> I'm not well off like most people on here, I can survive 4-6 months with no salary

Be careful of comparing yourself to what people post online. It's easy to read social media and think everyone else is waking up at 5am, drinking their keto coffee, and making millions with their startup while working as a digital nomad.

Even on a tech heavy site like HN I would classify someone with 6 months of savings as very well off.

> Even on a tech heavy site like HN I would classify someone with 6 months of savings as very well off.

I'm under the impression most on here make hundreds of thousands of dollars, I make nowhere close. I am saved on this front purely by living in a very low cost of living area.

You're right though, comparison with people online is probably just a recipe to feel bad.

Making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year doesn’t make you rich, history shows that people who make more than average amounts of money have a hard time retaining meaningful amounts of it. Making a lot of money doesn’t automatically make you good with money.

>Making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year doesn’t make you rich

Speaking of HN people living in bubbles.... Yes, it does explicitly make you rich, at least in terms of earnings replenishment. A person making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year is literally in the top 1% of the top 1% of the world's population. Regardless of how well they manage that money, they're making more of it than virtually all other human beings on the planet.

Also, unless you live in one ridiculously expensive place (and do nearly everything possible to maximize your expenses while living there), or you are absolutely clueless, or mulishly stubborn about your spending habits, (or possibly have incurred truly catastrophic medical bills in a place without decent public healthcare), then there's no way you COULDN'T manage to live below your means on earnings like these. Even in very pricey places like San Francisco, London, NYC, Paris etc, there are many, many people living right in their core areas on modest salaries and..... getting by without nearly bankrupting themselves! What a wonder.

> people who make more than average amounts of money have a hard time retaining meaningful amounts of it

Do you have a source for this? This conflicts with the data that I've seen: https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-average-savings-rates-b...

Same. Also several months of medical leave for burnout sounds very generous.

It's a government thing, my workplace had no say in the matter as long as my GP said I needed it.

Even if your employer 'had no say in the matter', it is still generous. Somebody had to pay for that medical leave whether it came out of the profits of the company you work for, their insurance company (which leads to higher premiums for everyone), or came out of the taxpayer's pocket.

It sounds like you could benefit from a completely different environment. If you can't find any joy working in your chosen field, it might be time to explore a completely different field. Many people have switched careers because of this.

I don't consider it generous, it's a basic right of workers that anyone in my country is entitled to should they need it. It's part of the social safety net and every worker pays into it should they need it.

I felt extremely guilty having to use it myself and beat myself up for it so much early on, but in the end it was the right thing to do.

> If you can't find any joy working in your chosen field, it might be time to explore a completely different field. Many people have switched careers because of this.

I agree.

You should absolutely not feel guilty for using sick leave. We all pay into it, either through taxes or lower salary in case we need it. The stigma regarding mental health absolutely should stop, as mental health is health.

Some of the commenters on here should hang their heads in shame.

Taking humanity out of the equation, sick leave makes economic sense as it allows people to recuperate and get back to work, rather than having to find a permanent replacement.

However, it sounds like you are still sick, and therefore you should go back on sick leave. Both to protect your income and your health. Don’t make a martyr out of yourself, it won’t serve any purpose.

As you haven’t really mentioned specifics (that I have seen yet), it seems that the working environment did this to you, so the company does have a responsibility to you. As such, I wouldn’t feel guilty at all about continuing to draw a salary from them while getting better for the damage they caused.

On one hand you don't consider is generous On other hand you feel guilty about it. I think you should make up your mind. Maybe the burnout will also go away then

I felt guilty about it, past tense.

> Even if your employer 'had no say in the matter', it is still generous. Somebody had to pay for that medical leave whether it came out of the profits of the company you work for, their insurance company (which leads to higher premiums for everyone), or came out of the taxpayer's pocket.

Workers "pay" for it by having on average a bit lower wages in said country, then they could have had otherwise.

It's just like any other country wide or industry wide constraint companies can do little about avoiding, and have to price in somehow somewhere or not operate at all.

Generosity is a weird concept to apply for mandated things.

>or came out of the taxpayer's pocket.

...you mean like... theirs? Same energy as someone who screams about paying a teachers salary with their taxes - teachers pay taxes too dog.

> Even if your employer 'had no say in the matter', it is still generous. Somebody had to pay for that medical leave whether it came out of the profits of the company you work for, their insurance company (which leads to higher premiums for everyone), or came out of the taxpayer's pocket.

What a guilt trip; you should be ashamed of yourself (and, frankly, you should probably also keep your US-centric thinking, which is entirely divorced from the rest of the civilized world on such matters, to yourself).

The shame.

May I please ask which country? I'm in Europe and I don't have this privilege in my country. Maybe I should move.

That's standard procedure here in Sweden.

Jealous. I need this because I've been burned out for like a year doing bare minimum and overeating

Have you considered that overeating is possibly exacerbating your issues? I had serious brain fog/energy issues until I stopped being overweight.

I don’t think they’re overeating voluntarily. It’s often a vicious cycle.

I can relate to this.

Before the pandemic I was really good at presenting and running workshops with groups. Then after work from home and with the gyms closed I put on 12kg pretty quickly. It changed my whole attitude and made me very insecure to the point where I never stood up in those groups. Someone else quickly moved into that role and I never regained that position and confidence I once enjoyed. I've been a bit of a shell at work ever since. Because I'd turned myself into a background character I no longer cared too much about my appearance and didn't get better.

Sometimes just focusing on the basics is so important. Yes maybe it's a shallow position from me but I've never been overweight and it hit me right in the identity and flowed on to the rest of my life. I'm happy to say I went for a run yesterday and am trying to overcome this.

For sure, but the point is that breaking that cycle is sometimes the single most important thing to focus on.

I feel moderately well off and COULD take several months off but it could not be comfortable. I'd almost rather put in lower effort at a job and continue to get paid than have months of no income where I'm pulling from savings.

Common if you work for FAANG

Yeah HN is a bubble within the tech bubble and there seems to be a vocal minority here that derives pleasure for putting others down for making less than 250k TC.

My favorite recent example of this was someone talking about how they were "really struggling" in their early days as a founder and going through all the ways they were scraping by and saving which included eating out to get a burrito at Chipoltle everyday, possibly for multiple meals.

After tax and any extras, that's likely near $8/meal! 8x3x30 = $720/month. For ONE PERSON! I spend ~$900/month to feed my family of four in CA, in what I consider to be an extremely privileged and luxurious way with all organic food, etc.

>During my time off I've been poked and prodded by psychologists and they seem to think I have ADHD and that it was a large contributing factor to this, though I'm not completely sure I buy this explanation.

I think you should give this idea more thought. The situation you find yourself in is not uncommon among high-functioning ADHD persons, and your life can truly get a whole lot better with a bit of therapy and medication.

While you're at it, you can use the therapy as an opportunity to probe why your job was such a bad fit, why you ended up in it, and how you can recognize and avoid such work environments in the future.

It may be a good idea to leave your current job, as others have suggested, but I think it would be quite dangerous for you to do this without also exploring the above more forthrightly. My advice, as someone who has dealt with a similar burden: don't overthink this. Just go to your GP, tell them you are suffering, and tell them you would like to investigate ADHD therapy. Approach this with a calm curiosity. You are in control.

I mean if they want to try and medicate me I'm not going to say no at this point, regardless of my personal views on the diagnosis. I've reached a point where I don't think any additional harm would be caused by doing so.

I'm going to find out in ~2 weeks at my next meeting whether they want to try medicine or not and I will just do whatever they tell me to do. I mean I'm not a psychologist, I'm paying them for their expertise on this and it would be foolish for me not to take their advice.

My experience is that despite everyone involved in the process -including myself - being totally convinced I have ADHD, I have still had to advocate for myself every step of the way.

And that really sucked.

But it was worth it.

---

Whether or not you do have ADHD, the most important thing to know about is executive dysfunction.

ADHD isn't people who can't pay attention: it's people who can't choose where their attention goes. ADHD isn't hyperactivity, it's a vacuum of understimulation that - for some - is most easily filled with activity. For others, that void is filled with mental/introverted activity.

>I've reached a point where I don't think any additional harm would be caused by doing so.

My friend, I truly feel your pain. I have been there, and I promise you it gets better.

>I'm going to find out in ~2 weeks at my next meeting whether they want to try medicine or not.

They're going to ask you if you want to try medication. I would encourage you to be actively engaged in your therapy. You can start by thinking about how you would answer the question, "would you like to try medication?" I suspect you have conflicting feelings about it; being able to articulate them clearly is a good way to start.

One thing that can help you articulate that part of you wants to say yes because X and part of you wants to say no because Y and part of you wants to still say yes because Z.

Writing out things into a journal is good because you can write things that wouldn’t make sense to someone else and therefore you can see reality more clearly.

If you're up for learning a bit more about ADHD and associated meds, I would recommend these two podcast episodes: https://www.alieward.com/ologies/adhd

They cover what it is that ADHD meds actually do and why certain meds work for some people but not for others.

For what it's worth, I had a situation similar to yours about a year ago. I was diagnosed with ADHD about 2.5 years ago. The problems I was having were not all specific to my ADHD, but all my problems at work were because the environment didn't allow me to have my condition and trying to mask it just lead to an insane amount of stress. On top of that, anything I did to try and correct the situation was met with complete resistence, leading to more stress and eventually my break down.

I agree that it would be foolish not to take their advice, however...

One data point from me - ADHD medication (Elvanse specifically) has some gnarly side effects which meant my wife had a very rough time with it. I won't go in to detail other than to say we nearly ended up in the A&E a couple of times. By all means try medication but be prepared to switch to another or abandon it altogether if the side effects are overwhelming. Listen to your body.

This is not to be underestimated. It can have quite a detrimental negative psychological effect to realize that the last hope, the only thing that could potentially help you to have the semblance of a normal life makes you extremely nauseous and dull.

I went through a 1.5 year long process to ADHD diagnosis and being prescribed first methylphenidate and later LDX (Elvanse) in the lowest available doses. It did what it was supposed to do and helped me focus better but the side-effects were to unpleasant for me, so much that I preferred to not take the medication at all. Seeing how my life spirals toward rock-bottom, every once in a while I give it another try but it always ends up in me regretting that I've taken the meds, as it ruins that day and worsens my insomnia. The doctor has no advice on what to do about it except for toughing it out.

I'd think hard and long before taking medications (personally, I already have, and decided not to).

Psychologists have a tendency to overprescribe drugs and you have no idea how that will screw up who you are and what you think.

Even if you don't have to pay for those drugs thanks to some healtcare insurance (whether public or private), some money will still flow towards the maker of drugs and that means they have an interest in doctors overprescribing medicines.

Instead of drugs, why not try to change something else in your life? Change job, increase your autonomy, find another way to live?

That may have worked will for you, jokethrowaway, but for many of us, it's medication that makes us able to change the other things in our life.

The reality is that the effects of medication have been thoroughly studied, and prescriptions are obsessively managed.

Meds don't work for everyone, but they work reality well for most of us.

---

No lifestyle choice is going to help me manage the chemical imbalance of my brain as effectively as medication does.

Even deeper than that, making an active lifestyle choice, or even any choice at all, is literally the thing my brain is bad at. It's called executive dysfunction, and it's the main symptom of ADHD.

If I have to overcome my ADHD in order to treat my ADHD, then I will never satisfy the circular dependency. Just like I literally cannot pick myself up by my own bootstraps.

Psychologists don't prescribe drugs.

