, Restaurants were making it way worst. Slowly getting out of it now just simply by working more and really looking at things as opportunities not as chore as you said. Perspective makes huge difference at the end you pick urself who you are, social media is also influencing us that life should be easy which is not true, you should work hard and enjoy the results of your work otherwise there is nothing to be satisfied about.
One definition of burnout is extreme effort with little to no reward or recognition. In your case you might have started getting recognition through the charity and streaming efforts. I'm climbing out of the pit of burnout and haven't figured out the redemption part of my story yet, but having stepped out of a work environment that was toxic for me has done wonders for at least putting my feet on the ground again. Just wanted to put this out there for anyone experiencing more severe burnout...
I am right there with you Primeagen. I didn't realize I got burned out until way later. I also had some medical issues never diagnosed and it really burned me on so many levels. It took many many years to get through it and also proper medication to just begin the healing.
On the point of a job not providing purpose. My job really does as a UI developer. The software I work on is an integral part of keeping the road infrastructure in a state maintained and functional. Recently us devs went out and met with the boots on the ground and saw how it all connected. It was great.
I wish you’d talk more about salary actually. That adds A LOT of context that people need.
Yes, I've had a different sort of burnout than what he describes: I'm 100% self-taught and have yet to land a dev job after 1.5 years of near-daily coding. I do have a job where I am able to do some programming however. My only burnout has been from overworking myself with zero tangible reward (yet), and it doesn't help that half the coding channels (NOT this one) on YT are just doom and gloom, good luck finding a job, etc.
I'm definitely not just in this for the money, I do love programming, but I don't love practicing DSA and doing boring stuff like css media queries, and I hated the grind that was required to pass my AWS developer associate cert. Thankfully my burnout periods thus far have been brief and were satisfied by a vacation or some gaming breaks. But as more time passes and I fail to even land an interview, I know I'm growing closer to some sort of real burnout. Part of me wants to just say F it and spend 100% of my coding time on fun stuff only like game development, which I have not at all been focusing on since it's one of the hardest industries to break into.
I'm in the time + vacation part of my life right now, and you're right. Living through it, the time just doesn't really help but I feel like it's necessary to go through it to see and experience that "hey, this ain't working."
I absolutely love and appreciate the reality of real life that you share with us. Not pretending that everything has been rainbows and unicorns for you allows us all to have realistic expectations that not everything will always be “fine” and to have hope that things can get better with resilience and sometimes some outside help.
What has really helped me a lot is realizing that my early childhood life made me into an external energy absorbing empath and people pleaser, so now I've learned to put healthy boundaries and to put my own well being above everything and anyone else, and to listen to my gut 100% of the time, and learn to say "no" in a polite but firm way. This saves me all the energy I was wasting on pleasing others, and in return now I feel empowered and have enough energy to do what I like and enjoy. Hope this helps someone.
This is really hard, I think all of us have been there at some point. Thanks for sharing your experience.
What helps so much with taking burnout PTO at my company is that all my work is offloaded. If I’m gone for a week all my projects are handed off. When I come back, I jump in totally fresh. It helps so much and I’m very fortunate that my company and line of work allows for this
Purpose is everything in life. I believe the monologue that Agent Smith delivers to Neo in the second film of The Matrix, just hits the spot
I wish could have someone wise and experienced like you to talk sometimes
man! I guess this one is among of the top 5 best video I listen from you. thanks for sharing.
Yea building websites can get boring
What amped me back up was side projects too!!!
Prime is the man!!!
so cool of you to share, Prime! The more people share their burnout experiences the less it's stigmatized.
Been there. I had burnout start to set in but kept going 2 years past the absolute cutoff date where I'd promised myself in advance I'd step away for a few months to recover as I had done twice before. Energy and work performance kept declining until I woke up one day and *_couldn't_* go in to work. Clinical depression was my reward. It's been 3 years of not even being able to enjoy basic things I used to love and recovery has been slow. I'm still not at the point for a return to work and only very occassionally am up to any sort of brief recreational social activity.
