Ask HN: How are you getting through (and back from) burning out?
&gt; places a lot of self-worth in the quality of his work ...<p>I felt <i>exactly</i> the same way, but over the years I&#x27;ve learned that it&#x27;s a little more complicated for me.  For context, I&#x27;m a Senior (Blah Blah Blah) ... 2 decades making stuff with code.<p>I place a lot of <i>demands</i> on myself regarding the <i>quality</i> of my work.<p>I place a lot of my own self-worth on the <i>value</i> of my work.<p>Burnout happens when my work has no value (to me and&#x2F;or anyone else) any longer.  This can be for many reasons, but it&#x27;s typically because I&#x27;ve recognized that the thing that I&#x27;m working on either serves no good purpose, or simply serves no purpose at all.  Less frequently, it&#x27;s because I&#x27;ve reached the end of what I can do&#x2F;learn -- i.e. that rare occasion where you can go to your boss and say &quot;I&#x27;m done, I&#x27;ve finished <i>all</i> of my work&quot; and you literally mean it.  It runs.  There are no more features.  Yeah, I can refactor it another hundred times, but there&#x27;s literally no reason for me to be here any longer unless I want to make-work myself[0] into a new reason for being here like I did the last 30-or-so times.<p>On the <i>demand</i> side -- I can be a bit nuts about <i>doing things right</i>.  I&#x27;ve been around the block -- &quot;best&quot; and &quot;practice&quot; aren&#x27;t meant ironically -- there are times it is &quot;correct&quot; to break practice in favor of performance, working around a leaky abstractions, actual &quot;correctness&quot; of the outcome requires it.  There are times it is &quot;correct&quot; to agonize over architecture details, calculate pricing to the penny&#x2F;hour&#x2F;minute).  But sometimes that agonizing is being done because if it weren&#x27;t, there&#x27;d be no reason to write the thing in the first place.<p>Your last paragraph hints at something a lot bigger going on in your life, so without details I can&#x27;t help you terribly well except to say:<p>(1) Don&#x27;t believe that the situation you&#x27;ve gotten yourself into is unique -- you are not the first to go through it, you won&#x27;t be the last[0].  There&#x27;s a solution.  It may be &quot;hard&quot; but &quot;hard&quot; problems but I&#x27;m guessing if you frequent here you have a few good strategies for breaking down&#x2F;solving hard problems.  If not, well, that&#x27;s basically the gist of it.<p>(2) Is all of this hinting that maybe &quot;getting through&quot; burning out might be best done by making a change to whatever the &quot;big thing&quot; is that burned you out?  For me, I was in a systems job when I wanted to be writing software.  So I scripted my job out of existence and writing web-based intranet software became my job (early 00s) within a year and a half.<p>(3) Life, necessarily, involves trials&#x2F;suffering.  My brain is naturally wired up to resist and fear any major change (e.g. changing schools when I was young, changing jobs&#x2F;careers as an adult) that comes with a large amount of unknowns.  The only thing that works for me is remembering that every single other past, major, change -- including the ones that went terribly -- were all somewhere in the range of &quot;<i>far</i> less awful than I thought&quot; to &quot;incredible things that I regret not doing sooner&quot;.<p>(4) Be thankful. This is not meant as &quot;First World Shaming&quot; (I have no idea where you live, so there&#x27;s that!).  I can&#x27;t speak to you, but for me, even at the worst times there has been plenty of good standing right in front of me.  At some point I realize I&#x27;m actively <i>choosing</i> to be miserable and I either (a) condition myself to focus on everything&#x2F;everyone that I love in my life or (b) solve whatever it is that is causing me to <i>choose</i> to be miserable.  But from that point forward, I actively attack any self-pity with a reminder that I am now actively working toward solving that problem, so I can choose to focus on how great things are going to be when I have completed executing my plan.<p>Nope, it doesn&#x27;t always work.  Most of that advice would fall into things that self-help books peddle pretty hard but who&#x27;s success is limited to that of the author of the book (and most of the time, probably not even that), but I wish you well and hope you emerge victorious!<p>[0] There was a great song around 07-08 timeframe &quot;This too shall pass&quot; who&#x27;s music video went viral.  I loved it because I was going through some awful stuff at the time and sometimes a simple phrase can calm your mind, but I really appreciated the video.  It was a room-sized Goldberg setup that ran the length of the song.  The metaphor worked.  There are quiet moments, loud moments, and a lot of mess.  The worst experience of my entire life made the best part of my life as it is now, possible.