Not necessarily true - several states allow clinical psychologists to prescribe now.

www.donefirst.com will give you a script within a 20 minute phone call. Careful with the medication approach, it has serious side effects and can be really difficult to get off of. Speaking from my own as well as friends' experiences.

Sounds like you're going through a hard time — but know that many here have been there. Burnout can be hard to spot in time, but once you step over the event horizon, it gets a lot harder to pull yourself out.

My non-medical-professional advice would first be to check out the book Feeling Good, by Dr Burns. It sort of kicked off the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy model of dealing w/ depression, anxiety, and adjacent issues like procrastination.

Second, I can say that what's always saved me in the dark times was some personal project adjacent to the work I do professionally. There were times where I couldn't even stand to look at code, but then the excitement of building something purely for fun got me back into it — and I found, "hey, I can work again too!" Just be careful to take it easy, and not let the personal project turn into a job — at least not before you're confident your burnout is truly behind you. And that's something you don't want to rush.

Third: sleep, walks, good food & water, and meditation have all consistently made a positive impact in my life. You don't need a goal for meditating other than to start even with just a minute a day — but allowing yourself to empty your mind can be really beneficial.

It's also possible your brain and body are telling you it's not the right path. You don't have to suppress that feeling — but I've also found that I'm able to change how I interact with the situations I'm given. It's good to have long term goals, but we're not always able to teleport to our "passion" immediately. We can, however, find small ways of moving the needle every day towards the type of work we really want to be doing, and it can be surprising how fast the changes ultimately come.

Good luck, take it slow — and again know that you're not alone. It can be a scary feeling, but many have been there. Every day is an adventure.

A lot of people say they left a job too late. Not many say they left one too early.

I think you know that you are still in the midst of burnout. If you can go a few months without a job and be okay, my suggestion would be to quit immediately and start looking for a new job in your own time. You need time to decompress followed by a complete change of environment. Recovery is not going to happen in this environment.

Feel free to contact me if you want to chat about your experiences. I went through something similar last year.

It's okay that your body is telling you some things that your brain won't hear. This is a survival mechanism and hopefully will spur you into a better place.

But you have to be willing to change. YMMV, but the first thing I would do is stop doing things that don't work. Change your environment and change the people you see.

Office life not your thing? Try construction or landscaping. Determined to stick it out? Make selfless service and love you primary values. Seek to hear and serve.

Psychologists can't help? Try talking to an older relative, religious leader, or try an altogether different kind of therapy.

Get involved in a group doing something. Anything. Play or coach a sport. Volunteer at your local homeless shelter. Get involved at a local church and help with parking, food pantries. Bake cookies for your neighbors and just show up and say hi. Don't escape with drugs, sex, video games, etc... and don't kill yourself with self-judgment with the plethora of readily available self-help productivity porn on YouTube either.

Lastly, you aren't alone, many people suffer this way, myself included.

There are a lot of different groups online dealing with this problem. Personally I've found a lot of help from the likes of John Verveake's Meaning Crisis and Johnathan Pageau's Symbolic World. It has helped me greatly to be able to see things that are bigger than you and be involved in them. It helps a lot.

Burnout checklist: Confirm you have/don't have ADHD. Confirm you have/don't really have a major depressive episode.

Somehow "burnout" is a more acceptable label than major depression. Because it's supposed to come from having worked too much. But as far as I can see burnout and major depressive episodes are hard to distinguish just from the symptoms. Prognosis and treatment are different. You may not need multiple months off for a depressive episode with proper treatment (or you might, but treatment usually reduces the time).

ADHD is a big factor in this. Especially not realizing or adapting to that condition.

No medical advise, ask multiple doctors.

I've had doctors treat me for depression in the past, but the drugs/treatments never did anything for me and I really don't think I'm depressed.

My mood is generally fine and when I'm doing something I'm interested in, or spending time with family I'm really happy. I don't have the typical lows one would associate with depression and I have tons of motivation and energy to do things. Once I manage to take the first step, the rest is easier.

I don't know if I experienced a true burnout or not, the job just got to much for me to handle.

There are quite clear diagnostic guidelines for both depression and ADHD. Causes and biological underpinnings may not be clear, but diagnosis of the condition really is no mystery.

I've burned out and been depressed(diagnosed and medication) they're different for sure.

You can burn out on an activity, eventually give it up. Depression is everything about your life. If burned out at work, I didn't hate everything, I still enjoyed my hobbies and put effort into them. I didn't stop cleaning my room and fight with my so.

I have been there too! I was also incapable of working afterwards. All the code was alien to me. Being in the office was a nightmare. I wanted shout and jump through the window! And seeing all the people whose mismanagement let me into this bad post burnout situation was even worse. Corona, my savior, came to me and office was closed. In hid at home and forced myself to do 6 daily pomodoros. That was enough to keep my job and think about other aspects of life. Now I have small consultancy, run my own product development and do my 4-6 daily pomodoros to keep that nice big corp salary. Management has changed, so I am coming for couple days to the office to chat and visit my own clients in the same city afterwards.

At the end I see burnout as very positive thing what happened to me. I am much better professional and better person. It brought me the understanding that I am not more than excel row for big corp and I must take care of myself by myself. Loyalty does not pay off.

Take your time, try keeping a job somehow. Looking for a new job while being mentally off track is very very hard.

What do you mean by 4-6 daily pomodoros? Is that 45 mins of work with 15 min breaks?

~2 hours coding and ~2 hours meetings daily average.

I'm curious if you did your pomodoros at 25minutes or had a different interval.

I was trying to work half day during these times. Still more output that usual in my group.

The reality is that deep down in your soul, this is not something that you really want to be doing with your life. Unfortunately in modern society, we have to trade our time and focus, staring at a piece of glass all day, just so we can survive. It’s absolutely insane if you think about it. I’d bet that most ADHD, depression, anxiety is caused because we see no end in sight working on these meaningless tasks. My advice is to find something you love and also adds value to society. Start very small and watch it grow…

Finding something you love is only momentary. Even if you find something you “love” to do it will have moments where it gets rough, boring, frustrating or cumbersome.

We need both work and rest, and typically burnout comes from pushing yourself in situations that are a net negative; either because you are over working in an environment that is compromising something valueable to you or because you don’t actually know how to rest.

We need work to make a living, make incremental and long-term growth and to stretch our capacity at a healthy rate.

We need proper rest (not Netflix, not social media, not mind numbing hobbies), active intentional rest to appreciate our work and the things we have. We need time to value things other than work because work alone is not enough to sustain us.

There are many good books on this I suggest the OP look into reading one in the time they have off if they chose. Fixing the underlying issues and habits is the way forward not just switching jobs.

Any book recs or tips for proper rest?

Two that I highly recommend

1. Subversive Sabbath by A.J. Swoboda

2. Garden City by John Mark Comer

* caveat they are both frameworked in Christian principles but the practical steps to get rest are still very good.

>Unfortunately in modern society

Not that in ancient societies was any better, your place in society was practically decided at conception: your father was a fishermen, well you know exactly what you will be doing in your life, that you like it or not. Almost all the disorders typical of this new millennium seem to originate from an infinite liberty without a guid, a paralysis analysis of some kind if you like. "What will I do with my life?" was not a question that pestered my ancestor (I come from a country where, untill my father's generation, all jobs were de facto hereditary). "What is the purpose of my existence?" was a question with answers in the local religions. I hope that, in building the future, we will use something like the fichtean dialectics (wrongly attributed to Hegel):

thesis --> antithesis --> synthesis,

and that wi will be able to take back all things positive present in our traditions and assimilate in a modern vision of the world: it is evident that, taken in isolation, both visions of the world had negative aspects that greatly surpass their benefits.

> Not that in ancient societies was any better

With the difference that modern society is 10000x wealthier, and yet people are overworked and the planet is being destroyed.

And a significant part of the jobs are outright useless or only needed because we work so much at these useless jobs.

> The reality is that deep down in your soul, this is not something that you really want to be doing with your life

You're not wrong. I only went into this line of work because I was naturally good at it. It seemed like I was just naturally destined to do this with my life.

>I'm not well off like most people on here, I can survive 4-6 months with no salary, which I'm likely going to have to consider given my firing seems imminent at this point.

>My mind knows what needs to be done, but my body says no and I am overwhelmed by apathy.

I've been there before. I was completely burned out but had to keep working. You need to find a job where the expectations are sensible.

It took me more than 1 year find the energy to change jobs after I burned out and in hindsight I waited way to long.

Find a new job and make sure you ask questions like 1)What's the work culture. When do people usually start working and when does it end? 2)How often is there a fire that needs to be put out? 3)If I need to take a 2-3 week vacation, would that be considered normal? 4)Are deadlines set in stone or frequently accelerated?

A healthy job environment will help reignite the part of you that has gone dead. It might take years, but you'll get back some of the faith and motivation you once had.

It took me 3 job changes to find a job with a good working environment because I simply didn't have the guts to ask employers the tough questions about the working conditions. With my current job I was very direct in asking questions about work/life balance and the manager and good managers/employees were equally direct in giving me answers. Being in a healthier work environment has done more for my mental health and personal life than anything else did.

If you're seeking care, this can also keep you from being fired (at least in the US/some countries). Most corporations have an employee counseling hotline that you can engage with that can help with this. Not that you want/plan to stay there. But that corp helped contribute to your condition-- they can help foot the bill. Don't put this all on yourself (but also don't put it all on others).

I was diagnosed at 32. Extremely high functioning but prone to burnout. I was hesitant as well, but embracing my diagnosis was life changing. You don't have to make ADHD your SINGLE core attribute like some people do. But ignoring what might be a core part of yourself isn't beneficial. Remember that it's just information-- what you do with the data is what's important. Meds can help but learning how to have healthy interactions with work and in my personal life was key.

You're not alone in this. I've found that there seems to be a higher concentration of ADHD in Dev/Security work. The constant newness of things keeps us interested-- but can also be dangerous.

Also, consider therapy. Even if you think you don't need it. Not a psychologist. But an actual factual therapist. I would prioritize this over medication, but honestly pursue them both. Therapy isn't what you think it is. It's a great way to have a sounding board.

How can therapy help for ADHD? In perhaps in other words, how has it specifically helped you? I have been recommended to try it, but based on past experiences, I find the whole process to be somewhat cathartic but otherwise of little value or utility.

I think the problem is your job. Some corporate situations are toxic, others are just poor matches. Some jobs are really about feeding your boss's ego; and once you recognize this, the job will forever feel soul-crushing.

IMO:

1: It's time to head over to the "Who's hiring" thread and respond to 5-10. See where they go, and next month do the same thing. That's how I found my current job.

2: If your employer is large enough, see if you can do an internal transfer or get a new assignment.

There was this discussion about recovering from burnout a while back. Perhaps it can help: https://hackertimes.com/item?id=33260525

But I can fully understand you, I don't think I completely burned out, but I was somewhere along the spectrum. I was, and am, in a priviledged situation where I can afford to take some months of work. Initially it did not feel like it helped all that much, but on later reflection it at least "stopped the bleeding".

I am in a better place now a year or two later, but my perspective on work has probably changed forever.

Plenty of good suggestions here, I don't have another one to add, let alone a better one. But I'll tell you this: you are not alone, this happens (a lot) and odds are it is not your fault. You asked how to deal with it, a lot of the stuff other comments said boils down to realising your professional universe is not so $negative_characterization_here like the place you are currently living in, it just seems that way probably because like a boiling frog you tried to adapt without seeing the hit coming, and came to think that's "normal" and you can't take "it" anymore. Time for a change, you'll do great in your next corner of the universe, and even if you find yourself into another bad one you'll recognise it soon enough and either fix it or leave it.

