How long is long enough to recover from burnout?

[justchad]

I've been the Founding Engineer of a startup for almost 9 years. Over the course of 9 years I have become extremely burnt out for a variety of reasons. I can't exactly quit the company and don't really want to, but I need to figure out how to recover from burnout. It's affecting my home life, happiness, anxiety, nearly everything. It's to the point where I don't feel capable as a developer anymore and have lost all confidence in myself. I am seeing a therapist but haven't really had a breakthrough yet. I have seen several other therapists as well with the same outcome. So my long winded explanation comes to a single question: In your experience how much time off was enough time off to recover from burnout?

[rhelz]

Sooner or later, everybody will feel the same way. In my experience, getting over it was on the same order of magnitude as, say, getting over a divorce. Absolutely one of the worse experiences you can have which won't actually kill you. Some pieces of advice I got which really helped:

1. What you need is seeing that small but steady effort yields small but steady successes. Losing weight, or shaving seconds and minutes from a swim or a run, fits the bill nicely.

2. An essential part of healing is to heal your body and health. When your body is strong enough, it will heal your mind.

3. Depression is a lying bastard--don't believe anything it says.

4. IT GETS BETTER!

[JohnFen]

> In your experience how much time off was enough time off to recover from burnout?

I'm only speaking of myself and the people I personally know who have suffered burnout. The first thing is that time off all by itself isn't sufficient. You have to actively do things to fix the problem.

That said, amongst myself and my burned-out friends, the amount of time between beginning to address the problem and when we could work effectively again ranged from 1-5 years.

[borissk]

IMHO putting up a fixed period during which to recover will only add more stress. If you can afford it take an indefinite leave and go back when you're ready - may take 3 months or 6 months or a year or more.