[55555]

I think a big factor in burnout is that most work is ultimately meaningless, or even morally wrong, and on a deep level, we're aware of that. Why is it so hard to make yourself work? Probably because you actually should be doing something else with your life.

If someone paid you money to kick a dog, you'd feel a strong urge to do something else. That's because you shouldn't kick dogs. But when we feel the same urge to not work, we read articles (not this one so much) that are essentially lists of ways to trick ourselves into doing things that don't matter or which will make the world a worse place.

You may have an idea that you know will make you a millionaire and which you could build, but you just can't force yourself to because fundamentally money won't make you happy and the idea is meaningless at best.

At least this is often the case for me.

[jly]

I think this is more true than many would like to admit. Maybe 'most work' as meaningless isn't the way I would phrase it, but I know many including myself that are often creatively and technically challenged, work an average number of hours, but feel the mental stress of burnout purely because of the guilt and resentment of spending so much time on the specific job function, itself.

To put it a little more abstract than 'kicking the dog', much of the work we do is in service purely of the bottom line - for products no one demands or needs, that solve no real human needs (of which there are MANY unmet needs), but generate maximum profit often at the expense of others or our collective future. Some work that centers purely around controlling capital serves virtually no real human function and has no actual output except profit (think banking, real estate, etc). Maybe I'm in the minority but these thoughts weigh heavily on me and make it much hard to make myself 'work', regardless of compensation. We keep at it because it's not feasible or enjoyable to be low-income in the world we live in, but we feel the urge that we should be doing something else. I call that a form of burnout.

[thesagan]

I identify with a lot of what you write, especially about wanting to avoid hurting other people in the pursuit of profits. What has bothered me lately, very much so, is how in-the-minority I feel about this "social crisis" that I feel is occurring: hurting people/ourselves in pursuit of money that we won't personally even see. (In-the-minority from the people that surround me in my work and personal life.)

I'm [finishing] working through burnout from my own consultancy that I closed down a few years ago, reloading fuel for my next heat. Meaning is so important, because after a certain income threshold the money means less and less, too.

As an aside, the people I work among seems to be primo in what fuels my passion, even before getting to the work of the company mission. Always looking for camaraderie (and friendly competition) among peers and an acceptable "mission" that binds us.

Good luck to you!

[Clownshoesms]

> What has bothered me lately, very much so, is how in-the-minority I feel about this "social crisis" that I feel is occurring: hurting people/ourselves in pursuit of money that we won't personally even see. (In-the-minority from the people that surround me in my work and personal life.)

A key point I think. I'm not sure it is a minority feeling, but more a case of active propoganda/cultural influence that keeps 80-90% of people complacent ("We're the good guys! This doesn't feel right, but they just told us we're the good guys! Keep working!").

[55555]

I wish I had advice for you but I don't. I just want to relate that it was also extremely hard on me when I had the same realization.

[seanp2k2]

This is one of my big problems with the idea of money being so separated from actual good these days. It also creates huge wealth gaps, and I have no idea what could be done to re-align it. Basically, I believe that the concept of money as it exists today is deeply broken and should be aligned with something which benefits humans vs something which is required in small to moderate quantities to not suffer yet which people obsess over, collect, and seek to increase with an unrelenting fervor, despite any damage it does to society or individuals.

[dnautics]

Money is very broken currently.

"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls . . . become 'profiteers', who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished not less than the proletariat."

Doesn't that sound familiar? The quote is, ironically, by John Maynard Keynes, the very person policymakers cite to justify stealing from the poor and giving to the rich via inflation, in the name of "stability".

[Dylan16807]

> stealing from the poor and giving to the rich via inflation

Inflation is a tax on assets. Isn't that the exact opposite of taking from the poor?

[qb45]

Inflation is a tax on money, not on all assets. It costs those who have their assets located in money. The big fish don't and beggars neither. Lower-middle would be my guess.

[tim333]

It's a tricky problem. I guess to an extent government can tax wealth accumulation that doesn't do good and fund good stuff that doesn't make money but it's hard to judge/implement.

[Clownshoesms]

I think we're showing our evolutionary background, in particular greed. Having our monetary system essentially controlled by powerful private interests is a disaster too.

[jansho]

I also identify with you. I struggled to find the venture that hits the "golden point", where it solves a genuine problem, doesn't disrupt to the point of messing up lives, is beautiful (by virtue of having an arty-farty personality) ... and all that plus maximum but entirely ethical profits.

I think I found it: edtech. Edtech is a notoriously hard one to crack, and it's a long game. Fortunately I've always enjoyed working with children and philosophising about the best ways to teach and learn. The bad news: most edtech are flops.

Still, it adds a bit of meaning to the everyday hum-drum.

[Danihan]

The unfortunate reality is that a lot of success boils down to IQ (and some other metrics of mental acuity,) which is mostly hereditary or imprinted, so that's depressing for a lot of people in education who started off wide-eyed and optimistic.

Also, an efficient, nationwide online schooling system (CAVA in California as an example,) would be the end of something like 90% of the teachers in the country. Would that be a good thing or a bad thing? Who even knows...

Everything has trade-offs.

[jansho]

Hmm my edtech aims for global literacy; so a reading programme for ESL kids who may be disadvantaged enough to only have access to a smartphone.

So that at least frees me from that glum thought of IQ vs Nurture tug-o-war.

While I'm at it, I might as well advertise:

--------- If anyone is interested to join my adventure please feel free to contact me via my profile. ---------

Someone with good tech skills will especially be welcomed, as I'm a bit rusty, and plus it's more enjoyable to make pictures and courses. I'm based in the UK but I'm not fussy about having an online collaborator :)

[Mz]

Hi there. You can come join us on the "light" side at business bootstrappers.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/business-bootstrappe...

[danblick]

I'm less certain than you are that good online education resources for K-12 would also mean the end of teacher jobs.

The anecdote about bank teller jobs and ATMs comes to mind - https://www.aei.org/publication/what-atms-bank-tellers-rise-...

Not saying that teacher jobs are likely to increase, just that I'm not sure they'd go away altogether, either.

[afpx]

Why wouldn't technology be able to magnify mental attributes, just as it magnifies our other attributes?

