> ... Left to your own devices ...

I'm going to take one small phrase you wrote entirely out of context because I think there's a point to make.

I'm suffering from burnout at the moment and trying to figure out a way past it. I recently attended a 10-day silent meditation training and one of the requirements was to surrender all my devices (phone, computer, etc) and any other forms of distraction (books, pen and paper, playing cards). Basically, I was alone with only my mind for 10 days, unable to speak or communicate with others for the entire period. It was hell for the first couple days, but by the third day I was really starting to enjoy it.

As I've re-integrated my devices again, the burnout and stress has returned and I've lost a lot of the benefit I found at the meditation center. I'm already planning to go back to try to refind it and be much more conscious about reintegrating my devices afterwards. I'm starting to believe that, at least for me, burnout is an overstimulation, and things that I didn't even realize were forms of stimulation were contributing. But the biggest forms of stimulation, Internet, computers, phones and television are all things that I now realize I have to use incredibly judiciously.

I think we'll look back at this time, when we introduced all these devices into our society without any concept of the damage they cause, very similarly to the times when we used lead paint on our walls or asbestos in our ceilings. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but once we study the effect it has on our health, we'll be horrified.

P.S. On the doing nothing front, having spent 10 days being forced to do nothing but think in between the meditation sessions, it's really underrated and I wonder whether you've given it a fair shot. You really have to go days of doing literally nothing but thinking before it starts to give you any benefit. But once you do, you can just feel the stress melting away. The hard part is making it through the initial stage and then maintaining that benefit once you start to reintegrate with the rest of society.

Funny was thinking something similarly. As much as I enjoy working when I want to, deadlines and avoidance of failure is killing me. I would never give up programming but for the past week it's a struggle to bring myself to spend even a half hour of writing code. The need to get things done has blocked me from getting into other things but the frustration I feel from a single problem when I sit down is causing me to get nothing done.

A shepherd's flock is essentially his passive sustenance. A lifestyle where you're physically active every day and don't have to answer to anyone all the time is my idea of freedom. We've all succumbed to tech and toys and while I can simulate reality on my phone I don't think I'm living a better life than people 200 years ago. I think there is a boredom that sometimes arises if we cannot exert our intellect to create something, but life costs too much to work at a leisure pace.

http://modernfarmer.com/2013/12/10-things-learned-lambs/ Look liberating that looks.

Grew up on a farm. Before all these gadgets existed. Definitely a low-stress time in my life. Nothing to do all day but some physical chores, and wander or read. I got very comfortable being alone in my head with my thoughts. I think many modern gadgets are about avoiding that very thing - how many folks have ever been alone with their thoughts for more than an hour in a dentist waiting room? And how painful folks find that to be. Speaks volumes for the modern psychological condition.

People don't know how to handle boredom anymore and it's taken a huge toll on society.

I'm glad you've found something that helps you.

One minor additional thought about this: "the burnout and stress has returned and I've lost a lot of the benefit I found at the meditation center. I'm already planning to go back to try to refind it [...]"

For a long time my model was similar, that this sort of change is something I could lose and find. I was excited to find it, sad to lose it. When I had it, I expected to keep on having it, and was surprised when it was gone. But it doesn't behave like an object.

A more useful model to me is one of homeostasis and calibration. When I end up in a different equilibrium than the one I prefer, I think of myself as also having some sensor (or perhaps sensor weighting) out of calibration.

For example, relating to stress and burnout, I was poor at noticing the subtle bodily sensations that occur early on in that cycle. When my body offered me alarms, I had a tendency to hit snooze, treating the alerts as unimportant. And I was over-sensitive to other people's desires and my (generally good) desire to do things "right", by which I mean in accordance with readings from other sensors.

Now I don't think I'll ever have peace, as if it were an object. But I do think I can create peace, that I can sustain peace. For me, though, that requires careful attention to keeping those sensors well-calibrated and respecting not just the big red warning lights, but the small yellow ones.

That's an interesting change of perspective and one I'll keep in mind. It fits in with the teachings of my course, as well, as we were told that we don't crave or have aversion to an object, we crave or have aversion to the sensations in the body caused by our perceptions of that object. The key, as you've pointed out, is to learn to recognize and objectively view those sensations in the body and react to them consciously rather than subconsciously.

I also wonder, based on the training, whether those sensations are signs of burnout or whether the reactions to those sensations are actually what's causing the problem. Perhaps by noticing those sensations and teaching the body to react with equanimity I'd find the same effect that happens with other sensations of aversion. I've experienced the power of that equanimous reaction with something as simple as physical pain, which became a shadow of itself. I'm curious whether burnout is similarly inflated in severity by the mind's reaction to it.