I had a similar situation. I didn't get to a breaking point like you did - I quit my job as I was approaching it. I took 6 months off, focused on myself and therapy. I went down the ADHD route because I had the symptoms and tried medication but it didn't help much on a day to day basis (I still have some leftover and I take it maybe once every other month when I really don't feel like working to kind of reset me - they are stimulants after all). I'm still not really sold that ADHD is a real disease as much as a conglomeration of various deficiencies that people have that we try to group together in order to provide treatment, but I encourage you to try treating it anyway as much as you can because there's no cure, everyone is different, and many people have positive outcomes. Either way, the medicine needs to be combined with therapy for it to be effective and from my experience, the psychiatrists who I've talked to that prescribe medicine have not been good therapists

What really got me out of the funk was a routine and a good therapist (I think he was a social worker) that didn't try to diagnose me but instead worked with me on tangible things like my mindset and my outlook on life and challenges I face. A morning routine gave me some much needed mental stability (highly recommend the book Atomic Habits), and working on breaking some habitual negative thought patterns got me away from procastinating / task avoidance (to some degree). I was also lucky to have a supporting wife

I've seen similar situations before (with some co-workers) and I was in the same path some time ago. For my friends the only thing that helped was to change careers, they started non-related business (one became a carpenter and the other one started a grocery store); having a non-mentally demanding job allowed them to heal. In my case, I changed jobs to avoid being so much stressed. It was complicated to start being productive again and every day I struggle but I is becoming better and better.

Rather than ADHD, have you considered severe anxiety? I had a serious problem of not being able to start and complete basic tasks because I was so filled with anxiety about, well everything, that I was self-defeating.

What so you do instead of completing tasks? Is it just a wall preventing you from completing tasks, or do you get distracted by other things?

I have ADHD and it’s been a lifelong struggle, however, as I’ve gotten older I found that it had a lot more to do with anxiety than the inability to focus. I was so wrapped up in failure, impostor syndrome, worried I wouldn’t be able to do some thing, worried that if I did a good job people expect more of me, etc. etc.

It doesn’t sound like burn out, it sounds like anxiety

Yes, it was the first thing considered and ruled out by the psychologist I've been seeing.

> What so you do instead of completing tasks? Is it just a wall preventing you from completing tasks, or do you get distracted by other things?

Majorly distracted. Put me in front of a boring task at work and I will immediately try to shift to something I find more interesting. It's always been a huge struggle to focus on my work tasks, but combined with "burnout" it's now just impossible.

I don't have imposter syndrome, I know that of my coworkers I am the most technically skilled. The problem is being the best technically doesn't matter when you can't deliver consistently.

That sounds like me to a T. When I don't have pressure from people I am so relaxed. But right now my brain is exploding because I have three different groups of people asking me to do things for them, and even though I know most of the answers I feel like a bowling ball is on my head.

Adderall doesn't help consistently.

I have a good paying job and a stock vesting schedule for another 2.5 years worth almost 100k on top of salary and I'm still thinking "what if I just quit today?"

I am so stressed. And every time I take even one workday off, when I am free to do whatever I feel like and not care about work or even other people, it's magical.

What helped my anxiety immeasurably was marijuana, but too inconsistent. Citalopram really helped get my anxiety under control, but medication isn’t for everyone. Adderall made it much worse. In fact, in my humble opinion, Adderall is one of the worst drugs. It’s a false prophet.

The dam breaking on my recovery from severe anxiety really began with depression.

I underwent ketamine nasal spray therapy and it completely removed my depression, and that allowed me to focus 100% on my anxiety.

Things are much better today

For some people ADHD and anxiety are co-morbid.

Hello! I've recently discovered about this guy named Dr. Andrew Huberman. He is "a neuroscientist and tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine". I've found that his videos super helped me with my lack of motivation issues. He has videos about every possible topic which I believe should help anyone trying to get better.

His youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewHubermanLab His website: https://hubermanlab.com/

I feel you. As many here I failed to recognize burnout early enough to prevent total exhaustion. My experience (not a doc) is medication won’t help and ADHD seems to be a stereotypical American fixation almost like tomato sauce for us Italians. Call it for what it is and don’t blame yourself. The cure for burnout is change. Distance yourself from the source of discomfort, lay bricks or bag groceries for at least three months and it will go away. I am saying this because you said you cannot afford a vacation (not slouching on the couch, rather travel). Not sure my experience will help, but that’s my 2 cents.

To counter this, medication has helped me a lot, and I am able to get work done thanks to it.

Edo, what was it? For burnout or ADHD?

It was for ADHD. But I have had burnout as well, not a good combination to have.

I'm going through this right now. I agree with others in that you should look more into ADHD, but it likely won't solve this burnout specifically (but it may help you avoid it in the future). I gave this a listen yesterday:

https://youtu.be/gRPBkCW0R5E

Burnout is usually a result of the workplace environment, but it can cause you to experience effects that last even when the job is gone, namely depression.

I submitted my 2 weeks notice and am taking 6 weeks off, then spending the Spring semester focusing on graduate classes before I re-enter the workforce.

I think the time off itself will do wonders, but the key is to uncover how you burned out in the first place. The work environment can be a major factor, but your relationship, attitude, and habits surrounding work can all contribute as well. For me, I should have learned to say no and pushback on expectations much earlier on in my career.

I gave my three week notice and went on a two week trip to Portugal. In fact I’m writing this at the Lisbon airport on my way back home.

Having been at the same job for eighteen years I felt it was time. I don’t know if it was a burn out but maybe it was. Almost everybody at work was surprised.l though. Boss suggested I take leave of absence. I said no because I know I’m not coming back. For me, things at work changed so much in the past two years that it was not the job I signed for or career progression I wanted. Also so many of my coworkers I cared for had left for other jobs.

My dilemma now is I don’t know what I want to do next. A few folks reached out offering me a job. But it would be similar to what I’d been doing but at different yet similar sized companies.

So while taking time off was great i still have homework to do.

Burnout doesn't always have to be exhaustion-focused. I'm no expert but to me it sounds like you're disengaged/apathetic moreso than exhausted. Boreout is another common term that gets thrown around on hacker news/reddit.

I think as software engineers we don't always consider the social element much, we tend to focus on the problems we are solving day in and day out, but the people are a critical piece of the puzzle as well. I similarly had a lot of coworkers I cared for leave for other jobs, and that ended up hitting me harder than I thought it would.

Best of luck to you.

Quit.

Anything else is ignoring the root cause. Which is not the Engineer thing to do. Your job sucks and you deep down know it.

Your reaction sounds reasonable to the BS corporate world. It's the agile coaches out there planning more meetings that need a psychologist.

Changing job may have a temporary positive effect, it lasts roughly 6 months for me.

Do the absolute minimum at any job you need to so you don't starve. Don't try to makes sense of it. It is indeed BS and you shouldn't care. Don't care.

Meanwhile, try to figure out an exit strategy. Build something you enjoy doing, start building passive revenue streams which may support you and replace your daily job. Hope you can escape the BS soon, we're all in this together.

Good luck

If meetings stress you out I'd say that's on you or maybe the people at those meetings. Not that meetings are necessarily productive, but just sitting in a chair shouldn't really be that stressful. If it is, some therapy may be in order?

A sane person would grow frantic at the idea of their life draining away as they wake up every morning to do something that they don't care about, is of no benefit to anyone, and perhaps it would be better if it wasn't being done at all, and is performed solely to fulfil one's basic survival needs. At least when you aren't at the meeting, you don't need to pretend that this is a reasonable, decent, or sane state of affairs.

Sorry, wrong group, that's the one down by the docks later tonight :)

Yeah, can probably just find a different company, or line of work.

Not sure if someone in the comments already recommended this. But I found that simply doing less work for a period of time while I got myself back on track was an important aspect of curing my burnout.

Not caring is actually a healthy step. Care less, do less work, and if they fire you tell them exactly what happened, and go find yourself a different job. When you get this different job, set better boundaries. Eventually you will find your output increasing.

Going from burnout to no work back to full work also did nothing for me.

The advice around therapy and medication for potential ADHD is important as well.

I've been in basically the same mental state a couple times. What helped for me (unordered):

1. Different employer - over half the places I've worked have been toxic... and even some of the not toxic ones ended up inducing burnout due to corporate issues

2. Adderall - not a wonder drug... but helps postpone burnout

3. Getting a dog - wonderful for my mental health in general

For me at least, burnout was mostly a reaction to being in toxic environments. I think I could have gone straight from one of my terrible jobs, unproductive jobs to one of my good ones and been productive right off the bat.

Number 1 is actively in the works. I actually thought I had this one done, but I had an offer get reneged last night, which sucks.

Number 3 is sort of done. I'm afraid of dogs after a few bad experiences, but I have a cat. Some days she's the only reason I even attempt to work, because I know she needs me to be able to feed her.

You mentioned GP, which implies you're in UK or Australia etc. There are likely lots of protections for employees, you can ask for stress leave - talk to the doctor about it. My friend was 6 months off full pay.

The other advice is make sure its not just you putting yourself under pressure. I think many of us were at school/uni always expected to dedicate your life to your education. When working its difficult to stop and try to get some balance, you have to learn this. Your boss likely doesn't expect you to do as much as you think.

This question, posed by someone new, makes it to the front pages of this site pretty much every week nowadays. I’ve been visiting this site for years and it used to crop up once every few months or so but nothing near the frequency it does now. There is something seriously wrong with the state of the world right now.

It is of no help to OP by unfortunately I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I was reading Ray Dalio’s latest blog post on LinkedIn last night and he thinks we’re heading for civil and possibly global war in 2025. I find it hard to disagree with him.

In a way, our entire system is just abstracted violence. People used to kill each over resources so we created this abstract system of companies, money, laws, social norms and dating rules so people could still fight each other but without any direct death. But the deaths are still happening, they’re just drawn out and slow. Various people bleeding your bank accounts dry, forcing you to work to the bone until you either keel over and die, kill yourself through drugs, or accumulate enough resources to retire from the game or become one of the exploiters yourself.

Eventually we reach the point we’re at now where the abstractions can’t hold back the grim reality. Too much power and greed accumulated at the top of the pyramid means the game starts to become physically unplayable for too many people. What happens when the abstractions collapse? Back to Hobbesian savagery.

This would be bad enough if it was just internal strife but throw in conflicting super powers and climate change on top and we’re looking at WW3. Things have gotten so bad I don’t see a world in which it doesn’t happen now other than if we get some serious reform across politics, media and enterprise.

To OP, I would say take some time to rest, revisit things you used to enjoy, then find a job you can tolerate doing in a town you can afford to live. It may mean doing something you never thought of doing and moving somewhere you never saw yourself moving a few years ago. I am planning on doing the latter next year.

Ray Dalio article for anyone interested: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/changing-world-order-approach...

> This question, posed by someone new, makes it to the front pages of this site pretty much every week nowadays. I’ve been visiting this site for years and it used to crop up once every few months or so but nothing near the frequency it does now. There is something seriously wrong with the state of the world right now.

I wish I could post on my main account, but I can't have this associated with my real identity sadly. I've noticed the same, but never thought I would be posting one of those threads. It's been helpful reading people's replies and has given me a bit of hope I didn't have this morning.

>It may mean doing something you never thought of doing and moving somewhere you never saw yourself moving a few years ago

I think this is likely. I've been in contact with an org that wants to hire me, but the logistics are complicated because they're extremely remote. They aren't even sure if it'll be possible to hire me, but if it is I might just go for it.

