Burnout: A Public Service Announcement

Even if did count, I wouldn’t be able to count how many times I’ve burned myself out on something.

Coding ✅

Ham ✅

Writing ✅✅✅

Running ✅✅✅✅✅✅

But I tend to always come back to the things that either matter a lot to me or mattered to me at some point. Take piano, for instance. I had played throughout my tweenage years and dropped it for another instrument, only to pick it back up and practice thoroughly, every day, for a year to regain the skill.

Have I burned myself out on piano again? No. I tend to play for around an hour a week at least. I thought this was an extremely strange observation. How did I burn myself out so badly in my early days, yet the excess amount of doing this activity again didn‘t end the same way? More on this later.

Recently, after a fairly dramatic year personally, I did enough retrospection to realize I had been burned out on coding, management, and work in general. This wasn’t at fault of the company, material, or anything else. I had been grinding so long and without saying no for so long that I’d worn myself out with the sheer volume.

Even now, I’d say I’m no longer passionate about coding. I’m good at it, but it doesn’t bring me the same joy I remember. It will return, no doubt, but when is another guess entirely. Until then I’ll get things done, clinically.

Lunch meat

Let’s talk about lunch meat for a second. I feel like if burnout is studied, lunchmeat should be a control. It’s so easy to burn yourself out. For my six-year-old, it’s like walking a tightrope over the Grand Canyon. One wrong move and we’re never eating ham again.

Sometimes what helps is a different preparation. Ham and eggs, anyone? Maybe?

It doesn’t always work. Why? I’m not sure. The science is intense; go google it, but I’ll leave the research to the experts and take the anecdotal observations.

Giving it time almost always works. A week? Maybe. Month? Maybe. A year? Hopefully?

What if you don’t have a year? What if this is your livelihood on the line?

A quick run

Again, I’m diverting your attention to another one of my stories instead of cutting to the chase. I beg you to bear with me, so you can have this weird understanding I think I have.

Several years ago, I trained for and completed a marathon. It took me 6 months of dedication. During the first month, I was miserable. It wasn’t necessarily the strange pains or aching quads that were the problem. I was bored.

So I started switching up where I ran. I ran across town. Down the rims. Up the rims. To and around a nearby lake. At a park. During these runs, I found joy in the novelty. That’s when I discovered that my brain needed novelty to prevent burnout.

But it wasn’t until I got to my super long runs, 20, 22, etc. that I truly felt burnout again. I had planned runs in new places without turning back. My wife would drive to point B and pick me up. She’s awesome, I know.

Afterward, we would hit up a local ice cream joint, which was bliss to the tired runner. The new scenery helped, but on a long run in which I had requested a supply drop, some electrolytes, and a watermelon slice, I figured it out.

Well, I didn’t figure it out just then. It wasn’t until recently I heard some amazing science behind the brain, glucose, and habit formation. Glucose, once it reaches the brain, triggers us to produce dopamine. The same hormone that gives us those good feels when we figure something out at work or hear our favorite song.

Encountering dopamine after a somewhat difficult or mundane task can make us reflect on the whole of the task as positive. Now that feeling elicited by a watermelon slice in the middle or the ice cream at the end of a big run made more sense to me.

But what about the piano? I hadn’t realized that typically after a session, it was later at night and I would usually have a sweet treat. Aha, glucose-driven habit formation!

So in summary, this is all to say that if you are experiencing burnout right now with anything besides lunch meat, I encourage you to try the following based on my highly observational science:

• Do like Grandpop and eat a Werther's after a particularly bad burnout day.
• Add some novelty: work on something new, talk to someone new, go outside for a walk.
• Give it some time. Take a break. Passion will guide you back.