[dvtv75]

Interestingly, I've been thinking very much along these lines with regard to my present job. It occurs to me that the actual reason for my current role is to fleece the taxpayer of as much public funding as possible, and in about nine hours I'll be working a day just to fleece the city of property taxpayer's money.

A quick bit of arithmetic reveals that we charge a significant amount ($50k+) for what we do, but put <10% of that back into the final product. (I can only account for about 8% of it.)

Nobody needs what we do. If my workplace collapsed in an earthquake, nobody would notice. Most people don't even know we exist, and are very surprised that such a facility exists here.

As you say, these thoughts have a serious impact on me. Every time we have a new hire I urge them to join the union and to use the place like it's a one-night stand. I would do almost anything I could find, but there is little appropriate work for me.

[5_minutes]

What organisation really produces something meaningful? Perhaps most of it is different shades of fluff.

For example many government and institutional project assignments are a complete waste of time and money to begin with.

Quite often they're a checkbox on some bureaucrat's desk.

Some perfect examples of this is you can find when looking at the (technical) tenders the European Commission issues. Pick your (tech) topic and be sure find a few million being thrown at some research projects that are never being utilised, or of which the outcome literally doesn't matter.

All being funded with taxpayer's money. There are hundreds of these projects being funded every year, and they are a complete waste of money.

While there are people dying on boats to get into the EU, they are funding machine learning and AI research projects that would be laughably outdated 3 years ago.

However, if one company doesn't pick it up, another one will. It is a whole ecosystem of its own of companies and organisations applying for useless EU projects.

Perhaps the problem is not the companies fulfilling these assignments but rather the governments that issue them in the first place. Or the general public that lets their taxpayers money get wasted like that in the first place.

[graphitezepp]

Yup exhausting to have this world view isn't it? And rising depression rates suggest, to me at least, that people that think this way are becoming more common.

[jansho]

When you find yourself in this situation, it's a good idea to "zoom out" a little and get closer to nature and real people.

I took long walks, trying to soak up the sun, trees, insects everything. I also walked all over the city and watched different people getting on with their lives; commuting, serving, sweeping, chatting ... and all the while paying attention to their facial expressions and language. And finally I volunteered at a school.

It will bring some calm. You will also realise how envious you can be of those in poverty.

[jgamman]

That last sentence. Seriously?

[Mz]

It's probably a terrible way to frame it. Maybe a better way is to say something like "People whose lives do not revolve solely around pursuit of the almighty dollar."

I would like to think there is a happy medium and that there are people who have their priorities straight and are also not poor. But there seems to be a dearth of evidence for this thing I would like to believe. It seems like those unwilling to sell their soul for money often have damn little of it.

So, while I understand your reaction, I can't quite manage to feel offended at what is possibly not the best framing, but possibly not inaccurate per se either.

(Edit: I am not saying everyone who has money has their priorities screwed up. I am just saying it seems to be hard to get both things right. It seems most people err on one side or the other, even if it isn't how they want to live. Those who err on the side of other priorities often seem to really struggle financially. Those who place a high priority on money often seem to do so at a personal cost that those chronically without money are loathe to make.)

[boomlinde]

> It's probably a terrible way to frame it. Maybe a better way is to say something like "People whose lives do not revolve solely around pursuit of the almighty dollar."

Yes, but the notion that the lives of those in poverty revolve less around the pursuit of money seems far removed from reality. Poor people struggle to make ends meet. This means taking awful jobs they don't want, eating low quality food, not affording sick leave etc. Only wealthy people can afford not to worry about it. I can not "place a high priority on money" for a year and still make ends meet while not worrying for a second that I won't be able to get another well-paying job by the time I feel like it. It's because I am not poor.

Sure, there are vagrants and hobos whose lives revolve around the pursuit of food and shelter rather than money, but that's kind of the exception that proves the rule.

[jansho]

I think today is my bad wordsmith day.

I was so detached from feeling reality, I felt jealous when I saw scavengers in Nigeria finding 'treasure' in the junk yard that they can fix and sell in the market. And when I was in a not so affluent area at one time, and guys in rags gathered around a trolley were chatting away happily. And when a shopkeeper of a small booth looked so relaxed, watching the world go by with his shiny eyes and small smile.

These people I felt was really experiencing life. They're on the knife edge, yet they seem ... I don't know, they had something which I didn't have at that time.

I'm sure alright now. But till today I can't feel sorry for disadvantaged people: they are not pathetic masses, they're people who happen to be born in unfair circumstances and something's gotta be done - and pity is not one of them.

[mikekchar]

Based on the topic of this thread, you can look at it in a different way. All humans need a challenge (or, at least, I've never met someone who is happy without some kind of challenge). A challenge for survival is, perhaps, the most noble kind. Literature (in all cultures) is filled with fantasies of the "Noble Savage". It is easy to connect meaning to that life and death struggle.

In that context, if I compare a rich person sitting on their yacht, sipping a martini to a scavenger who excitedly sets to work fixing a broken clock in order to eat next week -- which person would I want to be like? I mean, yachts and martinis are great, but they don't tell me what kind of person I am -- only that I am rich. Happily tinkering away while struggling against all odds? I want to be that kind of person. So does everyone -- that's why the motif pops up in virtually every piece of fiction, from the Bourne Identity to Harry Potter.

It's a bit of fiction, but I still think it's important. In truth, having a meaningful, noble challenge is mostly orthogonal to having money. We do see people struggling to gain money so that they can escape challenge -- only to be miserable with the result. However, money can also provide the means to choose your challenge rather than to be forced to always deal with survival.

In the end, though, whether you have money or not, how you choose to respond to challenge is what determines what kind of person you are. I also envy and respect those who excitedly greet their challenges every day.

[zubat]

I think the main point to focus on is not the relative condition of liveliness, but the mechanism of its generation - which is to have and engage with difficult life problems, struggling against them each day, even while knowing that there's some absurdity to it(because the premises are so often arbitrary).