It might sound cliche and not based on a professional psychological, but the advice I'm about to give is working at the least. I had been at your position too and it helps.

You are losing and with that state of mind you might be attempted to keep losing, but I don't think you want this to continue, do you?

The first thing is to start winning. Realize that winners keep winning and you are going to be one. Create small goals! Inside and outside work. Move! Do 5 push ups, 10, 15! Doodle simple toons, sing some music! Write a simple game on a simple framework! Sleep on time! Wake up early!

Focus on things you can control. The corporate environment, you cannot control, at least for now. Treat them like a child demanding things to their skewed worldview.

On your firing, you're looking at the worst case. There's a chance to improve, there's also a chance to explore new fields.

If you intend to keep the job, tell to your manager that you are dealing with your problems and your're getting more and more succesful. Fake it till you make it, but stay on the course so you can make good with the job.

You have to quit or be fired. Right now.

I was in your situation year ago, three years of agony at a mediocre toxic corporate company where our team was responsible for all the problems but were given no time or resources at all to actually fix the root cause. Only firefighting was allowed.

I was on medical leave, went back, and eventually was offered to quit without serving my notice period (so 4 months paid without working).

It’s been a year since and I didn’t touch a computer for 10 months. I was feeling like shit and really needed the time to recover. I’m still not recovered but much better. I’ve been seeing a therapist to deal with the aftermath for 18 months. It helped. Magic mushrooms and weed also help me putting things in perspective and understanding that it was a failure of that company, not of me.

Burn-out especially when ignored for so long is no joke. I know it feels silly/cowardly/scary to be unemployed, but you really have to get out. Sick leave while still employed at the company doesn’t let you free yourself from all the pain because you’ll have to go back eventually.

I’m lucky that where I live you get employment insurance even if you quit. But if that’s not an option in your country then let them fire you. They created the problem so fuck them. It’s not like you were going to get a good reference from that place anyway.

I would also recommend reading the post on common cog about burnout. It’s well written and instructive.

Bottom line is the longer you stay the worst it’ll get. Only time can heal you (several months, like 12–24) but you’ll get better. It’s just a matter of leaving that toxic place and waiting.

Good luck. It should be criminal to put people in these situations rather than just “cost of doing business” for employers.

> Sick leave while still employed at the company doesn’t let you free yourself from all the pain because you’ll have to go back eventually.

I've not seen anyone put this into words, but yes, absolutely this. The entire time I was out I knew in the back on my mind I was going to have to go back sooner or later. In the few days leading up to going back I was physically ill.

The other thing that sucks is I knew I should be applying for other jobs while on medical leave, but I just couldn't bring myself to. I really needed the time to try and recover (which didn't work out) and I think I managed to only send out a handful of applications during that time.

Thanks for the message, I appreciate it.

I know how much it’s sucks, I wish you the best. And remember that only time will heal you. It can take a long time but you’ll recover. Also remember that it’s the result of a shitty and/or todos and/or mismatched work environment, not of any weakness on your part. Knowing this really helped me.

Another thing I forgot to add: if you’re not keen on paychoactives, CBD works well to help me relax. I never used any drugs until this happened to me but (in moderation) it was remedially helpful to cope and move forward.

You don’t even have to smoke it and damage your lungs. I got a German made vaporizer (wasn’t cheap, got it used) which only heats the weee or CBD to 200C. It’s enough to vaporize the cbd and thc but you get none of the tar and other nasty stuff from combustion.

If you’re still sick you should go back on sick leave. Don’t let an employer fire you for a situation they created.

Why not? They contributed to the situation, they can also contribute to the subsequent burden.

And if your benefits depend on getting laid off rather than quit, it’s the right thing to do. The corporation gives no fucks about you, it’s not like your sepuku will save your honor or anything. Besides, they might actually be happy to lay you off and get rid of you rather than have you agonize because you won’t quit.

Medical leave for burnout sounds great, until they throw you right back in the same environment that caused the burnout. It's not surprising you don't care anymore.

It may be useful to do some budgeting to see if you can juice your savings in the short term and reduce your recurring expenses to give yourself a longer sabbatical timeline. This can be challenging to do if you're already emotionally numb, but I found planning an escape from work to be an exciting escape in and of itself.

If you end up taking a break, you'll have time to reflect on other things you'd like to do that don't elicit the same numbness you're experiencing right now. There are plenty of ways to build identity and confidence that aren't full-time tech employment.

Find some hobbies, do sports when you can, visit interesting/intriguing places, do activities you never had a chance to do before. Find a way to relax, e.g. sauna, deep sleep chambers etc. It's also possible you have some long-term nutritional deficiency leading to your brain literally shutting down some circuits making you apathetic. Try to take a NAD+ booster like Niagen (300mg/day) which is required for energy production and you might want to try 2000mg B1 Hcl and 1000mg B2/day, the first one required for each energetic reaction but depleted by long-term stress and the second one for producing FAD+ (energy production in the brain, similar to NAD+; don't expose yourself to strong sunlight though). You can also try to do some mechanical job requiring little to no thinking like resupplying stock at a supermarket or building homes etc.

Niagen had powerful effects in my case. Don't need to take it anymore, but wow, very potent. Similar to a B vitamin, but much less itchy/irritable, etc. Almost euphoric the first couple times.

A lot of burnout is actually ME/CFS and now possibly Long Covid. ADHD people are more likely to burn out due to shared genetic causes like hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS). hEDS is vastly more common than doctors think it is by 100x - so it’s very difficult to get diagnosed. The more common subvariants of hEDS are not even all that hypermobile. This isn’t to say you have hEDS just given ADHS+burnout+reading HN you’re in a riskier category. As for treatments patient forums are far better than doctors with this.

It’s important to find the root cause because most people assume they can return to homeostasis simply by doing things to make them healthier, rest, exercise, diet etc. When there is a genetic cause that isn’t an option and more extreme pharmacological interventions are needed.

+1, there's so much more that may be going on 'under the hood'. Thanks for mentioning ME/CFS and Long Covid. Recently had to quit my job and postpone starting my university studies due to what I (and my doc) suspect to be a pretty severe case of Long Covid. Previously diagnosed with ADHD too, however I do have my own thoughts on that, especially among the rather young demographic I belong.

Bottom line is, I have arrived at a point where I can no longer power through or treat the symptoms only. Finding a root cause and healing myself is all I do right now. Even though I'm very young, I've successfully ignored all the warning signs before _something_ took me out completely. I consider it a great lesson, albeit the toughest one I've ever gotten by far. Here's to our healing.

Thankfully I can be confident it's not COVID of any particular length. I have never caught COVID at any point and I actually have the data to back up the claim unlike most people which is helpful since I can rule it out.

I'd never heard of the rest of this, but it's quite interesting.

You can get Long Covid from the vaccine, it is being called vaccine injuries. Quite a number of the people in LongCovid support groups have never had Covid and yet acquired Long Covid symptoms shortly after taking the vaccine. I acquired subclinical pericarditis from the vaccine booster. It’s the kind of thing doctors can’t detect in either an Echocardiogram or a MRI so it wouldn’t get included in adverse reaction statistics. It hurt like hell but fortunately was quickly resolved with colchicine. The cardiologist I saw said he was seeing a substantial spike in subclinical pericarditis.

Regardless of the cause you can test if you have ME/CFS by doing a max exertion test. Do cardio as hard as you can, and if you can’t get close to the same level two days later then you likely have Post Exertional Malaise (PEM) which is defining characteristic of ME/CFS/LongCovid/VaccineInjury.

2 things that have worked for me:

- Psychedelics

- Building for the public domain https://github.com/breck7/pldb/issues

Also, in general when life hands you lemons put some tea on, read, listen to music, and watch films.

Holy shit doesn't this sound like me. I've quit my job this August because I couldn't work at all, too. Extremely sorry for the following not-really-related rant/oversharing you're about to read.

I think I have ADHD too although I haven't been properly diagnosed. I've been taking Strattera (at some point I've switched to generic atomoxetine) which is the only approved ADHD drug in Russia/CIS, but it only helps sometimes and the side effects are really rough.

When I was living in Tallinn, I've tried to get proper diagnosis, but there weren't any appointments in every clinic I called. Later on my residence permit was revoked, so I'm still suffering on atomo for now I guess.

What side effects are you experiencing with Strattera?

Mostly it's anxiety, fever, and overall dizziness. Sometimes I'm also feeling slightly more aggressive (e. g. when something's not working I might wanna punch my laptop, but usually I'm able to calm down quickly).

Sounds pretty bad, hope it gets better or you get access to something better. Good luck.

Thank you so much!

Usually, at the point of real "burnout" there is no fix except leaving for a different setting for awhile. While I often infer Plumbing is a cleaner trade than the tech sector, there are real consequences associated with some toxic corporate cultures. ;) I usually recommend self-evaluation though Ikigai as part of long-term career planning.

'Ikigai starts with the awareness of four key pillars:

Business Values

Core Competencies

Income Generation

What the World Needs' ( https://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ikigai... )

There are two ways to look at this. The first one is that your burnout is a problem that needs to be fixed. The other one is that your symptoms are entirely appropriate. An appropriate mind experiment would be "what would you rather be doing?"

Questions for self-reflection:

Are you generally seeing your brain as a performance tool needing regular and daily maintenance?

In the time since, what have you changed about yourself in how you live, work, and play to be at your best?

Do you prioritize good sleep, eat well, exercise daily, and manage stress as the continuous physiology?

How are your social relationships? Do you use or abuse any drugs including nicotine and caffeine?

Consider that focus, attention, memory, and decisions are core brain functions. How do you optimize your best capabilities?

You are a professional athlete. Do you train and recover like one?

If you’re considering medication for (mental) health, has your doctor tested your sleep and vitamin D?

I can't tell you it's all gonna be okay because I don't know that it will, but I do know that you should go fishing, because for that moment of clarity and relaxation, what does matter to you will become clear.

This is legitimately good advice. I like fishing because it is _just_ mentally occupying enough that I can actually stop thinking about life for a few hours. If I just go on a hike, I'll enjoy nature, I'll benefit, I'll chill a bit, but I can very easily just ruminate on things while I walk.

But when I'm fishing, I'm not stressing about anything, but just pleasantly occupied thinking "should I try a different lure? should I move or keep trying this spot? should I adjust my retrieve?" and all of a sudden I've spent 4 hours in nature.

Sometimes I even catch a fish or two!

This is good advice, I used to fish a lot and really enjoyed it. Relaxing, but also filled with incredibly exciting moments.

Been through burnout myself (still recovering, takes a long time).

Look for things that bring you joy (and don’t get carried away). If your body says no, it’s probably not a good fit for you right now.

Being in tech likely means you have skills that are valuable in a lot of jobs that can make you a (possibly smaller) salary. Now is a good time to try out something different. I recommend the book Designing Your Work Life with Bill Burnett.

You can also check out my book with advice based on how I moved on: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BDM4JXNR

Sorry for what happened to you. My anecdote was that years ago, I was stressed out from a high pressure project where I was literally vomiting in the office parking lot, immediately cleaned myself up, and went inside to repeat the grind. I took over a project/contract that was more than a year behind schedule. When I got the ship upright and actually completed the project, the thanks I got was nil. That's corporate life. I learned my lesson and left as soon as I could. No job is worth your health.

Many of us have been here.

