Overcoming Burnout

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#1

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As a programmer, UI Designer or absolutely anything you can burnout, even if you don’t think you know what burnout is or feel like you haven’t gone through it before.
Answer this one question, have you ever dedicated so much of your time to one thing (a certain game, etc.) and then after a while you just got soul crushingly bored whilst playing it?

How to tell if you are burned out

This is a small list of some tell tail signs that you are burned out or are on the path to being so.

  • You no longer enjoy doing what you used to like, (ex. programming) and it feels like you are having to force your self to do it.
  • Your work is something you do not want to do, or is something soul crushingly boring.
  • You start to get emotionally exhausted.
  • Your performance starts to reduce, tasks that would take you a certain amount of time are taking you twice as long as they usually would.

These are just a few symptoms that you are starting to or are already burned out.

How to recover from Burnout
The fact that you are reading this thread shows you are wanting to either educate yourself on it for the future, or you are currently going through it. Either way, you are on the right track.

I am using a variety of different sources, people and personal methods I have used. If you have any you would like added, be sure to message me them, or just message below.

Take a long break

This is a method is the one I use the most, it is not the most effective, time wise but it allows you to free your mind from the tasks and give you time to relax, not have to worry about what you need to code, program or create.

You can also use this time to catch up on school work, or start a new hobby like hiking, painting or something else you may find relaxing.

Deleted user on reddits burnout experience
I’ve burnt out a few times over the last 10 years and am currently recovering from burnout. For me I usually need extended time off (4+ months) before I feel like touching a computer again. That is when I know I am recovering. When I feel ok putting up with corporate again, I am usually recovered.

But what causes burnout? For me it is working long hours only to see your work not used or doing a death march only to be thrown into another one. It doesnt help that employers in america are stingy with time off. I think that also contributes.

People will say “oh you should be able to spot these types of companies in interviews”. Not always. I have had enough jobs that were great the first year but then the boss got ambitious and decided to make a name for him/her self. This has happened to me at corporations and non profit.

The other problem is we let them run us into the ground(at least I did) because I didnt want to miss the arbitrary bulls**t deadline. Nowadays I refuse to put in the extra hours anymore. Work horses are beaten for very little gain to the horse, usually in the form of broken promises by management.

Write code for fun

You do not need to make this about Roblox, or about any project you may be doing but rather than sitting around making the best production code you can, think of a fun idea, throw the code together and then see the result. It may not work, but then you can make simple bug fixes. Write the code for fun, not for a future project, or to sell. It will really take the stress out of making the code.

u/hubbabubbathrowaway:
If you write code at home for fun, try doing so without any regard for best practices. Go wild, just write stuff. In a while, stuff will bite you where it hurts, and you’ll gain experience – where to use this or that practive, and why. It’ll come all by itself. No need to fuss about writing everything perfect on the first try, that never worked anyway.

Keep a good work-life balance

This one is harder to do when you are working on a deadline and need to get things done, but if you fail to keep a good work-life balance you will burn out every single time you go to start and do something, this just ruins your mental health, work ethic and the final outcome of your design, code or anything you are trying to do.

Here is a small list of ways to improve your work life balance.

Useful Links

https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-overcome-burnout-as-a-developer-b5d734d686e8

How to Fix Burnout as a Developer - DEV Community

https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-overcome-developer-programmer-burnout

This is all for now. If you have any other tips on how to recover from burnout or how to detect yourself at the start of the spiral, just tell me below or send me a quick message on DevForums.

If this post helps you please leave a :white_heart: on the thread!

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[HELP] Ever had that feeling before?
Conceptualising a SciFi promenade
What should I do?
#2

Great tutorial, I will definitely try these methods when I feel like I’m experiencing a burnout.

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#3

Very good tutorial! I feel like I was really starting to lose motivation when it comes to building (mostly because of school) but now I will make sure to take a lot of breaks when im busy.

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#4

I think what’s more common for developers is the Shiny Object Syndrome. The Shiny Object Syndrome is basically when you give up a project to start a new one which you think will be really popular. The new project is the “Shiny Object” and you stop working on the old project. This cycle of starting projects but never finishing them goes on over and over. It would be great if someone could write a tutorial on breaking this loop.

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#5

There is no such thing as “work-life balance”. Dan Peña, the trillion dollar man.

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#6

I have been working on Devable for well over 6 months now and I have had burnout from it multiple times.