In the popular context this always maps onto basic survival since it's very relatable and immediate: but for a person in a slightly more privileged state the problem is one of picking the thing to struggle with, because it's possible to walk away from so much of it, find a distraction and squander one more day. If walking away from everything were really the answer, suicide would be success, and we are disinclined to want to believe that. Neither does it work to try to engage with every problem you see as there are too many of those and you aren't going to be effective at all of them.

This motivates many of the conclusions of Stoic thought: the moderation, the development of awareness about one's sphere of control.

[rdiddly]

Why not? Is it such a taboo idea to question whether maybe those without a lot of money might not be happier, more integral, less living-a-lie? (Assuming there is enough for the basics of survival.) I've seen it first-hand. Some of them even feel sorry for the rich Americans. Sometimes what you gain by staying poor is worth more than the money.

[j2bax]

LMAO

[praneshp]

I think the increased ability to talk about depression is a more important factor in rising depression rates. Unless the old rates had a model to factor in unreported cases.

[theparanoid]

Stagnation of income and living standards is probably the leading cause. It's not so great being in your 30's and barely affording to buy a house if at all.

[notfromhere]

think of how much top-tier human and financial capital is tied up in recreating photo sharing apps, let alone other banal software pursuits

[taway_1212]

Sadly, market (profit) driven ventures usually seem incapable of making the big leaps and can only incrementally build on the status quo. It seems that a fundamental change can only be brought in by state (see ex. state funding for Silicon Valley leading to computer revolution), which will only shell out the big bucks when facing existential threats, such as war (military being a huge driver in technology, standarization, organization) or ex. epidemics. In current times, there are no imminent existential threats (solutions to global warming would require global coordination, which likely isn't going to happen), so the states mostly take a back seat and we're left with Snapchats and Ubers.

[maldusiecle]

I don't think this is true. Occupations that have very positive social impact can have very high burnout rates--it's not as if burnout and depression are unheard of among teachers and social workers, for instance.

You're confusing cause and effect, to a certain degree. The feeling that your work is meaningless can be a symptom of burnout itself. People who do work that clearly improves other people's lives can still feel that their work is meaningless.

[metaphorm]

teaching itself is a noble profession, but teaching within the constraints, limitations, and structural flaws of the American public education institution can absolutely feel like "doing wrong" a lot of the time.

[mamcx]

Also, help people is high stress, and people fight back hard against help (for example, try convince someone to quit drugs).

[marsrover]

I can imagine there are many teachers and social workers who burn out due to feeling like they're not making an impact no matter how hard they try.

I don't think he's confusing cause and effect. There are instances where burnout is caused by a lack of purpose provided by the job. Just because there are instances of work feeling meaningless caused by burnout, doesn't mean the inverse cannot happen.

> People who do work that clearly improves other people's lives can still feel that their work is meaningless.

I can't imagine this is common. For someone to feel this way, I feel, they probably have underlying issues of existential origin. This is assuming the person is directly doing work that is improving someone else's life.

[germinalphrase]

They also burn out from work load. In my city, county social workers have a case load of ~60 youth they are supposed to be meeting with and providing services to every week. They are clearly being set up to fail.

Consequently, the yearly turnover rate is approximately 30 percent.

[cookiecaper]

>I can't imagine this is common. For someone to feel this way, I feel, they probably have underlying issues of existential origin. This is assuming the person is directly doing work that is improving someone else's life.

Most people are employed in the course of something important and/or useful, even if it's tedious or boring.

There's a strong argument that some of the least skilled jobs provide some of our most critically important functions. Those positions are low paid because there are lot of people willing and able to do them, not because they aren't needed.

I think claiming "my work is meaningless" is just a broad expression of workplace dissatisfaction and not really specific enough to mean anything. The position itself likely has an important function or no one would be willing to pay for it.

[ambicapter]

Not really, you just have to work for completely inept management that stymies or stonewalls your every effort to improve the situation.

[no-s]

I often say that bad management makes good people go bad. Which covers a whole gamut of personal and career dysfunction...even when you know it's happening and try to fight it you can still be suborned into burnout and depression. After 30+ years in the biz I became acutely aware of this.

[wu-ikkyu]

>"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."

-Buckminster Fuller

[cortesoft]

I feel like this is more about how you see life in general than about your job and work.

Quite simply, I love life. I know this isn't true for everyone, but it is for me. I find a lot of things meaningful and exciting. I love watching people on youtube excel at their random hobbies, I love seeing people compete in sports, I love talking about random things with friends and coworkers. I love the feeling I get when I stretch my legs out, I love walking outside and feeling the breeze on my face.

I love watching my daughter learn to walk, I love cuddling with my wife. I love fiddling with computers and getting them to do stuff.

Yes, maybe my job isn't 'meaningful' in some abstract, deep and profound, sense (I work for a large CDN owned by a giant corporation), but I think it makes the world a little bit better for people to be able to stream silly videos, watch live sports, and surf the web faster. I enjoy my coworkers, and look forward to going into work every day to see them and talk about random things we see in the world.

Even the horrible things that go on in the world don't get me too down. Yes, suffering is awful and I want to do everything I can to alleviate it where ever I can; at the same time, it is amazing that we do as good a job as we do. I am always gratified when I think about how many people live together in this world, and we get along remarkably well when you think about how we are really just randomly evolved animals. I mean, look at the complex society we have built! When I drive down the freeway, I can't help but be amazed at the things humans are able to build.

In short, things are fucking amazing. Life is pretty awesome, if you choose to focus on the awesome things.

[theseadroid]

You think your job is making the world a little better place isn't it? Do you think all or most people can think the same way? That everyday the 8 hours of their lives are making the world better/not wasted? The comment you replied to used the imaginary job of 'dog kicker' to say that's not always the case. In real life, there are jobs who are censoring internet, who are profiling teenage to find better advertisement opportunities, who are monitoring regular citizens' communications. The list goes on. And there are programmers that develop those tools to enable those jobs. Do you think people working those jobs can be confident saying they are making the world at least a little bit better?

[Thrillington]

    In short, things are fucking amazing. Life is pretty awesome, if you choose to focus on the awesome things.

That only works when you have the luxury of making that choice.

I recently rejoined the workforce after taking about 18 months off due to burnout. I had the luxury to do so. During that downtime I gained a roommate who is doing facilities work at a gym. She does not have the luxury to focus on the good things in life.