You accelerated your life in a few ways - financially and career experience - compared to most people. There's a tax to pay. Some are good at paying it inline with work by having healthy workout routines, loving relationships, a higher purpose to suffer for. But a lot of us "burn out" and pay that tax afterwards. It sucks, I'm sorry. I took 6 months off, and wasn't ready to come back but just forced myself anyway.

Therapists and psychologists are interesting to dabble with, and some people's lives are changed for the better. But they failed to help me at all, some were even bad for my mental health. Some blamed it on me for not being open to their theories (I consider attending every week for a few years, paying out of pocket, and actively engaging with their ideas in my everyday life as being quite open - they just couldn't handle critical thinking IMO).

You have a lot to unpack - What's going on with my body? What is the source of my confidence if not in work? Should I become a PM/bartender/artist? I'd say don't rush an answer. This is the journey you're on. Start where you are, even if it's not where you want to be.

Now that you're back at work, what's stopping you from doing the absolute minimum? I'm talking.. 4h days, boss unhappy with your performance, but not being fired. You don't care, right? Then focus on methodically answering the big questions, and having the experiences that shed the needed light for you.

> What is the source of my confidence if not in work?

Your whole comment is great, but this stuck out. My job is my self confidence and it is my self worth, without it I lose those things and I've been struggling with this massively throughout this entire process.

For sure. I relate. Like if I'm not a big money making guy, am I even attractive to women? Intimately tied to this question, is the judgment I make of others. Ye old projection ;)

Is work all you've been doing for many years?

Personal theory: I think a person needs several pillars in the foundation of their life. One will inevitably be in disrepair at any given time, but the others support you. For many it's.. family, friends, partner, a physical practice, and career.

When my career is frustrating me, I walk away from my computer and have dinner with a friend or call my old man and see how he is. When a girlfriend dumps me, I work 60h weeks :) Putting all of yourself in one pillar is devastating when it falters, which it eventually will.

Jobs are pretty important, even if big picture we all die and wish we worked less. Practically, it's central to the life and identity of a modern human. So you're not struggling with nothing, despite what spiritual teachers (pseudo, or otherwise) try to tell you.

> I'm not well off like most people on here, I can survive 4-6 months with no salary

For a more extended break, you can stretch that out by going somewhere much cheaper and living like a digital nomad. Consider places like Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Taipei since you can live there for a few years on your current savings. If those places aren't your cup of tea, then check out https://nomadlist.com/

Nah, this isn't possible. My ability to afford that time is due to having a mortgage and being in a low COL location. Going somewhere else while cool, would actually reduce my total time because my base costs are fixed and not optional, unlike if I was a renter.

So much good advice here. Just want to say as someone who has gone through this, burnout takes so much longer to recover from than you think. The sooner you make changes to start to address it, the sooner you'll get through to the other side. Don't waste any time waiting to take action, your wellbeing is the most important thing. And be patient and kind with yourself, it can be a long journey with ups and downs, but you can get through it.

Thanks ;)

There is a lot of good advise here, more than I ever thought I would get. It's made my day a little brighter.

I had written my own advice bullet list in 2020, which is still useful: https://hackertimes.com/item?id=25509941

If I were you, I'd also read up about neuroinflammation and tried some available interventions to lower it (or going to a doctor, not sure if you have money for it).

Burnout is also a low-level physical problem, it's not just psychosomatic.

Hey man, sounds like you are depressed. But you can get through this, you're gonna have to break things down into very small steps and take breaks in between what you do. First, make sure you eat well, take some B vitamins and fish oil. Also stop drinking if you drink. If you can get out for a nice walk in the fresh air do that too.

After that, find a cognitive behavioral therapy service. Get a referral from your GP. If you are interested in self-help there's the Let's Talk about CBT by the British CBT association: www.babcp.com . That gives you a good overview of what to expect.

Try this episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/cbt-for-depression/id1...

You're going to have to go deep and explain the working experience and why it was bad. Think about it in the 3rd person. Write a journal about the experience etc... Putting things in writing helps us make sense of things.

It could be the job is shit and the corporate environment is shit. You could be surrounded by assholes. There are other jobs out there.

I went through something pretty similar about four years ago. It was incredibly tough, but I was able to pull out of it and am more resilient now. It took me a few months to sort it all out, which I did mostly by writing. In the short term though, I relied heavily on my dad and my wife to help talk things through. If you have anyone close you can talk with, that's the best thing to do. I also got a prescription for Xanax, which I took every couple of days when I was feeling rough. After a few weeks of that I stopped taking them, but felt comforted knowing they were there in my drawer if I started spiraling down again. I did end up publishing the stuff I wrote during that time, and am happy to send you a copy if you're interested at all. I'm at quirk@cardinalspirits.com and the book is here. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B092WWNYQC/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_2P...

There's alot to untangle here. But a few notes for op:

1. Being burned out happens, as does being in a bad situation. Rarely does it get as bad as you say without there being other factors that make it bad. (Misfit, bad management, boredom, etc...)

2. If you are fresh out of college, yes, working is a very different thing than college. College is a sprint. Working is a marathon. You can't approach the two the same. There's a reason why people work only 40hrs a week or so... Doing more can be actively counterproductive.

3. If you did what you said on your break... you didn't take a break. And simply knowing you have to return to a work environment you don't like can ruin any vacation.

4. In the end, burnout is hard. The key is to forgive yourself, and the people around you... rest, and be ready to go again, wiser this time.

5. Your future is up to you. But, if you want to be in tech, realize as you go on in tech, as in all industries... it isn't about tech, it is about people.

If I can be of assistance to you. Ping me. I've been through where you are... and recovered.

1) I am the misfit at work, I've been one my entire life. I've always been the "odd person". I really try my best on this front, but it's worse with WFH. In office people found me kind of funny and enjoyed having me around, WFH though? I disappear and get forgotten about.

2) College for me was a decade ago. I've had probably three or four full time jobs since that point, one absolutely amazing one was over half that time.

3) You're right on both fronts.

I've had severe depression twice and I made it through it but man was it tough. Defecating over 10 times a day. Total body sweat, shivering in bed wishing I would die. Praying all night for relief.

My first win was baking a potato more than a month into it. Under normal circumstances I'm a good cook.

You sound depressed. Do the right thing with the employer and quit. Say you thought you could push through it, but you can't with the depression. It's not fair to make them fire you, even if you don't like it there. If you need financial support file for disability.

As soon as you possibly can, start working on something you 100% agree with. If you've always wanted to serve coffee at a cute cafe, do that. It doesn't matter how much it pays you can figure the money stuff out later. You are in full blown avoid-this-getting-any-worse mode right now.

I truly wish you the best and hope you make it through this. The day can be better again. I know how hard it is to believe this when it happens, but it is true. Do not give up.

>As soon as you possibly can, start working on something you 100% agree with.

Man, that point resonates with me. I quit a while back due to severe burnout (actually, I think now, boreout) and have been struggling to get enthused about anything. I think what you said here is the core of why I might be done with tech as a profession entirely - I'm almost completely soured with the impact and direction of it as a whole.

So then the question becomes well, what do I agree with and want to do? That's a hard one. This is the only career path I've been on and even if I do find something else, starting off at 40 with no skill base is... oof.

If you hate [war, human trafficking, etc] and live in an honest country one of the best things out there is working for law enforcement or intelligence. You'll use your skills on real problems that matter. Impact and excitement.

I'm sorry you are going through this.

You have probably been told this by the psychologists, but just in case: start with the basics: Food, Sleep, Sport, Family, Friends. Once you have those covered these the others won't be fixed, but the mountain will be a little smaller.

If you are sure you are going to get fired, use your time left to update your LinkedIn and apply to other companies.

I ran into this earlier this year too. I quit and took the 3-4 months off from work that I could afford. I gained a new perspective on work and realized it was a smaller part of my self worth/life than I thought. I got a new job that reflected perhaps the only/most enjoyable part of tech I enjoyed: straight application development. I immersed myself in it with old associates I worked with before from my favorite job. I kept a daily list of tasks meticulously watching over my attention and how I worked and would resequence the list at any point in the day I would start to feel blocked/like I didn't care/lost, so I would stay on task and remain immersed. After following this pattern and working the full 8 hours everyday and not working from home as much as possible. My mind again felt healthy and focused again, now I find it effortless and even happy at work again. Even as pressures mounted with higher work load I realized staying busy doing actual work was the answer I sought and then stopping right at 5 and not thinking about work at all after that. I hope my comments are helpful. It's what I tried and it seemed to work for me. I called my task list in TextEdit my dopamine hitlist. I know it sounds overly simplistic but it helped me solve the core of my problem:burnout, by staying focused at a new job with a fresh start with people I could trust/or try to trust. And sticking to a rigid morning routine, exercise each morning, that didn't allow for distraction and then sitting down and starting my list no matter what till it felt natural again and I felt like my burnout was gone. But honestly I had to change EVERYTHING, so it in no way resembled my old job. I also ate right, took different vitamins I thought would help: D3, Multivitamin, HTP-5, etc. I don't know how much those helped, but even as a placebo, I knew it was the intent to focus on simple tasks and small wins that carried me through my transition back to caring about work.

Someone here on HN shared this link with me, maybe it will help you as well:

https://commoncog.com/g/burnout/#the-ultimate-burnout-guide-...

It doesn't sound like burnout as much as a bad fit.

Go work for a good manager.

I have ADHD-I and I'm feeling almost exactly the same way, right up to a falling out with a company I had significant ownership in/was part of the founding team.

How are your daily routines? Are you taking breaks and pursuing the things you actually enjoy doing? Have you thought much about the kind of experiences that have brought you the most joy/satisfaction in life (both at work and outside of work)?

Maybe watch this video and see if it resonates with you. It's a talk by Dr. Russell Barkley on ADHD and it's what made me finally schedule a full analysis (after literally decades of putting it off).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tpB-B8BXk0

If you'd like to talk I'm here to listen.

Times are very hard right now for a lot of people I’ve spoken with. Not to dismiss you particularly but more to say I don’t think you’re alone in this. The psychological burden they carry feels massive. I don’t know if this is due to remote work, hard to say. If you are single or not the only provider, what helped me get through was to make drastic lifestyle changes. I did cold showers, some wim hof breathing session, some yoga, running, lifting weights - I had to shock my biology out of the rut I was in. And even still I go through shitty days, but I can tolerate a bit more. I don’t have the luxury of not working, especially in this economy and I have family to support and provide for (and also role model for..) But for someone with no way out, the above really helped me.

I would consider a career change to something you're more suitable for... hopefully something less stressful too.

But don't wait too long. Being out of work for an extended period of time makes it psychologically difficult to find work again, and extended periods of not working makes most employers wary of hiring you. So the longer you're out of work, the harder it'll be for you to find work.

Even if your next job is not perfect, at least it'll put food on the table while you're there, and finding another job won't be as hard as it would be after a long period of not working.

Also, consider psychedelic therapy. It can give you a new perspective on your own life and the world, and there's a lot of research showing it can be very effective at treating major depression.

The frustrating thing is I have excelled in this career before. My second last job was really amazing and I made real, valuable contributions. I stayed with them for years, it was a match made in heaven that I'm starting to think I won't find again.

I am definitely scared of the optics of a long break. At least with the medical leave I was still technically employed during that time. I will probably only take a gap if I really truly have no choice, it'd be better to switch into anything else.

If the same if for other activities, not just work, you might want to be checked for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS, similar to long covid). It can be like having a permanent flu in some ways (exhaustion, brain fog, non-restorative sleep, sensitivity to stimuli). Many doctors may have been influenced by a now-debunked study that claimed that gradually increasing exercise or getting CBT was the fix, but now the CDC, Mayo, UpToDate, and others seem to have better information. One source is batemanhornecenter.org . Diagnosis (at least in the past) involved eliminating other diseases and depression.

