[grantcox]

"Mental illness" and "psychological problems" both have such unfair negative connotations. But yes, if someone is finding the pressure of an activity graph and "breaking a streak" is negatively impacting their work-life balance, I think they likely have a problem.

These problems are quite common, hence the great success of free-to-play, extremely-gamified mobile apps. In many of those cases exploiting the most vulnerable users is the entire point, but not so for Github. So for Github to consider how they can maintain the interesting / fun / motivating (or irrelevant) aspect for most of their users, but temper the positive/negative reinforcements that some people may find literally addictive, it seems quite responsible.

[Smudge]

Zach Holman has an interesting writeup on focusing on maintaining that streak, and how it (among other factors) eventually led to burnout:

https://zachholman.com/posts/streaks/

Personally, I find the contribution chart both motivating and frustrating. The contribution chart is enough of a signal that I try to make sure it looks healthy each week. But, at the same time, it's far from a perfect tool for assessing how productive I am, because commits come in all shapes and sizes. And like any gamified metric, it can lead to unhealthy obsessions.

Arguably anyone who falls for gamification has "a problem," to one degree or another. But if we know that certain personalities are more likely to have unhealthy obsessions with something, that's maybe a good reason to take it down, or at least lessen the focus on the "streak" and represent activity more positively without highlighting the gaps.

[mburns]

Geoff Greer has a great counterpoint to that article (published around the same time):

http://geoff.greer.fm/2015/01/07/burnout-is-in-the-mind/

[Smudge]

Burnout is the western equivalent of "fan death," really? I don't buy it.

I appreciate the argument that burnout is more like depression, and should be approached with the same mindset. (i.e. simply taking time off of work might not cure it.)

But that's not really a valid counterpoint. One person's ability to have a 2-year Github streak is not evidence that burnout is just "in the mind," as he puts it. It just means that he's found a particularly sustainable balance. In fact, I'd argue that he's kind of an outlier. That 2-year streak would definitely not work for everyone.

What we commonly refer to as "burnout" can also surface with very physical symptoms. Blood pressure spikes, teeth grinding, weight loss or gain, physical exhaustion, even heart attacks. Maybe these symptoms are better attributed to stress or lack of exercise, but when they are a result of overwork and, more specifically, the compulsive need to work at a certain level despite all costs, that's burnout. It's not good and should not be taken lightly.

[KirinDave]

> But yes, if someone is finding the pressure of an activity graph and "breaking a streak" is negatively impacting their work-life balance, I think they likely have a problem.

So your misplaced value judgements, loaded language and dismissals aside... You realize that just because you might not value it, that it isn't being used to value you?

Lots of employers use github activity as a signal for hiring. And so making sure you can demonstrate very active participation in the community is often quite important to getting a job.

Even then, given that overwork seems to be something of an epidemic in the software industry and the entire industry is famously full of signals suggesting that a 60 hour work week is normal and reasonable (hell, somehow they decided that working on saturdays wasn't enough, now people say you need to work 8.5 hours every day to be "normal" and 11 hours a day is "crush")?

The signal and the reward for more work isn't healthy after some point. There is an environment around github that github has to consider.