Disrespecting that promise to myself was not worth it. Not at all worth it.
Moral of the story is treat burnout as the serious warning sign that it is.
My heart goes out to those on work visas who don't have that option. This is straight up abuse.
I took 9 months off after i got laid off at my last job. I was burned out.
Now that I’m working again, I miss being unemployed and doing whatever I wanted all day…
lol
Life is bs after i got a job
What did you do instead? I got bored so quickly when when i was unemployed for 6 months, the last month was so bad i started to question my life lol.
@@Denimy0 You must not have hobbies that can be done at home. I like to computer program, create art, play piano, guitar, drums, compose music, home gym and build robots with rasberry pie + assembly language. When I was unemployed my days literally flew past because I couldnt decide which hobbies I wanted to do first. I guess people like you are just made for the 9 - 5 work lifestyle.
@@Denimy0 get hobbies man, stop just consooming and create some stuff :)
the hard truth about any personal crisis is: time is not gonna heal anything, learn something about it, yeah, that`s gonna heal something... That's why vacations endup getting things worse, but doing something new, a side project, more work, endup healing the burnout.
Valuable video to watch before vacation, as someone who is really burnt out
Just be careful putting the expectation on the vacation that it will somehow solve things. I personally found it did not solve anything for me
@@ThePrimeTimeagen My goal is to spend at least some of it learning new skills that would lead me to get a new job.
So happy you talk about that ! That exactly how I handled Burnout. So much people on my family was keep try to stop me working on my personal project. Because for them it was to much. They was not understanding why a do this
I've had a very similar experience. I had a few work projects where I worked around the clock to meet unrealistic deadlines and felt I wasn't rewarded for my hard work -- I was just avoiding punishment. Combine that with problems with my personal life and it got to a point where opening up a code editor gave me intense anxiety. So I just started playing video games for a while because that's a place where you get instant rewards for doing well. Eventually I knew I needed to get my head back in the game and worked on some side projects that were actually fun. My personal life improved and I enjoyed my work again. But it wasn't the hard work that burned me out -- it was the disconnect between work and reward.
Working full time and going to school full time. I have never hated coding so much and it sucks because I used to enjoy it so much in high school and I remember those feelings but it has not been the same. Basically if you can focus on just going to school, then just go to school, try your best not to work so much
Utah entrepreneur here, there are great jobs in Utah right now. my uncle is cofounder of silicon slopes and he says everyone’s looking for workers right now. And because of the whole Mormon thing, it’s a pretty good place to raise a family.
For me this satisfaction/dissatisfaction comes from whether i am closing in on my goals or not.
And the closer i get to the goal the more of a swing happens
I should save this video for after a run out of goals or they become unrealistic
I've been in active burnout for the last five years, and at the lowest point I worked at a place where every constructive suggestions to fix something broken was shot down as the mere suggestion that something might be broken was "spreading negativity". I don't know if that job in particular could have been salvaged, but it did highlight the importance of soft skills in being allowed to work on the more satisfying tasks of solving real problems instead of being stuck creating more of them for the sake of not rocking the boat.
Vacation also might lead to you actually having time to think about how much stress you have and suddenly feel burned out. If you are just working your ass off and are functioning and fall asleep exhausted as soon as you hit the sheets, you have no time to reflect how good or bad you feel. Have seen it with a few folks.
But I also agree, amount of time spent working doesn't seem to be directly correlated with burn-out, at least for me. If I work long hours, but also achieve a lot, times are actually good. The issue is, if you work hard, but can't see a light at the end of the tunnel, that your sweat will lead to accomplishment.
The way i deal with burnout is in my notion board. I keep track of my progress and i have pretty long backlog of things i could try, i could learn etc.
When going through a rough patch I can still find something, anything that i can do and keep moving. So instead of video games being a distraction, this notion board is.