Also just an idea: finding what you can do might help understand the situation.

This may be helpful in understanding more about your burnout. It was for me, particularly the COR model.

https://commoncog.com/g/burnout/#what-is-burnout

I am currently recovering from extreme work-related burnout. Also got diagnosed with ADHD while taking time off.

What helped was having enough money for a therapist, enough freedom to reduce my life to the bare minimum, and enough money to take a year long sabbatical away from work. I'm 13 months in and there starts to be some light at the end of the tunnel.

I don't want to think what would have been of me if I hadn't had that money saved.

Burnout is hell, we do not take it seriously enough, and it destroys people. It takes years to recover from, and that is not hyperbole.

Hit me up if you wanna chat about it, email in my profile. I've had excellent chats with people about ADHD, I am starting to really enjoy connecting with other humans about mental health.

> I can survive 4-6 months with no salary

In my experience, how long runway is is not the point. Or, it's not "runway of money", it's a "runway of your soul". Your soul will be eaten alive before running out of money. I hope you will be fine soon.

this happened to me 10 years ago and there is basically no way back

Are you still in tech or did you change careers?

But what are you doing now? Do you have a job, and if so, is it in the same industry? Did a complete career change help you find something you can work on/care about again?

I'm finding ways back but started to realize this .. it's probably one-way ticket. I think we can't fix it but we may be able to put in more good things to have better ratio.

>I'm finding ways back but started to realize this .. it's probably one-way ticket.

When I ask myself the question about when I'll get back to the way I was, I also have to ask "Does that include being that person that let myself get burned out so badly in the first place?"

What I'm slowly getting back to is a different person than who I was. I have different priorities about how/where to apply and manage my curiosity and energy. If I can accept the person I'm turning into, then I feel like I'll be back one day.

If I want to be the person I was a decade ago who naively worked like a donkey until I burned out, then yes, I'm never coming back.

Yeah. Time travel lesson, as a present self if you see your future self show up, something terrible might already happen! "Why are you here, you did something wrong?"

Not to say that chasing paper is bad, but doing what you enjoy makes sayings like "I don't feel like I've worked a day in my life" a cool foundation for wellbeing.

The culture in your country doesn't sound like "job jumping" is the norm (saving the expense of training/onboarding), but fresh air is always obvious in a work environment.

Work/life balance is also more than a buzzword. If both are unwell..... I'm sure its complicated.

I always get 8 hours of quality sleep and would recommend that. Sometimes its from a good days work... Other times, it provides the energy for an amazing day.

There was a time I was working in very toxic environment. Imagine situations like seeing manager shouting angrily at your coworker and you being unable to do anything about it. Or manager being passively aggressive towards you, making personal comments or treating you as his menial (bring-me-some-tea kind) without reason. And I was in worse situation than you as I could not leave at the time, had to line something up first. But once I left I literally felt the burden sliding off my back, best feeling ever.

Psychologists who say you have ADHD and should take amphetamines to treat it are unlikely to recommend something like psilocybin instead. For an alternate approach to burnout and depression:

https://ava.substack.com/p/psychedelics-a-personal-take

https://hackertimes.com/item?id=33435140

> I find that I simply don't care anymore.

Root cause established.

Do something you care about. Find that thing.

I know it sounds trite, but when you care, you will find the energy. Don’t be afraid to be selfish at this point.

The trap to avoid is falling into media & entertainment consumption to the exclusion of creative activities. Consume in the service of your goal. Spend as much time painting as watching Bob Ross — substitute “painting” and “Bob Ross” with something your care about, of course.

> I'm honestly not sure if I'm capable of working in tech anymore at this point and that's doing quite a number of any selfesteem I had.

You know, as Mr. Rogers said, "Not your toys, they're just beside you, but it's you I like" Your value isn't dependent on being able to work in tech or what you have. Go out, grab a coffee, wonder at the autumn leaves, do something nice for someone, see where that leads.

Hello! I hope you feel better soon! Burnout is hard to recover from - still trying to fully recover myself too.

I made a post and asked the community a similar question a little while ago, if you'd like to take a look at more tips and tricks people shared then too.

Link: https://hackertimes.com/item?id=29754211

I took a 3 month sabbatical this summer after burning out really hard. Now I am with a new company and don't feel 100% recovered (and probably never will be) but at least I am taking steps to prevent getting burned out again, not working more than 10 hours per day, only working weekends during crunch, and I uninstall outlook/teams from my phone when I take a vacation.

Like with most things we want to change this is a math problem. There are things you need to subtract from your life to give you more time or clarity of mind. Once your mind is clear you can then slowly start to add things that you find interesting or enjoy working on. If you find yourself still burned out, repeat the above process until you've found a balance.

> given my firing seems imminent at this point

I don't have the exact answer but to me this needs to be focused on.

Psychological safety is paramount. Workers need to know that they won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. Not having that safety for a health issue shows there's something severely wrong with your place of employment.

That depends on the jurisdiction, I'd say. Here in Germany you can take sick leave almost forever and it can be quite hard to fire people for health issues. Not impossible, and eventually the employer can fire you, but in most cases if people intend to ever work again, they can stay with the same employer.

USA: totally different.

A different job? Go travelling for a while? Travelling is a lot of fun and makes you realize that life is short and that you should make the most of it.

I changed careers and found the change fun. I may go back to coding at some point, I kinda miss the that deep thinking it requires .... but I can do that in my spare time if I really need to.

Or, if you need the money, just phone it in for a while.

> Travelling is a lot of fun and makes you realize that life is short and that you should make the most of it.

I never got what was so great about travelling. Whenever I tried doing it, I was almost immediately bored and lonely. It proabably works much better for extraverts.

I think traveling can teach you a lot about various ways of life, especially early on in life, but can also be viewed as eco irresponsible, especially if you're flying around just as a hobby. Maybe consider doing something like English language or CS teaching in non-English country of your choosing and try embed yourself with the society there...

Yep, I learnt nothing internally rather than oh nice view, strange place, different way of [people] doing things. It doesn't change me even a bit. People claim that they become a better person. I think at least 50% of them were bullshiting.

I suspect six months of working in a blue-collar job (say, construction) in an area of the country you're not familiar with would be much more enriching than 6 months of traveling in SE Asia, at least for college-educated young people.

Yeah likely. My city attracts tourists/backpackers too. As local's perspective, I'm glad they enjoy the difference, but I don't think they have changed at all. It's not like bathing holy water of experience, suddenly you come out pure. No!

I am actively applying to jobs, but of course that takes time. I actually had an offer signed, but the employer reneged on it last night which really, really sucks because it was exactly what I think I needed.

In terms of career change, I'm not sure that's possible without moving. I live very rural, there's almost no jobs here that aren't retail. If I stay here I'm basically forced to continue remote dev work. I actually want to move, but I don't think I'm in a good position to take such a risk.

> Or, if you need the money, just phone it in for a while.

One way or another I'm going to draw it out as long as possible, I basically don't have a choice.

You mention you can survive 4-6 months with no salary and you're a remote dev right now - you can "soft move" and likely extend that runway.

I don't know your life situation, but it's possible you could travel to a city in your timezone and get a short-term rental of some sort and work from there as you investigate the city and its options. You could probably go a timezone or two away and still not need to actually make it obvious; of course swapping to the other side of the world would be more difficult.

Even if you chose to return you'll at least have more knowledge about the options.

I’m opening a local metal working business. Running both until I can get a decent income stream.

Tech prospects look bleak, I think the party will be over in 10 or less years as engineers are viewed more as a cost vs value add.

There are way more "tech jobs" than people who are qualified for them. Those numbers have to come way down. Digitalisation is far from complete, there is still way more productivity to reap. Machine Learning and automation is still far from finished, growing steadily. Cynics can disagree, of course. There may even be the odd bubble bursting, temporarily.

The worst that will happen is that some companies are chasing opportunities that aren't profitable enough to hire tech workers.

Most experts who have any data or solid reasoning agree that tech jobs won't get slashed permanently.

Tech can generate enormous wealth. Talking on the order of 1 guys code for Google might bring in 100s of millions of dollars of revenue (granted most guys codes contribute far far less).

I find it rather hard to generate 100s of millions of dollars of wealth through metal working.

On the flip side, which is harder to outsource? For metal trinkets it would be similar, for stuff that needs to be on prem.. metal working would be outsource proof.

Outsourcing doesn't affect the labor market. Offshoring does. And there's no such thing as choosing to offshore or not. Everything that can get offshored gets offshored, which isn't actually that much. Supply of tech labor in other countries is just as tight.

> Everything that can get offshored gets offshored, which isn't actually that much.

Eh, there are some moats. For example around Law.

Imagine how much members of the US could save with offshored and outsourced law?

But lawyers have a strong guild protecting them. Software developers do not.

> Tech prospects look bleak, I think the party will be over in 10 or less years as engineers are viewed more as a cost vs value add.

Seems realistic, though optimistic. I think the party will be over sooner than that, probably in the next 5 or so years, but we'll collectively be in denial about it for at least another 5 years following that.

You're both wrong, I hope ;) Tech jobs just seems to follow the usual hype cycle so IMO tech jobs will still be needed in the future but perhaps fewer of them. Tech jobs are also much harder than they used to be - when I started 'coding' HTML+CSS was considered high skill. Now you're expected to have serverless lambdas generating those pages and to configure a CDN and SSL and maybe talk to some backend Machine Learning APIs for a similar pay grade. So roles where you can still handle other people, and deliver, working technical solutions will still be very much in demand.

Tech jobs are harder than they used to be, but that doesn't necessarily mean the effort is proportional to the value being produced.

Let's be honest here; a lot of what we do involves navigating the theology of software more so than actually performing valuable work. Take frontend, for instance. Frontend development is continuing to move towards Java-esque complexity all while providing no measurable improvement in efficiency or reduction in bugs. New features ship slower than they used to. Until someone can show actual evidence that "modern" web development is a measurable improvement over the old days, I'll believe it when I see it, and what I've seen for most of my career now is adherence to a bunch of clever ideas that don't really improve anything.

Yes, more tech jobs have been needed to compensate for the onslaught of bullshit, but much of that bullshit was invented by the holders of those very jobs. Much of object-oriented dogma alone invented a bunch of jobs that otherwise wouldn't have existed because it created more problems than it actually solved. When the going gets tough, economically speaking, no one's going to give a fuck about all the frameworks, all the needless abstractions, all the supposed "best practices", all the build tools, all the lint rules, all the devops, all the stupid ass containerization schemes, or any of that jazz. With some exceptions, machine learning probably being one of them, what isn't necessary will be culled. Companies that know better are going to suddenly become interested in what their engineers are actually doing, will remove the low-performers, and tell their remaining engineers to stop making things complicated.

Idk, we are still in the digital transformation and customers are now easier to reach from anywhere. Add in AI tools and tooling. People will still want to wire these things up. There will always be value at the customer interface. There will also always be open source and then new companies building on open source. We have many multiple database vendors. Multiple OS vendors etc...

I remember the Windows shrink wrap days and everyone predicting doom, and then the internet happened. Next is AI and then the metaverse most likely.

I think the future is bright.

Sorry to hear you're struggling. To share my experience, I burned out and it was a good opportunity to reconsider my career and start a spiritual practice: http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/

> My job wasn't overly difficult, but the corporate environment I found myself in was something I'd never done before and it was completely unsuited to me as an individual

Is the heart of your problem your career or this specific job / company? A change of scenery can do wonders to re-motivate and reinvigorate.

