Burnout and Work-Life Balance

About this Episode

The panelists discuss work-life balance and avoiding burnout. Mike shares his personal experience of burnout from continuous long hours at startups and the positive impact of transitioning to a four-day workweek, which surprisingly increased productivity. The group identifies factors contributing to burnout, such as excessive workload, lack of autonomy, and value misalignment with the company. They explore symptoms of burnout, including diminished interest, difficulty focusing, and physical symptoms like headaches.

The conversation also touches on strategies for preventing burnout, emphasizing the importance of setting boundaries, disconnecting from work, and prioritizing tasks. They discuss how a supportive work environment, where employees have autonomy and their values align with the company's, can help mitigate burnout. The podcast acknowledges that sometimes, leaving an unhealthy work environment might be the best solution for avoiding burnout.

Transcript:

MIKE: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Acima Development podcast. I'm Mike. I will be hosting again today.

Today, we have with us Eddy, Ramses, and Tad. You can probably tell, if you're listening to this, by the title that [chuckles] today we're going to be talking about work-life balance and avoiding burnout.

So, I'm going to start with a very personal story on this one. About, I don't know, ten years ago, I was at a startup, but not the first startup I've been at [laughs]. I had been at kind of a series of startups, where I had put in a lot of hours. And I realized that the work wasn't motivating me the way that it used to do. I felt, you know, the obligation to get the work done. But I just... it was harder and harder to focus. And I didn't enjoy it the way I once enjoyed it. I mean, coding is fun [laughs], and it just wasn't anymore.

I started thinking about career changes, thinking about...in my free time, I thought about a lot of things, and they weren't work [chuckles], and that said something. Some context: I had been working at a baseline of about 50 hours a week, and sometimes up to 70-80 hours a week, not usually, but, you know, I'd put in a lot of hours, probably averaged around 60, and I had done it for years.

I had worked at one place where I was the lead and sometimes the only engineer keeping things together. And this was in the days before DevOps, so [chuckles] not only did you do the engineering, you also kept the systems up. And, you know, there was, like, a data center you had to go to fix things [laughter] in case the servers went down.

TAD: Unlock the rack, pull up the little cards, the keyboard, and the monitor around it, put things in.

MIKE: Yeah, KVM keyboard. We did that [laughs]. I did that. [inaudible 01:50] I didn't have to go to the data center very often. But I did that, that, you know, kind of run the show thing for a lot of years. So, I went for multiple years where I didn't have any meaningful vacation. I took off one or two days here or there, and that was it. In fact, I took two days off once and I remember it feeling like the biggest vacation I'd had in, well, in years. I pulled it off. I did it. But there's a point when you start to question, even if it's not even conscious. My body was telling me maybe this isn't the right answer.

And I suggested...I'd been reading about the four-day workweeks that some companies were going to. And we had a team meeting, and the manager I had said, "You know, if there was anything you could have, you know, anything that you would change, what would it be?" And I said, "You know, what? Working less. What if we tried this four-day workweek thing?" And he said, "Okay."

And he went and got approval from the company, and, like, the next week, we did it. So, kudos to [SP] Mutch, by the way. If you ever happen to listen to this, thank you [laughs]. That was awesome. I'm still very grateful for having such an excellent, you know, partner in things. But we did that, and we did that for quite some time, actually. I did that for probably a couple of years there.

And here's the thing, this is the thing: we measured our output and story points. And you know what happened? It went up. It went up. It wasn't just me working four days a week. It was the entire team. We were a relatively small team. We had six or eight people, something like that. But our productivity went up. Our consistency went up, and we consistently delivered. And we were all happier.

So, I went from working 50 to 80 hours a week to working 32 to 40, and the productivity went up. It was a profound moment to see that sometimes, working harder does not make everything better or push the work forward. And killing yourself, you know, perhaps literally killing yourself with the stress and all that time and taking time away from things that are also important in life, was not particularly effective to getting more done.

Now, I don't want to be misconstrued as saying [chuckles] that over no timeframe that additional work can't be helpful. Everybody who's been to college has probably stayed up late studying, stayed up for a test the next day, or finishing a paper, or finishing a coding project if you're a coder, myself included [laughs], sometimes all night for a couple of nights. But that's over a very small, fixed time interval after which it ends. And over longer time horizons, that becomes less and less effective.

I've seen some research that was a big to-do...probably between 15 or 20 years ago, probably closer to 15, about somebody named...well, somebody whose pseudonym was EA_Spouse. You can look it up: EA_Spouse, EA underscore spouse. When there was a spouse of a developer at EA Games, who wrote an open letter about how their spouse was being mistreated and overworked. For some reason, it went viral, and a lot of people commented on it.

And one of the things that came out of that was there was some research done in physical world manufacturing, not in modern information industries but back when people were working more with their bodies. (So, you could arguably debate that it doesn't quite apply, but I suspect it does.) that they measured overtime. So, they had one group of people work 60 hours a week, and one group of people work 40 hours a week.