This may be a bit of a tangent, but one of my favorite recording artists, Grimes, has said after her breakout album Halfaxa that shutting herself away for 10 days or more without any contact was vital to experiencing the "visions" which gave rise to her music... the recount I heard, did not seem happy, but necessary.

Oh, that the secret does lie within us, and that we must cross a frozen field to arrive at it. Who knows

Thank you for saying this. I sort of know it in the back of my head, but it needs repeating. Paradoxical place to read and write this though :) When I'm done with this thread this computer's switching off.

I think I've been on the border of burnout for a few months now myself.

Out of curiosity I wonder if personalities are more prone to burnout. I know some of folks aren't big fans of the pseudoscience of personality types but I'm still interested if there's some correlation.

I like the Myers-Briggs type personality indicator/test at http://www.16personalities.com (I'm not affiliated in any way) as they add another dimension called identity which resolves to either assertive or turbulent.

My results when I last took this a few weeks ago were INTP-T.

Perhaps there's a correlation to strategy?... mine is constant improvement.

  > Myers-Briggs

That's pseudoscience at its best.

> if you are feeling tired and sad, is it depression or early onset burnout, or are you just suffering lack of sleep?

Or maybe you're just not that into working in tech, and you're only doing it because x,y,z circumstance 'pushed' you into it when you were younger.

There's nothing wrong with career change, doing something different with your life, if you feel like programming or startups or whatever might be making you miserable.

As someone who's completely burnt out, I think the whole idea of doing any job 40 hours a week for several decades of your life is super scary.

It's too much routine. Too much auto pilot. Too many identical days and weeks which get compressed into nothing. Few new memories will be made. Your life will feel much shorter and uneventful.

Doing random blue collar part-time work (I currently work as a gardener) and working on interesting projects in my spare time works much better for me. I can think about my fun project during work, not think about my work when I'm off the clock.

> Too many identical days and weeks which get compressed into nothing. Few new memories will be made. Your life will feel much shorter and uneventful.

It is profound that I'm not the only one who quit a day job because of this exact reason. This is a biological fact. Your brain compresses memories that are too similar down into the smallest size possible. The result is that a year can often feel like a week, with a few memorable weekends and absolutely nothing else.

This is utterly frightening, and can feel like you've hit the fast forward button on your life and are careening towards the end.

This, I think, is why it's so frustrating when occupations which have historically been fairly flexible and creative start to gain a lot of process and become more formulaic.

> As someone who's completely burnt out, I think the whole idea of doing any job 40 hours a week for several decades of your life is super scary.

During university I honestly could never imagine myself working more than 20h a week. And this issue was really on my mind, it worried me, I really couldn't imagine how, but whenever I brought this up people always said "you'll get used to it".

Nearing the end of my study funding, I took a part-time job programming in an office. Two days, 16 hours per week for two months was enough to wreck me for nearly a decade now. I won't ever trust people that tell me I'll "get used to" anything ever again. I don't know how they do it, I guess I'm just a different species or something.

No, actually I LOVE programming and creating new stuff with software too. Sometimes the cure for impending burnout for me is just to start another quick side project. I did that recently. Spent 4 months single handedly building a SaaS HR app, and when I felt myself losing my energy, I spent a weekend writing a small & simple side app project that integrates with the main app.

It worked in that I felt re-energised to tackle the main app again after that.

There are days though, that I cannot bear to even look at a computer screen at all, and those days, I take up my guitar or another activity to focus my passion on...

> been through burnout several times

Wait--what?! How?

I don't want to discount your story or make light of it, but are you sure you've been "through" it? Maybe you meant to say you have closely avoided actual burnout several times?

You don't go "through" it without traumatic damage. The title doesn't say "minds turned to ash" for nothing.

I can't imagine anybody going through burnout twice, you have to be extremely unlucky AND stupid because the trauma turns up the alarm bells to eleven if you even get close to it (which is also lot sooner than before). This is some existential dread level of avoidance we're talking about here, the kind you need immense willpower to overcome. I'd do anything to avoid having to go through that again (maybe if I had children).

Ellen White, a very progressive health advocate and founder of the sda church actually recommended moving away from cities and working out in nature in tasks like farming. This prophetic insight has actually helped a lot of people. The church still runs a number of health resorts that do this and the results are off the charts.