| This is a subject dear to my heart, so I thought I would answer in earnest. About my personal experience, I viewed myself as a victim of burnout. It's as if it was a battle already lost once present. That fear in itself contributed to this state of helplessness to something I felt like I couldn't combat. Each time I burnt out it was related to the stress of the job or, at least, my perception of the stress. I think mild to moderate stress takes a toll on the central nervous system over time -- if you let it. There are definitely coping mechanisms[1] you can put in place; however, I've come to believe a lot of it has to do with mindset and how you choose to see your work and interactions. As a fellow burnoutee, I would ask you to look over your past burnouts/experiences and see which ones could you see differently? Can you find where negativity and stress started to seep into your daily life? Could you have done something to augment it? How do others around you cope with similar stress or how is their situation different? Asking myself these questions has allowed me to find the criteria of what I need from a workplace and people around me in order to thrive. Programmers, DevOps, and the like live in our heads and I think a key burnout preventative measure is the developing the ability to get out of our heads. In practice, I think this is different for everyone. Meditation, nature, exercise have all been effective tools for me to come back into the world and leave my head. Recently, I found an episode of Tim Ferriss's podcast that I found to be resourceful for burnout and burnout-like things. Sometimes, Mr. Tim Ferris can come off as pandering to tech entrepreneurs and name dropping -- but a lot of his content and guests is worthwhile. So, I entertain it. I continue coming back to one of the recent episodes with Tristan Harris [2] because it put into words some of the things I've thought about lately and provided a lot of other adjacent resources. The main one that peaked my interest was "The Work" of Bryon Katie [3]. Her branding can come off as new agey with a Oprah-like feel to it, but it's a solid framework that (seems) to pull from meditative and CBT practices. I don't think there's a silver bullet to defeating burnout. I think getting to know yourself and who and what help balance your equilibrium is an underrated, essential part of life we're never taught. Best of luck [1] - https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/coping-mechanism... [3] - https://overcast.fm/+Kebtdt5RM [3] - https://thework.com/ |