Burnout

Burnout is the state of being from the act of exhausting yourself mentally over an extended period of time. Burnout creeps up on you like the disrepair of your house, which suddenly springs a leak. You notice small things but fail to address the problem. Then, when it all becomes too much, it’s too late. Burnout has sunk its teeth into your soul, dragging you down, clouding your days and ruining your weeks. Burnout is often thought of as a single event, I think this is naive, to me burnout is a spectrum. You don’t flip a switch from productive to burnout, you inch towards it. Each day, frustration growing, leaving your bed becomes inconceivable. Suddenly, the project at work becomes infuriating, when mere weeks ago, it was an utter joy. Gone are the days when you woke up ecstatic to begin work, cheerful in the morning standup. Now replaced with the groans of the alarm clock and the heaviness of your body, reluctant to move like a barn door stuck from rust. Burnout is much like the build up of rust, it occurs slowly, you fail to notice until it becomes impossible to open. Much like your house, you fail to maintain the gutters properly until they overflow into the roofline. In life, we often ignore the warning signs, the clues that something sinister is happening. Then we lash out, we disengage, or we bolt. Burnout is avoidable, it has warning signs, you simply have to listen.

I am mildly burnout out, the project at work is wrapping up, and we are rapidly approaching the deadline with constant external delays. The finish line is within eye shot, but the mind and body are giving up. This is my fault, I failed to listen to my body, it had been screaming at me to take time off, yet I felt compelled to continue with a deadline just around the corner. I put off taking leave to hit the mark. This burnout is only mild, project specific and I can still get out of bed, but it is getting harder. I need a week to recover, however, if I keep pushing I will need a month. The longer you push aside your burnout, the worse it gets and the longer it takes to recover. You can and will push through burnout, you can ignore the signs, but you will pay for it. I pushed through early stages without realising it, until I realised how grumpy I have become as a result. The deadline was always around the corner, the pressure to deliver a constant burning cattle prod in the back. Just about every project will have a deadline that is next to impossible to hit, as a result, there will be constant pressure to meet it. You feel compelled to push time off until it is convenient for the project or the company, pushing your needs to the back burner. This is the wrong approach, suppressing your needs for a project is a sure fire way to miss a deadline. If suppress your needs down, then others will too. If you are the lead of the team, you set acceptable behaviours. Thus, if you fail to take leave when you require it, this becomes the message. If your team fails to take leave, they will in turn become burnt out, inevitably missing the deadline. In essence, by not taking time off, you end up taking more time off.

The signs of burnout

For each person this is different, some it is tiredness, others it is disengagement. You have to work out the signs and symptoms to address the root cause. Humans are not designed to spend eight hours a day looking at a screen, stressing their mind for months on end. They are designed for short bursts of creativity followed by longer rest periods. In today's world, we fail to disconnect from technology even after the workday is over. We jump into social media, scroll through the news or message friends. All tasks which restrict the mind from rest. The world's problems seep into your world, via your phone. You go to bed exhausted and wake up even more so. Work becomes a chore, the project no longer matters, and things bug you more. These are all signs of burnout, they happen slowly, but they grow. At one point you were a pleasant, happy individual, with a zest for the project. Now you just want it all to end, push it out the door and let it end, so you can jump into bed. Burnout drastically changes how your mind functions, you fail to see these signs until it is too late.

Over time your productivity will fall, tasks that took you 30 minutes suddenly take an hour. You have as much interest in completing that bug ticket as you do with the rate at which your grass is growing. You procrastinate on tasks because everything feels helpless. Furthermore, you begin to wonder what the point of this project is and why the deadline is so important, it most certainly is not critical to you! These are all classic signs of burnout, you need rest. You might resort to increasing your alcohol consumption, sleep less and party more. These are all attempts to fight your body and the inevitable.