[cortesoft]

I think everyone has the luxury to focus on the good things. I have known VERY poor people who are happy. I have known very sick people who are happy. I have known people who have suffered horrific loss, and are happy.

Everyone can make the most out of their own current situation. Sure, it is easier when your situation is objectively better, but there is no cutoff where you HAVE to focus on the negative.

[malkia]

There was a Game Designer Book (or collection of interviews) where someone (forgive me, I forget the name) classified games into two categories: one with goal (game-like), and the other ones without (toy-like).

For example Mario Bros is about saving the Princess (Goal), while Age Of Empires is not (toyette).

Wondering if this applies back to life. Some people put goals, others just like to play with life, to experience it, to see what's about.

Nah... probably wrong re-analogy here, but made me think about it this way... After all there are no save games in life...

Thank you for sharing your experience!

[cortesoft]

I think you are on to something. I have always thought of the things we value as having either intrinsic value or extrinsic value; do we value the thing because it itself is good, or because it allows us to get something else that is good? Money, for example, has extrinsic value, because we only value it for what we can buy with it (unless you are coin collector, I suppose). Eating ice cream, on the other hand, has intrinsic value because we enjoy the sensation for itself.

I feel like a lot of very goal oriented people never get to the intrinsic value part, which is where the real purpose in life is. If you are always doing something in order to get something else, you are going to feel like you are on a treadmill. You have to eventually arrive at something you find intrinsically valuable.

Personally, I find a whole lot of things intrinsically valuable, which is probably why I am such a genuinely happy person.

[Retra]

That's kind of an artificial distinction though. If your goal is to experience nice things, then the two are irreconcilably indistinguishable.

A big part of happiness is enjoying what you have. On the other hand, happiness doesn't really matter all that much. It's only a goal if you don't know how to achieve it. Once you figure it out, you move onto some other goal until you become unhappy chasing that one.

[Bakary]

There may not be a true distinction between these two life-modes. If you chase a goal, you are still experiencing life as a "toy" but with an added layer of abstraction and meaning you've built yourself that prevents you from seeing it this way.

[bamboozled]

Shoving your head in the sand perhaps?

Maybe your life is awesome, but people with chronic depression probably find it hard to just "look on the bright" there way out of it. Kudos to you for being the master of your destiny (honestly), but not everyone has it so easily.

Maybe it's their fault for not having the privilege to be exposed to the comments section of hacker news? :)

[cortesoft]

Chronic depression is not caused by avoiding "shoving your head in the sand." It is certainly not the case that people with chronic depression are simply more 'aware' of all the shittiness in the world than the happy people.

I am fully aware of the awfulness in the world. I know millions of people suffer immensely every day, and I want to do my part to alleviate as much suffering as I can. However, I also know that me being miserable will not help anyone. Finding joy wherever you can is simply the best response to a crazy, unjust, and often times cruel world.

As far as depression goes, I hope my comment didn't come across as dismissive of real depression. That is a serious condition that cannot be fixed just by sheer will. It can, however, be dealt with, and I have many family members who are living testimants to that fact. It must be treated like any other serious health issue; I am in no way advocating ignoring your problems, I am saying make the best of it as you deal with them.

[a3n]

I left a job last year that was the most meaningful job I've ever had. Despite the benefit to society, and my appreciation of that fact, I left because of an indignity. I essentially gave someone else power over how I felt about myself.

Jobs are not just jobs, they're people too. You don't go to work and save the world every day, you mostly work with other people, which can be great, or it can be hell.

[tutufan]

I've been through this as well, and it sucks. Sadly, even organizations doing societally important work can be incapable of policing their internal politics and professionalism in even a basic way.

I'm still working on accepting this.

[neuromantik8086]

Relatedly, it took me a while to pick up on the fact that "non-profit" does not necessarily equate to "beneficial for society". Many non-profits out there have noble purported goals, but when you actually gain some experience at them you start to realize that they are vanity projects for the wealthy.

[edit]: To clarify, I'm not making the claim that all non-profits are vanity projects, just that there are many out there that are. If you ever do want to work in the non-profit sector, doing some due diligence before applying for a job is a must (I recommend obtaining the publicly reported financial records for a non-profit in Form 990; what a non-profit's founder pays him/herself relative to the average employee speaks volumes about their moral character).

[seanp2k2]

Vanity projects or ways for rich people to defer more money they should be paying as tax to orgs run by / made up of their friends & family.

[neuromantik8086]

True, although using non-profits for tax evasion doesn't really work out that well if you die. iirc, HHMI was originally supposed to be a tax evasion vehicle, but started becoming a serious research venture after Howard Hughes expired.

[bspn]

>I think a big factor in burnout is that most work is ultimately meaningless, or even morally wrong, and on a deep level, we're aware of that.

I don't this is true across the board, but the challenge is finding a "job" that you love and are excited to tackle every day. This will differ for most people, but the closer you can get to doing something that you would voluntarily want to do even if you weren't being paid for it the better mental space you will be in.

Personally, I'm still searching for that magic job but through trial-and-error I'm getting pretty good at identifying what I don't want to do.

[kierantie]

> Personally, I'm still searching for that magic job but through trial-and-error I'm getting pretty good at identifying what I don't want to do.

Knowing what you DON'T want to do is sometimes more important and useful than knowing what you DO want to do!

[circlefavshape]

I'm not so sure. I haven't found avoiding what you hate rather than pursuing what you love to be a good life strategy

[xaa]

> the challenge is finding a "job" that you love and are excited to tackle every day

This is great and very important, but it doesn't prevent burnout necessarily. I have a job and career that I really enjoy and consider to be very meaningful (aging research), but I have been severely burned out several times.

In some perverse ways, having a "meaningful" job can increase stress and propensity to burnout exactly because you know it's important. I imagine this is why doctors and lawyers have a lot of burnout, stress, and substance abuse problems. OTOH, you don't really hear about corporate accountants getting burned out.

My personal theory of burnout is that it happens when you start to feel you are on a treadmill -- running hard to achieve an important goal, but getting nowhere. Then the stress and burnout symptoms increasingly make this a self-fulfilling prophecy and feedback loop.