It also helps in defeating impostor syndrome, theres tangible evidence for it! I know what I know and I also know what I still dont know. When i discover something i wasnt even aware of, i happily add it somewhere in my board.
Prime calls things like that "busy work", like bookkeeping, but i say its a productivity framework that works for some people.
I love your drawings during your long explanations, Prime, I love it. Very well drawn too. Thanks for the video, I'm currently on my millionth burnout phase, but this too shall pass.
Same for me. I founded a side hustle without earning a single cent during the last 18 Months. And I love it and I can appreciate my actual job much more. I thought I need more free time - but in the end only more work was helping me :).
Great to hear you found our way out. Thank you for sharing.
"The world shifts around your aim", and "I liked it, I was good at it", and "Merry christmas"
Thanks for sharing this personal experience ❤. These type of contents are really valuable
Oh man, please express my profound condolences to your wife. That kind of experience can be absolutely terrible for a woman to go through. It's unbelievably, profoundly sad. I personally know of one very wonderful woman who sort of gave up on the idea of having children after a miscarriage. It's so devastating. Again, I'm so sorry.
Vacation resets your brain, so you may need to boot up WORK.EXE again in it. And it's as if brain boots from floppy disks. It takes a lot of time and energy, and brain tries to avoid it at every turn. Another thing I noticed is that rushing, trying to do mental work when it's not ready yet just increases brain's resistance and bad feelings. Sitting doing nothing and gently recollecting work thoughts bit by bit seems to work best.
Had quite similar experience when my brother passed away. Software didn't feel right but after some time I refocused my efforts to embedded programming and EE where I found my passion again
Last vacation I was on, I was stressed going, stressed while I was there, and stressed about going back to work the entire time. They cannot fix something broken, they can only enhance something already healthy.
Amen bro. That's how you preach to the hearts and souls -- not to the minds and brains!
Going through a massive burnout and depression for the past 4 years, related to my PhD research. Well, the thing is almost finished, hand in next month, and I hope I’m going to get better
This is what I'm trying to do with learning Go and posting videos about it on YT - that gives me joy of coding again after I think 2 years of not having much fun from coding anymore.
I think most of my burnout comes from doing too much of one thing for too long. I love learning how to solve problems, though once I solve it I don't want to keep solving it I guess. I need to move on to something new or else burnout sets in relatively quickly.
The plowing a field analogy is because while you were plowing your field every year, year after year. You were still a part of a community that you had strong physical, mental and emotional ties to.
You guys could share in your struggle and plight, and even work together to try and make it better.
I find in IT that this would be the best outcome, but every department is off doing their own thing, which does contribute to the whole, but it's not the same.
this is by far one of the best video I have seen in my life. keep goingnyou are the best
The problem with vacationing as an American worker they’re too damn short.
Not long enough to really recharge while long enough to feel like you’re just getting more behind.
I dont work long enough as a software dev to be in danger of burnout but when it comes to work I dont really see it as chores. Not because it isnt anoying sometimes, there is only so much C#, Azure Deployments, SQL, webhooks etc. you can do until it gets repetitive. But its because of the environment I work in, I like the office and the people there, this is what keeps it from being a chore, not the actual workload.
Always love your stories Prime. Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, always real.
I had to pause this caused it was so surreal for me. Exactly 3 mins in and my story is almost perfectly aligned except me and my girlfriend broke up. But that wasn't the kicker, even though it was a huge contribution; it was a failed attempt at starting my first company. This lead to 6 - 12+ hours of league of legends a DAY, drinking all the time, drugs, porn, etc for 2 years non stop. Coding again just to code and falling in love all over again then finding my own version of purpose is what saved me as well.
being used to not doing anything on vacation is for sure a thing. I've been using my vacation time to not only recover energy bnut also work on learning things which I don't normally have the time to work on. It's great. But also it requires energy for it as well. So some days I don't do much of anything besides taking care of the home and others I work on something all day long. Finally at the end of my vacation I'm feeling like I can have fun playing games. Because I got all of my 'need to do xyz' out of my system.