And they found that, initially, the people working extra hours had more productivity. But by about six weeks, the productivity was equal. So, after six weeks, the people who'd been working 60 hours a week for those six weeks had no more output, and their cumulative output was no greater. Their cumulative output was no greater than people who had worked 40 all that time. And [laughs], wow, right?

Imagine you're that poor group that worked 60 hours a week, only to realize you've accomplished nothing more than the people who just worked normal hours. That really resonated with me, and I've thought about it a lot in the years since. And I think about the four-day workweek. I worked the four-day workweek for several years. [inaudible 06:00] the Acima Development podcast, my first few years at Acima, I was a contractor, and I actually worked four-hour weeks, and eventually, I came on full time.

And in order to work well with the rest of the team, I've shifted away from four-day workweeks because my burnout had healed [laughs, and I was back and loving my job again. But I know that risk is there, you know, I know that I can destroy myself. So, I've made very conscious effort in the years since to be very careful about how I spend my time. When I'm done with work, I turn it off, and I do something else.

And I've learned that it has not affected my productivity. In fact [chuckles], if anything, I think I've done very well. I've done very well in the years since and have been able to be very successful. And part of that I ascribe, actually, to a willingness to maintain a boundary and say, "This is where work stops." I have an office. And when I'm done with my workday, I leave my office, and I go and I spend time with my family. But maybe I'll do other things sometimes, too. But, you know, I leave my office, and I go and do something else. And then, when the next day comes, I go into my office, and I work hard.

There are times when I do think it's appropriate to put in some extra time. There's times where there's an urgent project, and you put in that time to get that done. But if those are anything other than the exception, I think it not only is going to be the cause of a poor personal experience, but it won't actually help. When those long hours become the rule rather than the exception, they tend to actually be counterproductive.

And I'm speaking from anecdotal personal experience, though we did measure, you know, over a team. But there's also research backing that, that maintaining this balance and getting away from burnout is beneficial not only to individual health but to the company health, that we're able to contribute more because we're able to bring our whole selves in.

And it's interesting. I don't think we're necessarily personally aware that our productivity is going down when we're overworked. It's as much as a person who's intoxicated has a hard time being introspective and recognizing they're intoxicated, or a person who's been sleep deprived has a hard time recognizing. And they might know that they're sleepy, but it's hard to do cognitive introspection. You don't see that your productivity is going down. It [chuckles] inhibits your ability even to be self-aware. So, regardless of whether you think you're being less productive, if you're putting those kinds of hours, you probably are.

I think that there are probably some cheats, to some degree, to get you past some of those things. I know that there's some people in Silicon Valley who do, like, mindfulness meditation to find some break between things and then return to work. But there are human limits. At some point, you've got to take that break. And refusal to acknowledge those limits doesn't mean they're not there. As much as I can refuse to acknowledge that gravity affects me, but if I jump from a high place, my refusal to acknowledge its existence [laughs] is not going to make it go away.

I have kind of strong feelings about this one because I think it's important. I think that developers should be, and everybody should be treated with respect. And particularly knowing that overworking people doesn't get the job done better [chuckles] leads me to argue pretty passionately that we should be treating people well, not only for their own sake but for the health of the project and the company. We do better when we give people reasonable hours of work. What thoughts does this bring up in y'alls mind? What do you think?

TAD: A couple of questions that I'm curious about from you guys is, what does burnout look like? And are there other factors besides workload that contribute to burnout? Because workload is an obvious one, right? And that's what you're talking about, Mike. But I can think of other factors that would contribute to me feeling burned out, even if I'm working just a regular 40-hour week. So, those are a couple of questions for you guys. And I'm curious to see what you guys think.

EDDY: I feel like we need to find what the symptoms of burnout is first, right? Maybe fatigue, like, cognitive thought goes down, et cetera. Like, maybe we can engage the room and see, like, what other people's opinion is on the symptoms to burnout.

TAD: Like, just a lack of interest, right? You're like, I know I should care about what I'm doing right now, but I just can't bring myself to care enough. And I'm going to force myself and [SP] pinery, and I'll push through this. But, oh my gosh, this is a slog because I feel so indifferent right now to what I'm doing. That's something that I experience when I'm feeling burnt out.

MIKE: That's really well put. And related to that, focus becomes extremely difficult. Think about intrusive thoughts. Whenever you've had intrusive thoughts, something that you keep thinking about, well, that happens to you because instead of your mind staying on it, your mind wants to go somewhere else. You lose the ability to have the kind of focus you need.

And for software development, you need focus. It's important. It's a very focus-driven endeavor, and inability to keep your mind on it...you think, okay, I'll go for a walk, whatever it is that you do. You know, I'll go and read an article, whatever it is, you know, we all have our own things that you do to go and clear your head just because it's working.