Ten years ago I had all of the following, undiagnosed: - Severe obstructive sleep apnea - Low thyroid - Low testosterone - Insulin resistance

I was turning into a ghost

The first three got eventually diagnosed and fixed. For the fourth, I moved in a place where I can do long mountain hikes during the week-end, and it helped enormously.

It sounds like the job is the problem. If you feel like you are going to be fired anyways it's probably best to start applying for other positions now. A change of culture and environment will probably help a lot. Try doing something different that allows you to learn new things.

There might be value in prior discussions (or not, but):

https://www.google.com/search?q=burnout+%2Bsite:news.ycombin...

man up, life is depressing and we are not entitled to anything and nobody owes us anything. A Job is something we have to get paid to do, otherwise would not be a job. Is not a place to be happy, make friends and be fulfilled.

hmmm, yknow maybe it's time to really take some time off (2 to 3 months) since you can afford it anyways.

i wont force you to do any shit you dont want to do right now, just chill out for a bit, relax, unwind, unplug.

then come back stronger and better after a couple of months. maybe with mental clarity on where you want to be headed in your career or business, if youd want to eat healthy or exercise some more, if youd want to date better quality of women, if youd want a higher paying job or additional streams of income.

the world is your oyster man, go chill the fuck out when you can afford it. most cant, you can, so make it count.

Sorry you're experiencing this. My advice would be:

1. Don't assume this will last forever. 2. Don't assume things are the same everywhere.

Hang in there. Try a new job, maybe a different field, maybe just a different company?

Living with someone who went undiagnosed for their entire life until their 40s and then started Ritalin and Cognitive behavioral therapy it made a huge difference.

Is there any job you can think of, tech or not, even if it's a fantasy you aren't sure exists, that you imagine yourself being comfortable in or liking?

As stupid as it sounds I really, really enjoyed serving court summons as a side job during school. I got to get out, drive around, and see lots of places. You never really knew what to expect and I liked the unpredictability of it, every trip was different form the last.

Even if not that particular job, identifying what you liked about it might help you think of other jobs too.

I'd agree with other people in the thread that if trying to do your current job feels impossible, set a goal of finding a new job, or even career. Even if you don't switch at once, having the goal and making a plan and searching will give you some focus and meaning and hope.

You are only going to be alive for a finite number of days. You may as well fill them with things you actually like doing. Or can, at least, tolerate. It sounds like your current job does not even begin to satisfy that, most basic, criteria.

Therapy. Time off (months). Training new skills and hobbies. A couple joints. A couple crazy nights. No screens in sight, even phone only for loved ones.

Did you get COVID? I'm having similar issues with both work and hobbies and I believe mine stem from the long-term side effects from COVID.

Get an NAD+ booster like Niagen quickly; even a mild Covid seems to deplete a month-worth of NAD+ in 3 days and as it is a required part of any energy reaction in mitochondria, people end up like zombies for months thereafter if they don't replenish it. See:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8831132/

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04809974

No, I have never had COVID. In fact I am the singular person I know of in my life who hasn't gotten COVID at this point.

*

Wait, what is the difference between this and procrastination?

Procrastination is just one aspect of ADHD, though it's a big one. The reason ADHD people procrastinate is that the urgency created when a deadline approaches creates enough motivation to actually do it.

One sounds funny and the other is in the DSM-5 database :)

Sleep 10+ hours per day for a while.

I stopped working for other people

how?

I want this

you always work for someone, but you can have multiple clients so you're not at the mercy of one. Even if you save up some money you have to think of ways to make it work - be it in rentals or owning a factory - you just serve different groups of people then.

bootstrapped saas / apple ecosystem apps in niches i'm familiar with. mostly passive recurring revenue (most of my time spent goes into r&d, i chose architectures to minimize ongoing operational needs).

i bootstrapped to avoid "working for" investors. and on some projects where i'm working with others, we've formed anarchist coop-like structures to avoid hypocritically subjecting others to the hierarchies i escaped. we're all happier and more productive for it. i would like to help more people try this through repeatable playbook-like resources.

Leaving the ratrace to start a bootstrapped SaaS worked good for the first 5 years.

Now into year 6 of bootstrapping a SaaS.. I am in the same exact boat as OP. And I can't take time off, at least not enough time off to "fix" the burnout.

It's painful. I didn't realize selling apps is very less of building software. Sure market is important, but it's even less than "changing our type of person". If self-promotion or narcissism is not our type, we are doomed.

> repeatable playbook-like resources

Is there someplace we can find out more? I’m very curious.

I bought indiedevstack.com to compile/blog on this but am some months away from getting going. You can follow one of my bizs for now I’ll announce there eventually @manabiSRS

Just milk the job while looking for something new that does sound interesting.

I hear you.

I have been able to skirt the burnout line and still remain _somewhat_ effective. Given that I'm still(for the time being at least) far more productive than my peers it doesn't show. However, I know what I'm actually capable off and I can tell I'm in a "degraded" state. So, I can relate.

Burnout, as I understand it, is a mismatch between your environment and yourself. Like you said, the work is completely unsuited to you. Your brain knows this and is throwing a fit so you will listen.

The way I've been able to skirt the line is this. I know that my problem is that at my job we are chock full of execs that are just trying to justify their own existence and love their voice and very little gets done anymore without a whole lot of pointless meetings. So, given that I can't really _do_ something meaningful anymore(at least not in a reasonable amount of time), I focus outside of work on things that I can actually do. I have a very long list of personal projects and I've been knocking them off my list with unprecedented speed. This has helped me feel _some_ sense of accomplishment, and has staved off the worst effects. For now.

So, if you want a short-term "fix" that may help you get some energy back, figure out what it is that you hate about your environment and see if you can refocus that elsewhere. Easier said than done, it took me some time to figure out that I missed just being able to do things.

That will not help you long term. If what you have truly is burnout, it will not change until your environment changes. In this case, your job. And I'm not necessarily talking about the company either. If you don't like what you do, doing the same thing in another environment will not help.

Now, all of the above assumes you really have burnout. If you do not, what you need will be completely different.

ADHD is not often diagnosed in adults. It doesn't mean it cannot be diagnosed, just that most diagnoses happen in children/teens. Adults that are high functioning will have coping mechanisms for untreated ADHD, some of these may be really unhealthy. One of the hallmarks of ADHD is executive function issues. Can you start tasks fine? Because if the problem that keeps you from finishing tasks at work is that you can't even bring yourself to begin working on them, that could be ADHD. And you can have burnout simultaneously. ADHD + burnout is an explosive combination. One already has issues starting tasks even during "normal" times, now they are burned out, which even for a neurotypical brain makes them unable to start any tasks.

Since you said "psychologists", plural, I'm thinking you got multiple ADHD diagnosis from more than one doctor. So I would start listening to that if I were you :) You can ask for differential diagnosis, as there are some issues that look like ADHD but are different. It could be "just" burnout, but you won't really know unless you change your working environment. If it is ADHD, you get medicated, and now things improve, it's a pretty good indication that you didn't have a neurotypical brain your entire life. You can still be burned out, in which case it means the coping mechanisms you developed for ADHD got overwhelmed.

Also, do not forget the basics. Your body must be healthy - do a checkup if you haven't done one in a while(that includes dental and vision). Get some exercise, don't have to be strenuous, just keep your body working. Get plenty of sunlight. Make sure you are sleeping well. And eat healthy. Lose weight if you are overweight (that's actually important for mental health, related to hormones and inflammation). None of that will fix your issues, but if you don't even have that covered, you will have a much harder time making any progress.

... I apologize for typing too much. I'm currently struggling myself and I have had plenty of time to think and research it. I know what I must do (get a new job). Having the energy to do some leetcode after work is a different matter.

> One of the hallmarks of ADHD is executive function issues. Can you start tasks fine?

No, I absolutely can not start tasks fine. Starting them is the hardest part of doing them and it has been an issue my entire life. It has made my life more difficult than it needs to be.

> One already has issues starting tasks even during "normal" times, now they are burned out, which even for a neurotypical brain makes them unable to start any tasks.

This is where I am. I can not start the most simple of tasks at work at this point. A simple text change in a UI? That might as well be sized for a whole sprint right now, much less significant API changes.

> Since you said "psychologists", plural, I'm thinking you got multiple ADHD diagnosis from more than one doctor.

The plural was a mistake, my apologies.

I've been there. After almost three years of very intense work. I was the technical leader in a team with, at that time, not very experienced people. We had to do a huge migration of one of the most important projects of the company. I had to work very hard: 9:00 to 21:00, weekends, crazy on-calls, refactoring tons of crap by myself, fighting with the management which, at the beginning, had a very authoritative attitude towards anything that wasn't strictly lift and shift the pile of utter garbage we had in the first place as they were not the ones suffering it, arguments and what not. I had success, got promoted, got the respect from everyone, salary raise etc you name it. Covid hit and the state of the world + working from home (which I personally dislike)...I suddenly started to feel like my brain wasn't working. Got stressed and mentally blocked by literally any slight sign of effort. What is happening? I asked myself. Am I getting old? Perhaps I hit many times my head when doing impact sports when I was younger (real thoughts I had BTW). I wrongly assumed it was just due to boredom. I requested a change to a different team that worked in an area I was more interested. Same crap, tons of garbage, even more crazy on calls, some people expecting me to pull the rabbit from my hat again...no freaking way. Then I quit the company and moved to a new one. In the new place, despite I was earning a huge amount of money in comparison, suffered from the same. Apart from that new place being an absolute sad joke, brain blocked, which triggered insecurities, which triggered a feeling of impostor syndrome etc. I left that company, took a month off and started into a different company, this time in an architect role (no on calls, design and planning focussed etc). Still feeling the burn out reminiscences but slightly better.

I am still on my way to be fully recovered (assuming one day it will eventually happen). Things I recommend:

1. Find another thing other than work and, I insistently suggest, other than even CS, that you might enjoy. In my case, climbing. It keeps me healthy, focussed and relaxed. It gives me self confidence as I see I accomplish new challenges and I progress. Also, it has helped me to improve my social skills and to appreciate and enjoy interaction with people with different interests other than computers. Computer Science is not everything.

2. Change your area. Nowadays, I simply refuse to fall back again into that "reactive-devops-trenches-wake-up-at-4:00am-and-follow-this-runbook" or "refactor-this-crap-and-fight-the-folklore". Life is short and health goes first.

3. Assume work does not define you. Do your job the best you can but remember, you are not gonna inherit the company. Become cynical but not toxic.

4. Have compassion for yourself. What you feel is completely normal. You are not weak. You simply got wasted by an industry that is mainly, IMHO a utter shitshow in 99% of the cases. Allow yourself to suffer.

Anyways, I wish you the best and really hope you recover.

Go back to the shrink and get the diagnosis and the meds. You have ADHD.

Time and therapy. Usually it’s not just the job as the sole root cause.

Yes, sometimes it's a level of self-hatred (or at least lack of self care) which makes you feel that you deserve nothing better than the job you have (which you hate, and as a result, makes you hate yourself more for being there, and it's a vicious cycle).

This is a really good comment. I've been trying to evaluate my entire life, because the last thing I want is to switch jobs/careers only to find out that wasn't really the problem in the first place.

Find a new job, sounds like you will not recover where you are now.

>Earlier this year I burned out hard and spectacularly, having nothing short of a total breakdown and being forced to take many, many months of medical leave by my GP.