You know what's even greater than this? Having a best friend who is also programmer, who is also working with you, who is also thinking the same.
definitely vacation is the worse things to do, I agree.. I've quit my job after a week.. couldn't handle that shit anymore... and that was the best move I ever made.. but this is my personal case. keep strong out there everyone 💪
Went through a beginning burnout end of last year. My company granted me a few month working less hours (80%) while keeping my payment. I used the time to start with learning Zig and starting game development again after I left that field in the 90s. That helped a lot and just as Prime said, finding the fun in coding again was, what helped. And of course getting treated that well by my company. You could offer me double of my current payment as a company and I would reject it.
Perspective is important, indeed. Thanks for sharing your inspiring story.
Burnout for me was when I realized how anything I did didn't seem to have an impact or matter that much. Rather I burned the midnight oil or I did the bare minimum: the next day, the next month, the next year: it always seemed like I'm running in circles as nothing I was assigned ever was even used even 1 quarter later. It literally felt like I wasn't given engineering tasks, but rather tasks that looked like engineering tasks but really were just busywork. If nobody truly values your work why do it?
I've had odd issues with side projects. As an example, when my sister died a couple of years ago, I took a week off for grievance, and while taking that time off, I started a new project -- and I found it energizing! I continued that project for a few weeks after I went back to work, but between work and family, I gradually lost the energy to continue my side project.
I've had this burnout experience over and over again, where sometimes I burned out, sometimes the startup I was working for would burn out, sometimes both would happen at the same time.
It's only been a few months since I have come to understand this, but I was very likely suffering from *autistic* burnout during these times -- I lost energy to work on side projects because of my largely-subconscious efforts to "mask", and gradually I lost energy to do the work I was doing as well.
I'm still in the process of figuring out what I need to do next, now that I understand this about myself -- but it's been a gut-wrenching process. I have the impression that I cannot just go back to the 9-to-5 grind, yet I don't know what I need to do instead. I *do* know this, however: there have been days where I wished I could *never* see a computer again ... and during those days, I'd spend lunch time designing ternary logic computers!
I love mathematics, and I wish I can get back into that. With computers, however, I cannot say I love programming the way I love mathematics ... but I *nonetheless* know that programming is probably the *one* thing I'm driven to, even if I don't like it at times! The good news is that I can do mathematical things with computers ... the bad news is that it's been so hard to find that kind of work, and get paid to do it ...
So, yeah. Life is never easy, is it? But it has certainly been an adventure!
(Incidentally, right now I'm figuring that I likely need to take regular long breaks. What should I be doing during those breaks? Try to avoid all but close-friend-and-family social interaction, and focus on a project!)
When business is booming to the extent that I'm too busy to enjoy my job, verging on anhedonia, it becomes challenging to imagine a future where I can love any kind of work again.
I'd love to hear other engineers on this topic, would be a really interesting interview
Glad you guys got though it, a lot of relationships dont survive that period.
His graphs are so good now.
For me I was seriously considering a job outside of tech, because I didn't see how to keep it up. Then I started o learn Kotlin and Odin pretty much at the same time. And there was the spark again Especially Odin+raylib reminded me of my teenage years with Turbo Pascal. I just had fun coding again.
Thank you for this, I am overcoming kinda depression with burnout and I completely lost my skill in coding. I am living in other country that I am coming from, but still within EU borders. But I got stuck in some company for money, but the projects are not developing at all, hence I think that starting something outside could help.
I think a bit of break is still a good thing when it comes to burnout. Too much of it, however, modifies your expectations in a bad way. I personally got out of burnout by taking a step back and doing things in my own pace. By that I don't mean programming only when I feel like it. When burnt out, you always don't feel like it. Instead, I got out by programming what I want using the tools I like, learning new stuff, and doing stuff that is somewhat related to computer science even if not exactly programming (i.e. networking).
There is no prod, there is no dev. No test or cert or stage. There is only "Protoduction"