As someone who is going through some mental health issues, I can honestly say Roblox is an amazing coping mechanism. It gives me that sense of control that stops me resorting to what other people resort to. I spend a lot of time on the platform because of that, so I get burnouts - pretty often. Not only that, but my mental health issues means I get them a lot more often.

When I get a burnout, I usually do that the OP mentioned and write some code for fun. Just make something that isn’t what I’m burnt out on - that gets my mind off my main project and I’m back up and running before I know it.

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#7

I have a question. What should I do if I get burned out, and I forget what to do / forget how to script? It happens to me quite often.

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#8

Start to learn again.
Do a simple project to refresh your memory, go through some tutorials, etc.

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#9

Oftentimes we forget what it is like to be a beginner again. It’s refreshing to be a novice at something again. Never stop learning.

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#10

Well done :clap: ! AMAZING tutorial honestly, I have been suffering burnout for many months now, and this is helping me slowly overcome it. Thanks for taking the time to write this tutorial!

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#12

I’m just making a game and I’m always taking a day of break, doing the game for fun and I have a balance, but I still have a burnout. Sometimes I get very exhausted emotionally. How do I solved this?

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#13

It’s not always to do with roblox. Burnout is something that you can only deal with yourself, to be honest. You are the only one know truly knows your mental health.

You may be going through the stress of exams at the moment, or you may be struggling from a variety of things in your life, have you tried just taking a break from development for like a little while, catching up with life and then starting when you should start to feel refreshed.

Try playing other games, try another language, do something to take your mind off of life and off of Roblox.

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#14

Actually, if you have a real burnout, it’s largely not something you can only deal with yourself and you should probably visit a medical practitioner or a therapist. High stress levels is not the same as burnout.

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#15

You don’t always have to meet a doctor, but there’s no harm in getting an appointment with a doctor, and listening to what they say. Just do something you think can help, because you won’t know what does until you try it.

I have only had one burnout (or about that), and that was after working on a game for so long, without doing anything else (other than school, of course). I got tired of everything that had to do with development, I wasn’t even able to turn on my PC because I felt there was nothing to do. Sure, I had work to do, but I just felt there was nothing I could do.

This was honestly a horrible experience, and I really do not want to experience it again, although I probably will in the future. It’s not like I didn’t want to get a game done, but only the thought of having to work more made me “bored” and sick of it. I did nothing productive for at least a month, so I took a really long break from computers. Probably up to a month or two.

Sadly, this resulted me in getting fired from the job (for obvious reasons, I wasn’t online for a long time). Any notification I received was like another boring moment, so I decided to uninstall all apps from my phone. Personally, I just needed a break from what I was doing.

The only person I can blame is myself, I was pushing the boundaries too much. Sleep is important, which was something I didn’t realize back then. I was working until like 1 or 2 AM, and then I had to wake up at 8AM to go to school. My grades worsened, and I just felt like I was a total disaster at everything.

Trust me when I say this, if you feel tired, don’t continue to push yourself. The stupidest thing you can do is to ignore your body and its shout for help. It will come back for revenge. If there is something important you have to do at 1AM, maybe you should have done it earlier.

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#16

When I get tired or sick of working on Lua Learning, I try to work on something else that interests me to keep me motivated.

I also always open source whatever little things I make while doing this, because why not? Someone might as well benefit from it!

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#17

I have done this unknowingly for all this time! I want to especially emphasise on
keeping a good work-life balance. This due to that I have faced this adversity many times. Unfortunately this due to my constant procrastination and the horrible mindset of thinking working harder instead of smarter. As consequence, you affect the people around yourself.

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#18

This is true, you can seek help from a therapist or a medical practitioner, however, this guide is primarily focused on smaller developers who do this recreationally or who do it on small to medium sized projects.

Yes, top-developers will still suffer from burnout but their experience has given them their own personal ways to overcome this, they develop with experience.

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#19

Considering I tend to overwork myself quite a bit these tips were very helpful.
Thank you for sharing them with us!

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#20

The hardest part about creating something is making it unique. Far too many people do it for greed and become disappointed when it doesn’t work out. I’ve been on the platform for almost a decade and I have yet to make a successful game. However, patience… willingness to move forwards, etc are all life lessons that I’ve learned through this platform and ultimately helped me a great deal in life.

The struggle of making the next popular game is comparable to the struggle of life. Both are unforgiving. Both require you to work for it. At the end of the day, the biggest roadblock is you.

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#21

This is a very good message.

If finding a game idea is the problem you are having, I’d recommend checking out this thread:

1 Like