Five ways to beat burnout

so let's face it the way that software engineers are viewed in hollywood film and tv has not always been that great we're always portrayed as either awkward and isolated i'm gonna need an unlimited supply of xena tapes and hot pockets right okay or mean an antisocial and i don't even know what this is but there have been some times where they've gotten it pretty right like 2014's halt and catch fire was excellent if you haven't seen that before as well as silicon valley that's really funny and also fairly accurate now and again but of course the absolute most relatable classic is mike judge's 1999 movie office space which most people remember for the lumber scenes or for the printer scene but i recall mostly for when peter decides to give up his job to do fire repair instead so you sure you don't want us to get your job that's one thing i'm definitely sure of so why is office base such a relatable movie well i think there's two reasons for that the first is that overwork isn't glamorized like it is in other hollywood tv shows and movies and the second is that peter is on the verge of burnout or burning out the whole time and so i think that is very relatable for us so on this blue collar coder we're going to take a look at burnout we're going to talk about the symptoms of it and then we're going to give you five ideas for how to address it in your life so what are some symptoms of burnout well you can feel disconnected from the job not emotionally invested in it the way that you normally do you'll have trouble waking up in the morning and getting excited about working on it being distracted or distractible while you're working on it not being able to retain that focus the way that you normally do often times it can include anger and irritability and then we get into things like being tired and being truly exhausted even when you're not on the job those are symptoms as well and it can also get into physical symptoms it's also been linked to depression drug abuse alcohol abuse headaches and even gi issues so this is really important it's it has a major impact on your life and it's something we should look to address so the first thing i want you to do is indulge in a little self-care and by that i mean five things the first is to give yourself a big break this has been a really tough two years of pandemic and everything else going on and i know we have super high expectations of ourselves but we can't say that we're going to meet those under those circumstances in all cases i mean that's crazy we're holding ourselves to these crazy high expectations and when we fail to meet them then we get on ourselves about it and that doesn't help at all so give yourself a break i give you a break how about that and then secondly get a good night's sleep that's absolutely critical i know that when i get a good night's sleep i feel so much better the next day all those little things would make me irritated before like water off a duck's back and the third thing i want you to do is get outside and enjoy the fresh air that's really important a couple of times a day just get it from your desk take a zoom call outside on the porch or do some work outside on the porch whatever you need just get outside and get some fresh air and while you're out there notice that hey i could be doing that a lot more i could be walking or biking or you know running those kind of things that's the thing i do i go running every once in a while and i feel so much better when i do every article that i read when i was researching this video on burnout the number one thing they talked about was working out and the fourth thing i want you to do is take those vacation days it's really critical disconnect from the office and disconnect from tech and then finally have someone to talk to that you can honestly open up to hopefully outside of work certainly outside of tech would be great if you can and if you can't then most companies offer mental health plans that you can get remote help for free usually i've used better help and it's great another thing you can do to beat burnout is to have a hobby something not tech related that's going to give you a real sense of accomplishment as you achieve things with it and make stuff it's really great and you get a whole new circle of friends around that hobby hopefully who are not in the tech community and that's going to be a really great support system for you my personal hobby is woodworking and it requires zero technology at all well except for this cnc router which needs coding but otherwise no technology at all another important thing to do to keep your mind and your passions fresh is to engage in continuous self learning software is a very intellectual skill it's all up here so feeding your mind with new thoughts new concepts as opposed to continuously doing the same thing over and over and over again is a way to keep your mind really healthy and engaged so how do you do that well you can create some side projects on technologies that you'd never use on the job that's one way to do it but i warn you people tend to beat themselves up when it comes to these side projects if they don't complete them if the point is to learn stuff then be happy with that it's okay i give you permission to leave those side projects behind and not trouble your mind with that and the other thing is to realize that sometimes we're in the mood to learn and sometimes are not in the mood to learn so if you are in one of those cycles where you're just not naturally receptive to new information that's fine don't push it you don't want to burn out on learning and you don't want to burn out on learning that new skill which actually might be really cool how do you engage with it when it in a time when you're actually more receptive to learning it so let's talk about that 800 pound gorilla in the room and that's work would we get burned out we're not for work i guess maybe i'll find out at some point but what you can do at work really breaks down into two big buckets the first is what you can do for yourself and the second is what you need to do in conjunction with your manager or your company so let's talk about what you can do for yourself and that's really about time management and also effort management so make sure that if you push really hard for a couple of days that you reel it back and you try and get into a cadence where you understand when you're pushing on the gas and then understand when you're taking your foot off the gas and you give yourself that time to recover from those periods of really high work and make sure that your team is on board with that as well so maybe when you pull back a little bit and they step into it and when they step back then you get in there and help out and just make sure that there's a healthy team dynamic there so that everybody knows that we're all human some days we have great days and some days we have not so great days and everybody compensates for that and then also i want you to embrace the power of saying no that's absolutely critical just that it's a superpower nowadays actually i know we all want to say yes to everything i know we all want to be we want to take the all the tickets and go through all of them but understand that you don't want to over commit and by over committing you're losing control of your time and so the power of saying no is really the power to control your commitment level and that's not just of stuff that you do at work but also stuff that you would take on maybe at home or some friends you know side projects things like that be sure if you're not gonna be able to give your 100 to it just say no and finally let's talk about the things that you can maybe change at work so the first thing to do is if you're having troubles talk to your manager directly let's give your manager a break there for a second if you're on zoom everybody's going to want to be smiling all the time and painting a happy picture on zoom and being all upbeat and perky and that may disguise what's actually going on underneath so you need to have an open and honest conversation with your boss about what's actually happening with you and then part of that conversation should be saying what a good situation looks like google actually did some really cool research on this a while back where they talked to all their teams and did lots of surveys and what they found out was that happy and productive teams share two common traits and the first is autonomy they have a lot of individual control about what they're working on and the second is that both they and external parties value what they're doing so they find a lot of value in what they're doing so if you don't have autonomy and you don't have that sense of value it's easy to get burnt out in a situation like that so whatever you can do in conjunction with your company and your manager to get the whole team into that autonomous and valued state the better off it's going to be but if none of that works honestly it's a great hiring environment out there super hot right now so if it's not if it for you and if it if you're burning out at work and you know that there's just really no way out of it at this particular work then there's probably another good job out there for you all right well if you found this video on burnout helpful be sure to hit that like button but i really want to start a conversation with you about if you've experienced burnout and what has helped you recover from burnout so be sure to put anything like that in the comment section down below and we'll get that conversation started of course the meantime hit that like button if you like the video and hit that subscribe button if you like the video and you'll be notified the next time a new blue collar coder video arrives pretty cool dude chilling out playing a base walking around the park how cool is that freaking awesome i love love washington it's so good for that kind of stuff yeah so this is lachemist park this is where i shot this one particular video mostly actually i think all of it now is in lacamus which is beautiful such a great little park up here in campus washington all right see you next time

Channel: Jack Herrington

Views: 4,567

Keywords: 5 tips to avoid burnout from coding, Five ways to beat burnout, How to beat burnout from coding, avoid coding burnout, burnout in coding, burnout in tech, jack herrington, tips to avoid burnout, tips to avoid burnout at work, tips to avoid burnout from coding, burnout from coding, avoid burnout from coding, coding burnout, ways to beat burnout, 5 ways to beat coding burnout

Id: 5m7Al81Um88

Length: 10min 15sec (615 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021