[ryandrake]

I've found there is no such magic job. That's why it's called a "job" and not a "hobby that pays", and that's why the call what you get "compensation". Your pay compensates you for the time you spend doing something you otherwise would never choose to do on your own! The key is to just accept this transaction on its face and not go and assign deep personal meaning to it or get your self-worth all wrapped up in it.

[rexpop]

This is a very privileged point-of-view. Most folks are lucky to find a job they don't hate, that isn't grossly exploitative and uncomfortable.

[ThrustVectoring]

In broad sense, loss of control is useful, since it credibly closes off options you don't want to take. You don't want to to take the option of putting up with slights and insults and loss of social standing, so you get mad and lose control, and people don't want to play that game with you any more. You don't want to take the option of abandoning your spouse and offspring, so you love them so deeply that you'd never consider it - and your public displays of affection prove it.

I think burnout fills the same sort of role. When people are constantly called to take on risky, stressful, and high effort activities - essentially, those that raise your cortisol levels - they burn out. Not just one-off ones, but repeatedly over long periods of time. So long-term high cortisol levels paint a picture of a certain narrative/social situation, where it's very much in your interest to "shirk" but you haven't been able to manage doing so because of narratives or social pressure. So your body "helpfully" removes the option of yielding to social pressure to rise to the occasion by making you unable to rise to the occasion in a way that cannot yield to the demands of others.

[p0nce]

Burnout is a physical problem first and foremost, albeit caused by prolonged stress.

(very interesting link: http://www.arltma.com/Articles/BurnoutDoc.htm)

[oregontechninja]

This seems very case specific. I will admit the reason I quit being a real estate broker, and Realtor, was that it was just taking money from people. They're just smooth talkers who provide very little real value to people. Their clients are treated like prey, and its the broker's fault if somebody doesn't want to sell or buy a home, not the users.

[envoked]

Most your points resonate with me but in my experience a large part of it has to do with perspective.

I [believe] I'm in the latter stages of burnout and while very anxiety-inducing, it's been a great learning and worthwhile experience so far.

For context, I started coding when I was 13 (I'm 29), studied CS, and never had any job outside of software engineering – got started undercutting outsourcers on Elance as a teenager, making below minimum wage with my poor estimation skills.

I was 4+ years into working at a successful company, in a lucrative position, surrounded by interesting people. At first, my enthusiasm started waning and I became more distracted. Then followed a lack of fulfillment punctuated by shame; a shame that I wasn't appreciating my situation. Eventually, I was honest with myself (and my team) and decided to leave.

It was definitely scary to lose interest in one of my oldest passions, but it gave me the mind space for some valuable introspection. Over the last five months I've been moving around (about one city a month), pursuing other passions outside of software. Most recently, I decided to spend the summer living on a farm, with some part time contracting.

Through this process of stepping outside my usual sphere of influence, I've regained an excitement for technology and the meaningful impact it can have on peoples' lives. I've also become more aware of just how truly fortunate we are as engineers around Silicon Valley, when compared to the rest of the world; it's given me a new perspective.

So (as simplistic as it might sound) if you think you're experiencing burnout because your work is "meaningless", stop (budget, adjust your lifestyle, etc.) and try something else; you'll either start missing it and get reinvigorated, or you might find a better way to spend your time.

[abledon]

Did you throw your stuff in store before you started moving around to other cities? Or did you sell everything and say 'Tabula Rasa! clean slate!'.

[envoked]

I didn't own that much to begin with but I sold what I didn't need, and put everything else in a friend's garage. Oddly (but in line with what most digital nomads seem to experience) after living out of a backpack for a few months, I don't miss most of it (exceptions being things like my snowboard, sharp kitchen knives, quality pots, etc.)

[crush-n-spread]

I submit that the working person greatly benefits from having a strongly held, over-arching life goal. Then even if he or she is working a soul-draining job for, say, a social media company, they will be content knowing it is a necessary step towards their goal.

[losteric]

What do you mean by "goals"?

I've met too many people hopelessly throwing themselves against a wall trying to "achieve their dreams"... they see themselves as a Hollywood-esque main character, either aiming unrealistically high or shooting for mundane gimmes. Without a broader vision, those that pick reasonably scoped goals may still end up depressed by their small wins that add up to nothing. Modern mss media and image culture certainly hasn't helped manage realistic expectations or self-perception.

I think it's more important to have a strong life stance - a broader collective vision that adds context to the individual - and a stoic understanding of limitations. That metaheuristic provides deeper meaning while facilitating rational evaluation of our achievements/goals.

Drawing an analogy to software projects, the life stance defines a person's mission and tenets while goals act as milestones or stories. Executing without the broader vision simply doesn't work for humans... our limited and unknown budget of time is constantly burning away.

[crush-n-spread]

Yes, I concur that resistance to burnout depends on having a broader context to your life and humanity as a whole. If you understand your own life within the perspective of the billions of humans that have lived and died before you, and that will live after you, it adds a very resilient drive and resistance to small setbacks.

Personally, I was able to achieve this using the recursive why, or chained why, which is a thinking pattern I'll describe here:

1. Come up with a random statement about anything at all.

2. Ask "Why?" about that statement.

3. When you come up with a reasonable answer, ask "Why?" to your stated answer.

4. Repeat step three until you arrive at the meaning of life

This really works. I did this riding the bus for hours when I was a kid because I had no friends. Now it's like I live on another planet compared to people who have not done this. Stoic, content, and driven is the result

[biot]

Eventually the last "why" you get to has the answer: "The biological machinery that comprises my body receives incoming stimuli and the laws of physics causes a cascading chain reaction which changes my internal state. Thus, I'm basically a series of recursive analog state machines and free will is but an illusion." At that point, you lose all motivation for asking any further "why" questions.

[projektir]

Last I checked, the free will question wasn't shut, and I wouldn't suggest basing your entire model of the world on something that pretty much nobody has a good understanding of right now. O.o

It sounds like you've simply bought modern "nihilism", i.e., the "everything is meaningless and nothing matters" philosophy that a lot of logical types seem to believe but none actually live (since it's not workable).