I went from 1 bad job to a worse job. Burn out happens. Dont blame yourself, your job pushed too far. You'll find the next job and it will be awesome and you'll cling to this job. I know, I'm clinging to an awesome boss.

>I returned to my job late last month and I find that I simply don't care anymore. My burnout was never really fixed despite the time off. I'm unable to accomplish even basic tasks at work now and truthfully I'm at a point where I don't even care if I get fired. In the time I've been back I think I've been able to close one of two tiny tickets, the rest of the time I've literally done nothing.

It's hard to be sure. It sounds like you're bad off and this will take a long time to properly recover. It won't be months unfortunately.

>During my time off I've been poked and prodded by psychologists and they seem to think I have ADHD and that it was a large contributing factor to this, though I'm not completely sure I buy this explanation.

Certainly possible, yes there is a factor of oversubscribing drugs, but those psychologists are there to help you. No one here can diagnose a throwaway account.

>which I'm likely going to have to consider given my firing seems imminent at this point. I simply don't think I'm capable of maintaining this job anymore.

The thing about burnout is you become extremely defensive and see "im about to be fired any moment" which often isnt true. This actually is what gets you burnt out. You feel like, if only I worked a little harder then i wont get fired. Shitty managers who dont care about turnover use this trick to get maximum productivity.

https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1889985/cebu/feature/four...

>I really don't know how to get over this and how to move past it. I feel quite literally incapable of working. My mind knows what needs to be done, but my body says no and I am overwhelmed by apathy. I'm honestly not sure if I'm capable of working in tech anymore at this point and that's doing quite a number of any selfesteem I had.

Dont worry about your job. Hopefully you have 'unemployment' benefits where you live. If not, hopefully you have welfare. You shouldn't care about this job. Instead work on solving your mental health.

Here's what you need to do.

You no longer care about the past, yesterday doesn't matter anymore. cant change it, dont worry about it.

Tomorrow doesn't exist, don't even attempt to think about tomorrow. You're not nostradamus and have no chance of predicting the future. If you could predict the future... might I recommend day trading lol. None of us can predict the future.

When you wake up in the morning, you are only allowed to think about NOW.

Multi-tasking is a myth. Human brains literally cant multitask. You now work on only 1 thing at a time IN THE NOW.

>Truthfully I didn't know things could get this bad. I'm trying to figure out what my future even looks like and how to move past this and any advice would be really appreciated.

Take a baseball bat to that crystal ball. The future is not something you can predict. Tomorrow doesnt matter; it's a trap to try to imagine the future.

hey there, sorry to hear you are not feeling all right. I know the feeling.

If you got to a point where it's "that bad", then the first thing I would do is lower that level of emotional and physical stress as much as possible. Since this is being caused by thinking, you can't solve it by thinking. You must realize this to get out of there. You can't get out of your situation by thinking.

Step 1: Relax and rest your mind in nature.

I would take a 3-5 days trip ( 7 ideal ) camping/hiking trip *alone*, don't take your phone or laptop. Pick a trail that you can follow on a map, or just go camping. Keep it within your means. Don't prove yourself, and don't pick a challenge. Keep it simple, easy, and attainable. You should leave in the next week. Don't delay this.

Focus your mind on the problem at hand, and notice when irrational worries come in while planning your trip. Don't argue with them, just focus on finding the practical solution to it.

This is medicine for your brain. This will help you in several ways. First, it will help you focus on a task, it will show you the negative patterns in your mind and teach you how to overcome them with things within your reach right now. It will show you, you can get things done and learn when not to listen to the narration of your mind.

Just being in nature there will help you relax and recharge your body keeping you focused on all the work that camping involves. But you can turbo-charge it, and it sounds like you need to.

While you are there, find places where you can sit alone and feel the forest, the moment. Not by thinking about it, not in the interface of the mind, on the narration of thought ( label, judging, etc ).

But by experiencing it directly. You'll know you go it when you start to feel the beauty, listen to the wind, and notice small insects and slow things. This is not a goal, not a step to reach. It's the other way around, focus on resting your mind and the feeling of peace and healing shows up. And when it does, stay still, stay the same, in equanimity.

Don't force it, don't over-concentrate, don't "heat-up" your brain as a car going at max revs. If you get frustrated, remember is not about not being frustrated, but about taking energy ( power, attention, battery life ) away from the thought process that is frustrated. Ignore it and focus on something outside, on the feeling in you hands, on sound, sight, smell. Get out of your head.

Lowering "your thinking revs" takes time, you can't accelerate that. It takes 2-3 days in nauture, so take it easy. Things might and will feel strange, bad. Lot's of thoughts to leave got back home, compulsion about using phone and laptop, lot's of what-if's. Lot's of ideas that will solve all your problems if you go back. STAY until you can sit down on the ground and watch the leaves fly of trees. Until you can listen to the wind, look at a fire burn - all without thinking, without trying not to think. Just be still, do nothing, eyes open. Be. This is the medicine.

We don't get burnout by working too much, lots of people work 2 and 3 shifts and they are all right. We get burnout by a condition we did not know we had that makes us think and worry too much. Compulsively, until our brains get really tired.

We must learn how to manage this condition and our brains ( minds ). But we can't do this while in "burnout", crisis and certainly not by thinking and worrying non stop about the future.

Step 2:

Be prepared before you live for when you get back home. You will be successful, and when you get back you'll feel better. Try to have things organized, to take advantage of this breakthrough and apply all you learned in this "retreat" in your daily life.

You must be really focused on healing and recovering. The thought process will come back, it's a habit and a pattern. You must be patient and persistent.

Find people like this around you, try meditation, yoga centers, and qi gong centers near you until you find one that clicks.

Doing this ( not thinking, not worrying, not creating this context, this reality you are in right now ) must be your priority in life.

If you focus on yourself now, you will be ok in the future. Promise.

Remember it's not about getting rid of the feelings. Discover that your emotions, thoughts, and even the burnout it's not happening to you, they are just signals being emitted very strongly. Like error logs overflowing the system, you can't get rid of them or continue ignoring them anymore. Debug, observe, line by line, and you'll get it.

Happy to help more if this resonates with you: roberto@paz.co.cr

hey there, sorry to hear you are not feeling all right. I know the feeling.

If you got to a point where it's "that bad", then the first thing I would do is lower that level of emotional and physical stress as much as possible. Since this is being caused by thinking, you can't solve it by thinking. You must realize this to get out of there. You can't get out of your situation by thinking.

Step 1: Relax and rest your mind in nature.

I would take a 3-5 days trip ( 7 ideal ) camping/hiking trip alone, don't take your phone or laptop. Pick a trail that you can follow on a map, or just go camping. Keep it within your means. Don't prove yourself, and don't pick a challenge. Keep it simple, easy, and attainable. You should live in the next week. Don't delay this.

Focus your mind on the problem at hand, and notice when irrational worries come in while planning your trip. Don't argue with them, just focus on finding the practical solution quickly.

This is medicine for your brain. This will help you in several ways. First, it will help you focus on a task, it will show you the negative patterns in your mind and teach you how to overcome them. It will show you, you can get things done and not always listen to the narration of your mind.

Just being there will help you relax and recharge your body keeping you focused on all the work that camping involves.

While you are there, find places where you can sit alone and feel the forest, the moment. Not by thinking about it, not in the interface of the mind, on the narration of thought ( label, judging, etc ). But by experiencing it directly. You'll know you go it when you start to feel the beauty, listen to the wind, and notice small insects and slow things. This is your only goal, this will help you rest you mind.

Don't force it, don't over-concentrate, don't "heat-up" your brain as a car going at max revs. If you get frustrated, remember is not about not being frustrated, but about taking energy ( power, attention, battery life ) to the thought process that is frustrated.

Lowering "your thinking revs" takes time, you can't accelerate that. It takes 2-3 days in nauture, so take it easy. Things might and will feel strange, bad. Lot's of thoughts to leave got back home, compulsion about using phone and laptop, lot's of what-if's. Lot's of ideas that will solve all your problems if you go back. STAY until you can sit down on the ground and watch the leaves fly of trees. Until you can listen to the wind, look at a fire burn - all without thinking, without trying not to think. Just be still, do nothing, eyes open. Be. This is the medicine.

We don't get burnout by working too much, lots of people work 2 and 3 shifts and they are all right. We get burnout by a condition we did not know we had that makes us think and worry too much. Compulsively, until our brains get really tired.

We must learn how to manage this condition and our brains ( minds ). But we can't do this while in "burnout", crisis and certainly not by thinking and worrying non stop about the future.

Step 2:

Be prepared before you live for when you get back home. You will be successful, and when you get back you'll feel better. Try to have things organized, to take advantage of this breakthrough and apply all you learned in this "retreat" in your daily life.

You must be really focused on healing and recovering. The thought process will come back, it's a habit and a pattern. You must be patient and persistent.

Find people like this around you, try meditation, yoga centers, and qi gong centers near you until you find one that clicks.

Doing this ( not thinking about it ) must be your priority in life.

If you focus on yourself now, you will be ok in the future. Promise.

Happy to help more if this resonates with you: roberto@paz.co.cr

> the corporate environment I found myself in was something I'd never done before and it was completely unsuited to me as an individual

There are two things here. There is your (correct!) realization and recognition of your alienating corporate environment, then that acts as a catalyst to your reaction - your resulting behavior.

My grandfather used to meet people who were in the original class divide in the United States - the masters and slaves from the cotton fields in the south. You are a wage slave, and the corporation controlled by the capitalist bourgeoisie exists to exploit you, and doesn't ultimately care if it burns you out as there's another young guy coming down the road.

Other than your exploitation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour ), the unpaid expropriation of your surplus labor time ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value ) by your corporate employer, there is also the feeling of alienation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation ) you are describing, which flows from a number of things I won't go into here, but that others have described in literature over the past two centuries.

Making this even more unpleasant is the idea pushed that the problem is you. That is due to the hegemony ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony ) of the superstructure ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure ) by the current ruling class. This is ever-present - one example, you post this message on this board, but the Verizon/AT&T corporations mediate your access to this board, which itself is run by another corporation. While this is an example, the cultural hegemony of the rentier ruling class's superstructure us ever-present.

So you have come to the correct realization. You work for your enemy. Your boss is your enemy. They have worked to turn not just your workplace against you but the entire society.

The comfort, fellow worker, is that your fellow workers are not your enemy. Some of them vye to be managers themselves, and will side with the bosses against you, but many will act in solidarity with you, their fellow worker. And you will act in solidarity with them. Learning about all of this, and organizing with others to push back where one can at this point of history can be comforting as well.

Your feelings are natural and will not change, but your reaction can change. I work for an alienating corporation as well, but I can cope with it. I'd prefer to work for myself or a coop, but can not afford to currently, and even that is not an ultimate solution within the existing relations of production - the entire system has to be overthrown, just like it was in France and England and Russia when their kings and czars were eliminated (well I guess in England the kings came back).

I still feel unpleasantness at work, much of it things my fellow workers complain about. I probably react to micro-management more strongly than some, or worse workers trying to become managers who think they're my boss.

In addition to this, why should I do a good job and create a good product for my exploited? This is real cognitive dissonance because the exploiters don't care if you churn out crap if it's profitable. But we have a need to put out a good product for those who consume the fruit of our labor. My uneasy compromise is I spend my 40 hours a week making a good product, but I will not work over that to do a better job if I am rushed (unless not working unpaid overtime threatens my job). That is some cognitive dissonance - I do a good job for myself, my fellow workers and the consumers - not for my company.