EDDY: For me, it's headaches. If I'm staring at the screen for too long or whatever, my head starts hurting. It starts throbbing a bit, and I have to stand up, you know, walk away.

MIKE: It's interesting. You have to look for those things, that, you know, lost self-awareness. It's really hard to do a self-analysis. So, you have to kind of look for those things. Wait, why am I getting so many headaches?

TAD: I think it's potentially harder for us because we train ourselves to tune things out and to focus, right? That's part of the job. That's part of the skill set is: I need to be able to put the blinders on and set my mind to a task. And if I'm really into something, I'll forget. I'm like, oh shoot, I should have eaten lunch, like, an hour ago, right? Which is a sign that I was doing a good job of focusing but a terrible job of being self-aware of my body's promptings, right?

EDDY: So, what adds burnout? I think workload, like you said, Tad. I think that's where most of us go, right? Like, instinctively [laughs].

MIKE: It's not all of it, right?

EDDY: Yeah.

TAD: I know that if I have this possibility for something, but I haven't been given the ability or the power to accomplish it, then that puts me in this burnout spiral, right? Like, if they're like, "Oh, there's a very important deadline you have to meet this Friday. You have to get it done." And you're like, "But the API isn't even ready yet." I've just coded against vapor. And I don't have the power to change that, right? Like, the responsibility without the power to accomplish what you're responsible for that disconnect often just makes me stressed and burned out, right? There's, like, a control-responsibility balance that I need.

RAMSES: In hindsight, I don't know if that would be necessarily your responsibility. It's, like, the product manager's responsibility. You do what you can do, and, you know, if it's not delivered on time, that's their problem.

TAD: But I've been in a situation where I was working at a startup, and they say, "You got to take this data and build these graphs from this data." And I said, "That's impossible to do." Like, the data just it's not the sort of data that you can graph in that manner, right? And my manager said to me, "You're a smart guy. You'll figure it out. I need this done by Friday." And Friday came, and the data hadn't changed.

MIKE: [laughs]

TAD: The requirements hadn't changed. And I still I'm, like, you can try to match this data to this graph, but it's nonsense, right? It just isn't the right graph for the data. And that's just burnout, right? That's just stress. And --

EDDY: I feel like some of that responsibility does fall to the individual, too, right? I think we need to be able to be expressive when we feel that the deadline is unrealistic. So, like, part of that is imposed by management, like, product managers [inaudible 14:34] and such. But I think as a developer, you also need to be pretty conscious about that and be expressive if you feel it's unrealistic.

MIKE: Well –-

TAD: Yeah. And if they say, "You're a smart guy; you'll figure it out," then --

[laughter]

MIKE: So, that goes to your...you had mentioned...You didn't use this word, autonomy. I was going to say the same thing. You know, anytime that...and I've seen...I don't have it in front of me, though I've read about this in the past. That's the thing they mention first [chuckles]. It's often mentioned first is, when you don't have autonomy, when you have demands that you have no personal control over, autonomy or agency kind of related words, if that's taken away, it causes stress. And those are the kinds of things that lead most to burnout.

And it says something to management that [chuckles] it's their job to provide agency and autonomy to their employees. Give people the opportunity to do what they want to do, that is, to do their job, right [chuckles]? I don't mean the autonomy to decide to go on a three-year vacation but [chuckles]—maybe in some places—but the autonomy to choose how the work gets done. And that means listening.

When you say, "This is what I think the requirements are," and the developer says, "Well, what is the reason that you have those requirements?" And they say, "Well, I'm trying to solve this problem." And the developer says, "Well, I can think of this way to solve the problem. It doesn't quite meet those requirements, but it solves the problem." Now you've had a conversation. You've done what was really requested, was solving that problem rather than meeting a set of rigid requirements.

In the case you mentioned, Tad, "Here's this data. I need to visualize it." If it had been brought to you in a different way, saying, "I've got some data I need to visualize," that's a very different request because it steps back and has some humility, you know, some willingness to negotiate so that the problem gets solved. There's still a problem that needs to get solved. But solving the actual problem in healthy environments...I think we've spoken before about psychological safety. In healthy environments, interesting questions are celebrated and encouraged because they lead to better solutions. In unhealthy environments, there are demands made without any feedback.

And this is related to the idea of Agile software development, which is all around communication, recognizing it's really hard, actually, to communicate about requirements. And if you try to come up with a bunch of requirements upfront, you'll probably get them wrong. So, instead, focusing on an iterative process where there's communication at every step, you tend to get better software.

A prominent example is SpaceX. They're a physical world company that tries to run things like a software company, and they do this iterative development. And they've just dominated that industry recently because that process works. It works. The heavy communication, the tight feedback loops, where the communication is kind of the center of the cycle rather than documenting rigid requirements. