| Exactly. I was inches away from a total breakdown this past November after putting in months of long (some up to 90 hour) weeks. Following the conclusion of the project I took some time off; almost an entire month (thank god for the xmas/new year holidays). For me, it was that or compromise my long-term health. The time off came and went, and I didn't feel revitalized at all, not a single bit. I started to think the problem was me. However, more recently I took another vacation, but this one was only a week long. In this instance though, when I came back from my time away, I felt more like myself, more productive, and happier than I had in years. So what was the difference? During my first vacation I was still on-call, I was still expected to reply to emails and chat in a timely manner, review pull requests and so on --- you know, the stuff that is part of the "off-the-clock" aspect of many of our jobs. Essentially, while physically I wasn't at work, mentally I didn't leave the office for a single second. This second vacation? It was the first time I my spouse of eight years and I were able to take a vacation together, in my mind it was the honeymoon we never got to have. So, I spoke with my management and asked for permission to go completely offline for the week. After some negotiation, I was granted the permission to do so. When I left the office for the last time before starting my holiday, I sat in my car and disabled all work related notifications and alerts, then I just sat there for as long as it took for the panic of knowing those notifications were disabled to subside. It may feel like you're only taking 30 seconds out of your time away from work to send off a quick two-sentence e-mail reply or thumb-up a tiny pull request. However, many of us are already too deep in the hole of a workaholic mindset to even see all of the hidden costs of such behaviors and thinking, regardless if they are personal, professional, mental, or physical. (P.S. Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Frquhar, the founders of Atlassian, hosted a great presentation/panel discussion during the 2016 Atlassian Summit where they talked about and hosted a panel discussion surrounding the issues of workaholism and burnout and how they handle it at Atlassian. During this sessions they spoke about how within Atlassian, if somebody (probably of significant importance at least...) is exhibiting the typical signs of burnout as we currently understand them they will force the affected employee to take a vacation, not a stay-at-home vacation, but an go-out-and-have-fun type vacation. They've even gone as far to conspire with the spouses of affected employees to ensure that they leave their company provided devices at home and do not bring them with them on vacation) P.P.S. If you are interested in learning more about workaholsim and burn out: what it feels like, how to spot it within your team and colleagues, and how to actually help those being affected by it -- I would suggest you check out Avleen Vig's USENIX LISA 2016 presentation [Don't Burn Out or Fade Away](https://www.slideshare.net/avleenvig/dont-burn-out-or-fade-a...) |
You need to get out of that incredibly toxic environment.