Digging down to whys requires actually answering them, not throwing your arms in the air and saying that the question is unanswerable. It's answerable, there's a reason that you do things, otherwise you wouldn't even be able to exist. "I do things because that's what my machinery does" is avoiding the question. Well, duh. That doesn't mean there aren't reasons as to why you do or do not eat that donut.

It's like if someone approached you asking how a given piece of software works, and instead of explaining the structure and the business logic, you say that it's a bunch of machine code. Wrong level of abstraction, you just dodged the question.

[biot]

Oh, I'm not saying that I live under a nihilist viewpoint. Even if free will is little more than an illusion masked by seemingly infinite complexity, I happily buy into the illusion and (for the most part) operate as if I have unlimited agency / free will. My comment was more to say that you have to stop asking "why" at some point and just go with the flow otherwise you descend into meaningless.

[eduren]

While I'm sure that methodology can produce personal drive in some people, others can follow the same process and feel like it'll never mean something.

Also, if possible, could you point me in the direction of this "meaning of life" you found. It would really help me out.

[crush-n-spread]

Hi, sure I'll point you in the direction of the meaning of life.

It's really the question of why are we here? What are humans and what is our consciousness and emotions?

Humans are the most fit creatures for life on planet earth pre-civilization. We were created by an evolutionary algorithm where the fitness function was our ability to reproduce and live the most effective, longest lives.

Our emotions and feelings are the "emergent behaviour" of our complex system of mate selection, reproduction and raising our young that runs on a chemical system created by that billion year evolutionary algorithm.

So our society is a great big thing that basically determines the lives of 8 billion of these creatures. And the people who are driving the ship don't understand themselves or their place in the universe. They might as well be outside of society altogether, fighting over mates in the forest. But no, here we are, blessed with our language, technology, medical science and all the other blessing bestowed upon us by our prescient forefathers, killing ourselves. Marching towards our own death. Taking human development and the ecology of our planet for granted. The smart among us watch a slow motion apocalypse.

So my life goal is to fucking stop this shit whatever it takes so that I can rest easy knowing I didn't get to see the light and then ignore the answers it showed me

[webmaven]

> I did this riding the bus for hours when I was a kid

Why?

> because I had no friends.

Why?

[crush-n-spread]

Wow, that really was a clever post you made. I think you're smarter than me, and I feel bad about myself.

[webmaven]

That wasn't my intent (well, the "feeling bad" part wasn't, anyway), but I guess I'll just have to take what I can get.

[projektir]

Most high-level goals that I've seen people have amount to what I call "winning the gauntlet". Making a lot of money, founding a big company, achieving fame, finding a high-profile SO, etc. Statistically, those goals will not be achieved by a given person, and not only that, but they effectively amount to "have it better than someone else", i.e., they're zero-sum.

Goals like these seem reasonable to people when they surround themselves with "haves", so they are not exposed to the serious problem of the "have-nots" that have to exist for the "haves" to exist. One can be reasonably happy in this state as long as they dodge the cognitive dissonance, or if they just think this is a good model.

This works neither for people who care about the world nor those who are "have-nots". Which is most people. So most people end up unhappy while reading self-books (if they even have enough agency for that) from the "haves" and trying to figure out what's going on. But nothing is going on, the situation is zero-sum, so there will always be someone in a bad state in the current system. The only thing that changes is who.

The gauntlet cannot be completely ignored because it is necessary for basic agency. But in some cases, the agency is already there, and the person can begin defining their own vision, but they still continue chasing the zero-sum goals due to pressure.

Even if you try to develop your own vision things can get strange.

> our limited and unknown budget of time is constantly burning away.

Well, there are 6+ billion people in the world, and, on average, they have a similar budget. Why the sense of urgency? What is it that is so important that only you personally can do it? It would be very strange if the world was filled with these super important goals for each person that were conveniently person-lifetime sized, but it often feels to me like that's the perception. This often ends up back at the zero-sum issue, in the sense of "lots of people can do this, but I need to be the one to do it". It's thinly veiled status-seeking all over again, which is why it fits so well since in a competitive environment, the goal IS person-lifetime sized.

A broad non-status goal wouldn't fit that paradigm. It is likely to be overwhelming and require a lot of people, or, on the other hand, be fairly straightforward and missed because it's not prestigious. But people find themselves in these insurmountable goals and feel like they need to do so much work, that brings other questions. Why them? What is everyone else doing?

On a certain level, I think most people seek vision that fulfills subconscious nags they may have, and that's the primary reason they seek it. Things in the region of "am I doing something with my life" or "am I a good person". There isn't an actual vision higher level than that, so once those nags are satisfied, the person will stop asking. But this is just chasing the gauntlet in another way.

[cookiecaper]

>A broad non-status goal wouldn't fit that paradigm. It is likely to be overwhelming and require a lot of people, or, on the other hand, be fairly straightforward and missed because it's not prestigious.

I think you have it here. There are some very simple, very natural things that can fulfill most of the average individual's basic yearnings, but they're overlooked today, they're regarded as passe or even backwards. These things are not high-glamor nor high-privilege, but they give people a sense of repose and quiet dignity, regardless of their other circumstances

IMO the most important such thing is to have and care for a family. I believe that many contemporary social ills come from an exponentially-increasing generational denial of the importance of stable marriages and child-bearing that kicked into high gear after WWII.

It can be argued that industrial corporate interests have an interest in stripping the dignity and independence of having a family away from workers, hoping they'll search for meaning in their careers and spend more hours at the office instead.

[mpfundstein]

"IMO the most important such thing is to have and care for a family. I believe that many contemporary social ills come from an exponentially-increasing generational denial of the importance of stable marriages and child-bearing that kicked into high gear after WWII."

I totally agree. My life turned 180 degrees when I became a father. So much things that seemed to be important are just bs now...

[projektir]

Odd, child-bearing is kind of the original source of all the zero-sum status-seeking behavior.

[dasil003]

Child-bearing is the original source of all humanity.

[watwut]

We have less social ills then pre-WWII world. Also, 19 century workers and peasants (e.g. majority of population lower class) spent more or equally as much time in work (including women) then we do now.

