What Burnout is and how to recover
Statistics about burnout
83% of developers suffer from burnout.
62% feel physically and emotionally drained.
56% of IT professionals can’t unwind once their workday is over. As one survey participant said, “I went to bed feeling exhausted and woke up still feeling tired.”
51% feel they’re achieving less than they should. “There are a lot of insecure people in tech.”
Burnout can make one deal with others harshly. 22% feel they deal with others more harshly and less sympathetically than they deserve.
Cynicism about work causes one to detach emotionally from work as a means of self-preservation: 43% feel less and less engaged in work.
24% of leaders don’t know their purpose or value. They can’t explain to others why they get up and go to the office every day. And these are the people who are supposed to lead others!
What does burnout feel like?
Burnout has 3 facets (according to Christina Maslach):
Exhaustion: You feel depleted of physical and emotional energy. You feel you have nothing left to give. You can't bring yourself to do small tasks. You feel overwhelmed by things you could easily do earlier.
Cynical attitude towards others, such as clients/the job/the ecosystem. This is a coping mechanism to distance yourself emotionally from the stress of work.
Lack of achievement: There’s a decline in your feeling of accomplishment, that you’ve been successful. You no longer feel effective. You may start to question your competence.
The difference between (2) and (3) is that (2) is a feeling towards others, while (3) is a feeling towards yourself.
When you’re burnt out, you can’t enjoy the ordinary pleasures of life — sleep, long baths, strolling, long lunches, meandering conversation…
How do we recover from burnout?
Reduce workload to match capacity: Being in a situation where much more work is expected from you than is possible causes burnout. Say no to such situations, as I do when, for example, CEOs demand that I commit a fixed deadline when I don’t know exactly how much work it takes. This makes me lose some “opportunities”.
Ensure you’re rewarded for work: As a founder, I gave a lot to my startup, and wasn’t rewarded for it, whether in success, reputation, or financially. This causes burnout. It’s not the hard work — many of us are willing to work hard. We burn out when the hard work doesn’t deliver the results expected. To prevent this from happening again, I now work only in situations where I’m paid at the end of the month for the work I did that month.
Leave the work environment that caused the burnout. If you don’t, you won’t recover, no matter how much you meditate or do yoga. If you do, recovery is guaranteed. If it’s a company, quit it. In my case, being a founder burned me out, so I stopped being one, instead working as a tech advisor to CXOs.
Re-evaluate priorities, values and goals: When I was working as a founder, I aimed for an outsized return, in career, reputation and money. When I shut down my startup, I settled for more modest goals as an advisor, but still more ambitious than many of my friends. Dial ambition up or down as appropriate.
Develop self-awareness about what troubles you. For example, deadlines stress me out, because they’re often committed to without knowing how much work is required. The first step to overcoming burnout is to be self-aware of what hurts you.
Support system: Build and use a support system: family, friends, a counsellor… When you talk to friends and family, and they ask how you are, openly share what you’re going through. Don’t put on a facade. Recognizing and accepting that you're experiencing burnout is the first step to overcoming it.
Develop personal coping mechanisms: For example, in the last year of my startup, when I felt success slipping from my grasp, I emotionally detached from the startup. As Indian philosophy says, perform whatever actions you need to perform, but don’t be attached to the results. This is an example of a coping mechanism.
Reject unfair expectations or situations at work: Even monkeys value fairness:
Fairness isn’t about the result but about the decision-making process. For example, if someone is denied a promotion, but feels that that process used to come up with the decision was fair, they won’t burn out. If they feel it was unfair, they do. The moral of the story is that if you feel you’re being treated unfairly, say no.
Trust, transparency and collaboration: Lack of these causes burnout. So say no to people who respond to your questions with, “You don’t need to know that.” Or who begin a new relationship with distrust, suspicion or negativity. Or who refuse to entertain your suggestions on what they can do differently to produce a better result for the team, instead practising mushroom management: “Keep them in the dark and feed them shit.”
Autonomy: If you’re working under an ineffective process that comes in the way of delivering results, but you’re still held responsible for the results, you burn out. To prevent that, change the process and if they refuse, say that you can’t take responsibility for the results.
Recognition: Lack of recognition causes burnout. Don’t work with people who don’t value you for what you can do.
Purpose: When there’s no sense of purpose, no larger goal that’s being achieved, you burn out. To prevent that, I’m saying no to jobs that pay a lot but have no purpose. As an example of purpose, when US President Kennedy was visiting the NASA space center, he noticed a janitor carrying a broom. He walked over to him and said “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?” The janitor responded, “Well Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon.”
Chronic conflict: It’s okay and even healthy to have a strong disagreement on some topic related to work, hash it out, reach a solution and adopt it on both sides, leaving the conflict in the past. But many companies face problems and, instead of solving them, keep rehashing the conflict every week. This causes burnout. For example, if you’re an engineer, the conflict can be in the form of businesspeople harassing you every week with unreasonable demands. Put a system in place to solve the problem, like using a task tracking tool that shows everyone the status of your work, and insist that people use it instead of asking you again and again. Refuse to be drawn into chronic conflict.
Ethical alignment: Working with people who are opposites when it comes to ethics and values causes burnout. Say no to such people, as I did when I turned out a startup that into buying and selling our personal data without our consent.
Permit yourself to be imperfect: Perfectionism makes you feel inadequate, contributing to burnout. Instead, be okay with some imperfections, like occasionally being 15 min late to a dinner.
Take care of physical health: Sleep well, drink enough water, do stretches, exercise, cook and eat healthy home-cooked food, and so on.
Take time off: If possible, take a break from work, even a day trip. Or work partially. For example, my break as an advisor consisted of skipping outbound marketing to get clients, while still taking seriously any leads that came inbound.
Stop setting goals for a while, like “I need to sort my photos by Monday.” If you want to watch fun Youtube videos for hours, give yourself the permission to do so. Listen to what your body and mind are asking for. Our society looks down on inactivity, and expects every minute to be spent productively. Reject this expectation. Watch the sun set. Without setting deadlines for myself, I naturally improved in my cooking. This gives me a sense of satisfaction and achievement at something important for everyone (food), countering the feeling of purposelessness that comes with burnout. This feeling of accomplishment also countered the feeling of being overwhelmed and incapable of achieving things that comes with burnout. This created a positive feedback loop that helped me overcome the vicious cycle burnout creates.
People recover from burnout in 1-2 years. You’re guaranteed to, as well. It’s not a permanent condition.