Hello World.
My name is Adrian.
I'm a software developer who got severely burned out with his work over the last 18 months. If you have ever seen the movie "Office Space" - think of the protagonist Peter Gibbons. That's me. Okay, that's not actually me. I never worked at a company called Initech and never stole money from them and the place never burned down (but the name of the company I worked for starts with an "I", and I've certainly fantasised about watching the joint burn down!). Just kidding.
But in all seriousness - just like Peter Gibbons, I did start to feel like I'm going through a daily time loop, did end up losing interest and coasting to some extent towards the end - and definitely felt like chucking it all in and becoming a truck driver instead - on several occasions.
So I started this blog today (10th December 2010, the day I resigned) as sort of a combination self-therapy, personal journal, and hopefully as a source of information and solace for other programmers and office workers who might be suffering through similar issues.
BURNOUT IN A NUTSHELL
I've researched career burnout heaps over the past few months. The main thing that has to be understood about burnout is that it isn't just a stronger version of your basic everyday stress. It's a long term issue that requires drastic, long term solutions. Burnout develops notoriously differently in different people, but in my case (and what seems to be a common theme for many sufferers), a good litmus test was this: short term time off work didn't make it better. At all.
Normal, everyday stress is generally lessened by taking time off work and going on vacations. In the case of burnout, the feeling of stress and heaviness is chronic and constant. As I've heard it described: "It's the psychological equivalent of having a permanent migraine.". The reason that short term de-stressing events such as vacations don't make it go away is that it's a long term exhaustion issue. Anything less than a handful of solid months away from the situation which caused it tends to just make you feel slightly better on the time off itself, and you end up back where you started as soon as you return. Simply put: with burnout short term breaks do not "reset" your everyday career motivation and mental well being. With normal everyday stress, they do.
Another way to think of it is that burnout works a little bit like clinical depression. There is no way to make yourself feel better by rationally reflecting on how your job and your situation in life "actually isn't that bad". No matter what you do, and no matter how many blessings you possibly really do have to count in your job, you still just feel lousy and "over it" about it.
THE RECOVERY PLAN - SABBATICAL 2011
So I've decided that 2011 will be a self-funded Sabbatical Year for me...
The plans are vague so far, but here is the outline of the first few months at least:
I will take 2-3 months off to do absolutely nothing (career-wise). I won't even touch computers unless it's purely for a relaxing activity such as WoW, surfing the Internet, or at most contributing to Stack Exchange. The irony of the last point is how I still actually enjoy reading, writing and thinking about programming. It's just the everyday reality of actually working a formal programming job that I don't want to touch lately.
One thing I'll do during this time is go on a backpacking trip around Australia. I've got friends and family interstate who I'd like to spend some time with, plus go on a general "walkabout" up the east coast.
After this, I'm not quite sure yet. Underneath what happened with my burnout - I still do love programming and computers. And I can see myself wanting to come back to it after a few solid months of wandering aimlessly and not having any productive focus. At the moment my dream is to start a micro ISV, or maybe dabble in freelancing or contracting later in the year. In any case, this is really something that has to wait until the burnout has subsided and my motivation has recalibrated itself. So only time will tell.....
Adrian, 10th December 2010