[egh5oon]

Are you serious? It's the very opposite.

[cookiecaper]

Of course I'm serious. I don't know of a credible argument to the contrary.

[webmaven]

> Why the sense of urgency? What is it that is so important that only you personally can do it?

Sometimes it isn't that only you personally can, but rather that only you personally will.

[projektir]

I mentioned that:

> But people find themselves in these insurmountable goals and feel like they need to do so much work, that brings other questions. Why them? What is everyone else doing?

If you find yourself in that situation, you may want to ask why this is happening, because it's strange. You should also realize that the chance of failure is very high, and if your goal is truly important to you, that should worry you.

I'm not saying this in the sense of "you should/shouldn't pursue your goal", I have no idea, I don't know what your goal is. But strangeness is often a highly valuable source of information. You really, really need to know why nobody else is pursuing your goal, and that information could help you find more people to help with your goal to address the second concern.

On a more fundamental level, answering that question could put the value of the goal in jeopardy, or, on the other hand, make it that much more important.

[webmaven]

All good points. The only thing I feel I can add that addresses the strangeness in a general way are these quotes:

“There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” - Robert F. Kennedy

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” - George Bernard Shaw

“The sweet spot is in good ideas that seem like bad ideas.” - Peter Theil

“Pursue the good ideas that, for some reason, others won't.” - Chris Dixon

“It's actually pretty easy to be contrarian. It's hard to be contrarian and right.” - Reid Hoffman

[tutufan]

Maybe. I did this for many years, and then by circumstance my overarching goal turned to dust. That's a lot to take. Make sure you're on a path that has some enjoyment in the now. Don't just suffer for some future pleasure.

[taco_emoji]

> strongly held, over-arching life goal

Like what? I believe that I'm an incidentally self-aware thermodynamic curiosity; setting any sort of lifelong goal feels like an attempt to fool myself into feeling important.

[Bakary]

This line of reasoning feels like it's missing an important piece. If you consider yourself to be unimportant, then why is vanity a bad thing? It won't matter either way, except that you may feel better and be more active.

[dwaltrip]

Ah, but feelings of importance are merely incidental mental representations and emotional responses that are somewhat hard coded into our bio machinery, so I'm pretty sure the universe won't mind if you indulge every now and then. Having this self awareness adds a nice element of comic absurdity to the indulgence as well ;)

[ambicapter]

What's wrong with feeling important?

[taway_1212]

Most people are not driven really, so this advice won't work for them.

[projektir]

The lack of drive is itself the issue, though.

[taway_1212]

Why? Why should everyone by driven/obsessed? Most people are fine doing the minimum that is required to maintain their desired lifestyle level.

[projektir]

Well, remember the start of this conversation:

crush-n-spread: > I submit that the working person greatly benefits from having a strongly held, over-arching life goal.

I believe having a strong over-arching goal is very helpful for a person (working or otherwise). Helpful in the sense that it can offset certain problems or give the person better tools for working around/through them (i.e., depression, burnout, purposelessness, general decision making).

I don't think this is the same thing as ambition or obsession, although many people do turn that into their drive and I think that's fairly dangerous (the thing one is obsessed about may not work out).

I wouldn't really agree that most people are "fine" in some general sense, nor do most people typically subsist without any kind of life goal (religion is popular).

[taway_1212]

I would say that 'purpose' would fit better into your argument than 'goal'. Taking care of children or elderly parent gives you a purpose but is not a goal. And yes, I agree that having a purpose makes the tough parts of life more bearable.

[taneq]

> You may have an idea that you know will make you a millionaire and which you could build, but you just can't force yourself to because fundamentally money won't make you happy and the idea is meaningless at best.

You can't force yourself to build the thing which will make you a millionaire, not because of nihilism, but because subconsciously it's much easier and more rewarding to have an idea that you hope will make you rich than it is to build the idea and know it doesn't work.

It's the same reason there are so many aspiring artists and rock stars compared with the number of failed artists and rock stars.

[projektir]

Yeah, I think most people become highly motivated when the work they're assigned is actually meaningful and important. But most people don't get such work, so big surprise that people have "gotten" lazy...

[ge96]

random unconnected thought

I'm working on a "may eventually make me money" thing and I do pretty much 100% of the work as far as technical aspect goes (coding) and I'm set to have 30% of this "thing"... 13 hours of coding today, I feel like I achieved nothing. And it's like there is no return, I didn't get paid "someday you'll make money maybe" and I'm not sure I like the idea itself. I don't know I keep asking myself why am I doing this. It may happen.

edit: the thing I did today was un-jQuery the entire "codebase", oh my god so much broke. Also to make the scripts load async, bumped the dom loading from 6 sec to 1.5-2. Developing a site to deploy in a place where network speed on average is around 500Kbps

Also it's funny when people don't know coding, I'm not an expert, I'm pretty sub-par but people are like "Why don't you just do this..." "Do that..." if Facebook can do it why can't you? hahaha, I don't know, pathetic

edit: nothing really against jQuery just that a 1KB file takes almost 1 second to download, requiring jQuery (even min) big file. It's so easy to work with though especially multiple-selectors like selecting by class. the cross browser support... man. something I depended on and take for granted... sorry rambling pointless comment on my part.

[kenning]

I have found it extremely important to stop working at the end of a big accomplishment. Doesn't matter if you still have 5 hours of time left in the day and tons of energy to keep working -- when you stop and watch tv for a bit, that nagging feeling "I should be doing work" will be met and sated with the new feeling, "hey, actually I did something pretty great today." If you just keep working it feels like nothing has changed.

[ge96]

but 5 hours though...

Yes when you stop to look back, you do realize how far you've come. It's like when you try to learn a new language and you're just blocked... you know can't just turn an idea into a working reality that others can use.

Somedays though the mind refuses to work haha, then you binge on tv and lay around like a beached whale.

I don't know the site doesn't reward me with money right now. Money is "highly desirable" just because I'm financially destroyed but when passion is in the equation it's nice. I don't expect praise either as it's kind of worthless unless people actually comprehend like what you did. "Good job" haha. I don't know... gotta avoid these essay responses.