One of the biggest factors personally is the lack of control. The less control I have over a situation, the quicker the burnout. A lack of control leads oneself to hopelessness, you to give up and procrastinate. In the current project I have spent weeks dealing with delays that I have a minuscule amount of control, dependencies on teams that have working code one minute then broken code the next. This constant uncertainty, the constant blockages of my entire team, is demoralising for myself and the team. As a result, the entire team is utterly burnt out. The entire team just wants to kick it out the door and move on. We are burnt out from lack of leave, but more from the project and the situation. It’s my belief that the lack of control is, at least in my being, the largest contributor to burnout. The cynicism that arises when everything is out of your control, is extraordinary. These situations are inevitable, you can’t control everything, however, when at the same time there is a cattle prod in your back to hit a deadline, it becomes too much. Allowing someone two weeks to deliver a report on the company financials might be a huge amount of time, this could very well be a simple task. However, if the devil himself saw fit to have his fun, changing the financial data you had sporadically, stealing your keyboard to stop you from typing or just shutting off your power at unexpected intervals you would lose your mind. If I were to, then yell at you because factors outside your control have been halting your progress, you would give up. What is the point of attempting to hit this deadline with overtime when the devil keeps flicking the power button? Deadlines are an excruciatingly painful part of software development. Yet, they don’t have to be, they can be flexible based on the blockers that you face. Pushing a team or an individual to hit a deadline that in all reality means absolutely nothing is ludicrous. As a result, burnout in software engineering is extraordinarily high. Deadlines are often set months or years prior when next to none of the details are ironed out. Furthermore, they are “hard deadlines”, they can’t possibly be moved, despite the team crying out for it. Someone high up promised some client a specific date, and they’re too afraid to stand up and say it's not going to happen. As a result, the team suffers.

Breaking out of burnout

Taking time out is a must, at the first signs of burnout you must take time off. The pressures of a deadline can wait, a project is never worth your wellbeing, you are more important than the project. You are the most essential person in your life.

In today’s age, it is a monumental task to overcome. With the advent of social media and the constant news cycle, coupled with the constant attachment to our phones, we never switch off. Our brains are constantly wired, stuffed with meaningless information that benefits no one but the big software companies. Switching off the phone, detaching, throw it in the ocean for all I care, just remove the device. Spend the time on a hobby, on a task that brings true peace and quiet. I enjoy putting on a podcast and just lying face down into a pillow, yes it’s as funny looking as it sounds and yes, I am “technically” on my phone. However, the act of being in constant darkness listening to something enjoyable and not at all work related brings incredible relaxation. I often spend hours in complete darkness listening to a podcast or an audiobook, by the end of it I am completely relaxed, recuperated and feeling great. Simply replacing the act of working with a phone or a video game is not relaxing if you spend all your day on a screen. Instead, spend time outside, each morning I perform a workout in the fresh air, in the dawn of a new day. It’s only a simple 15-minute workout; however, it’s enough, more importantly it’s the act of being outside in the early morning that benefits you. The exercise is just a subtle way to perform some basic exercise for a healthy body. Picking a few actions you can perform each day that truly relax, and recover your mind will pull you out of burnout, or reduce the onset. Burnout requires inner reflection, you must see the signs, if not immediately, not long after. Inner reflection is hard, often we are in a constant state of fight or flight with the constant stress of the world and your job. Listening to your body and your mind is the only way you will capture what it is telling you. Your body is outputting constant feedback, much like the logging service for your servers, the information is there; you simply have to look at it. Self reflection is hard, you don’t realise the tone of voice or the negativity you exude until it’s typically too late.

Recovery takes time, you might be simply burnout on a project, much like I am currently. You might be burnt out from everything, this is an extreme version. The greater the burnout, the longer the recovery time. As burnout gets more severe linearly, the recovery time grows exponentially. Ignoring the signs will cost you more eventually.

Ask yourself the following questions:

- “Is the attitude I am brining to work my usual attitude?”

- “Am I constantly tired?”

- “Do I dread attending work, when weeks ago I loved it?”

- “Do I just want the project to end?”

Put yourself first

Take the time off as soon as you feel the burnout creeping in. Better to take the time now, when the deadline is two months away, than when you desperately need it when the deadline is two weeks away. You must put yourself first, your company will not, the project will not, the deadline will not. Only you can put yourself first, in fact, some people do this by booking holidays months in advance so that there is no guilt, and no way it can be cancelled. This is smart and something I wish I could make a habit. Listen to your body, it tells you many things, most of all it cries out to you. Subtly at first, but overtime, it grows, as you ignore it, like a toddler it gets louder, until it’s unbearable. Do not let the unbearable nature of your body screaming in pain to force you to take a holiday. For if you ignore it for long enough, you will suffer enormously from health conditions, living a poor, miserable existence.