[tymerry]

I first acknowledged burnout at the end of 2020. It took 6-12 months of struggling before a baseline could be established and to this day I don't feel "recovered" but I am improving. From reading a lot about burnout I realized people are different and what works for one person may not work for all. Looking back my burnout was caused by constant context switching and a self imposed requirement to always be available. In the moment I thought it was about the work I was doing and how I felt like it wasn't improving the world.

To ease the struggling stage my biggest win was acknowledging what is the minimum actions needed to take to keep coasting, Once I accomplish those things I didn't beat my self up. Examples of this would be acknowledge 6 hours of meetings in a day is a full day, and I don't need to do 6 hours of dev work on top.

To start the healing process I quit my fulltime job and took 3 months off. After that I started contracting instead, billing hourly, and working less then 40 works for my budget and the strong disconnect between working and not working is helpful to me.

I would ask your self the question, do you need to `fix "everything"`. Sounds like a lot of pressure to put on yourself, maybe you need that pressure, maybe you don't.

[dirtybirdnj]

> I started contracting instead, billing hourly

This is a huge struggle for me. I have difficulty estimating tasks I don't know how long it will take. Then I can't provide cost estimates to customers who want pricing on things they don't understand to begin with. If I am lucky to deal with technical people its ok but I find intense social pain and failure when it comes to getting these important details across to people with a financial interest in not understanding or negging me down.

I really wanted to make consulting a thing for a while but the pain of working with non-technical people makes it almost unbearable.

[tymerry]

I am very lucky, I don't have to do much estimation. I am just a cog in a machine, more senior people break apart work and I execute it. I tried to get a client who has a team in place and just needed extra velocity.

Non-technical people are part of the job, I try my best to explain the tradeoffs of different implementations and let their internal people make those calls. Long term problems are theirs so if they cut corners that is on them in 2 years.

[ostenning]

Thanks for your post, I’m curious to know how you go about finding work as a contractor, where are you based?

[tymerry]

I was based in Denver Colorado, and years ago worked full time for an agency/consulting company. I got my one and only client through a contact I kept in touch with at that agency. After doing some work with that client I started traveling a bit. My hourly rate is lower then most others in the area but it is enough for for me since we don't spend much.