It does feel good to get into the groove, get some coffee, music... boom! Entire day gone. Spine and eyes damaged, electrons moved on hard drives.

[watwut]

You achieved that jquery is not there anymore and that is us faster. That is quite a lot, objectively. It is gonna look that way after you get rest too.

And yes, people tend to have naive ideas about what is possible and people like to give brag suggestions.

[ge96]

yeah I was amazed that async loading of scripts, how much of a difference that makes.

I'll just remember that for future projects and code structuring making things independent or defer/wait for parts to be present due to async loading.

the console internet throttling is a cool tool too with Google Chrome. To simulate poor network speed I have it set to 500Kbps with 300ms delay. That was the latency with our closest "data center" single-core vps hahaha. What a man can do with $4.00 and brute-force-idiocy to get things done.

[theparanoid]

"if Facebook can do it why can't you?" Just tell them to fuck off. It feels amazing to figuratively tell someone to just fuck off.

[ge96]

Yeah it's somewhat of an exaggeration, but the concept is the same some viral site with garbage-clickbait-content and this guy's like 'Why don't our photos/site load as fast this site' and I'm like... well We don't have expensive technology, we don't have teams of engineers... I'm a guy with two hands and Google... pounding away at the keys like an Ape looking for ants.

Oh well. Someday I will escape! haha

[d3ad1ysp0rk]

I spent 2 hours getting a python environment properly setup last night. It's not pathetic.

[ge96]

I could see that.

I briefly worked for a company and it took 7 hours or so to configure a working local copy of their site pulled from GitHub. Ran into problems with PHP versions, MySQL datetime stuff... that was nuts though they used bower, npm, twig, composer (all related) but yeah.

It's a complicated code/company creating charts/maps from data so it's not "just a website".

crazy too how many years things take to develop. You hear some "popular thing" or something advertised even like "Zip Recruiter" for example, started in 2010.

Oh well the little dopamine hit from making something work is a good feeling.

[taway_1212]

Can cofirm. Programming IRL (esp. on a team) is mostly tedious crap like that. I'm glad it pays so well though.

[webmaven]

An aside here, just in case you ever find that you miss using jQuery for something: There are several jQuery-mostly-compatible replacements that are much smaller.

[ge96]

I've heard of lighter versions of jQuery and it's not really like I'm against jQuery in this particular case internet speed is really bad... and I did not know of a way to async load scripts and not have the $.is not defined problem. Mainly though the jQuery library itself is 80KB (jquery-min)... the downloading speed thing (watching network) it's hit and miss, I mean I see a 1KB file take nearly 1 second to download so why wouldn't an 80KB file take 80 seconds to download.

It's good though to learn pure JavaScript I think. But yeah I got so used to the calls that deal with cross-browser problems.

thanks for the thought

[Franciscouzo]

> I mean I see a 1KB file take nearly 1 second to download so why wouldn't an 80KB file take 80 seconds to download.

This does not follows though, TCP doesn't works like that, the initial congestion window is usually small and grows as more packets are received, that's why using Keep-Alive is so important, so you don't have to rebuild the socket and TLS connection before every request. Add some ping into the equation and getting the socket up to speed can take several seconds (even minutes) depending on the bandwidth, and the connection's packet loss.

[ge96]

Yeah I'm not 100% clear on the console waterfall thing, it shows stuff like 'this file was waiting to start downloading for some milliseconds..." then the time to download.

I use Apache, I haven't touched the KeepAlive I guess that is something to look into, a direct ping has a latency of around 300-400ms pretty high I realize... I rent through OVH and their closest data center relative to the Philippines is France... supposedly they have one coming somewhere in Asia like Singapore or something...

We do use Cloudflare but we currently use a free Cloudinary account to host our images and I cached them locally to get around that API/hr request limit. So while Clouflare helps with minizing possibly closer... the "processing" of stuff like querying with PHP/MySQL takes place on the server... I used this awful JOIN or COUNT statement that took like 300ms to execute it was bad... haha. Minor fixes.

[webmaven]

Right, jQuery is 80k, but there are replacements that are as small as 8k, or even 4k: http://minifiedjs.com/#sizeCmp

[pasbesoin]

You know that feeling when half your mind is filling up the spare moments with the thought/feeling, "I'm screwing myself, here."

Yeah.

Whether you're "doing the right thing", "paying your dues", or just fighting your instincts and hoping that eventually, he/she will come to like you the same way.

One of my greatest challenges in life, has been to fight the messaging that put me on that track -- or the delusion I initiated. And, figuring out which it is and to what extent.

[colordrops]

As I've grown older (and hopefully wiser) I've taken a position that is a lot more meaningful but with a lot less compensation. I do often think about finances and worry about my retirement, as I have children. But I will say that making a lot of money and wishing you were doing something more with your life is a lot more painful and damaging that doing something worthwhile and wishing you had more money.

[Bakary]

Most people never get either of the two situations you describe.

[amelius]

> I think a big factor in burnout is that most work is ultimately meaningless, or even morally wrong, and on a deep level, we're aware of that.

Wouldn't this mean that people who work e.g. in the advertisement industry are overall more depressed or burnt-out than people who work, say, in medicine?

[Tomminn]

"If someone paid you money to kick a dog, you'd feel a strong urge to do something else."

Truth.

[Arizhel]

>You may have an idea that you know will make you a millionaire and which you could build, but you just can't force yourself to because fundamentally money won't make you happy and the idea is meaningless at best. At least this is often the case for me.

Not me; I can't say I've had any big money-making ideas which are morally wrong and the ideas "meaningless". However, I've had lots of ideas for things which are small money-makers (i.e., probably won't make me a millionaire, but can provide a small-to-decent income maybe) but require time and effort to develop. Since I have to pay rent and bills, and I want to have a social life, I have limited extra time to pursue side ideas like this. My ideas/projects may seem "meaningless" to others, but to me they're fun and interesting and would probably make some money, but definitely won't be the next Apple. If I didn't have to work for a living, I'd be happy to spend my time working on these projects instead, because they would be more fulfilling than my day job.

[jakobegger]

I'd love to hear your meaningless idea that you know will make you a millionaire.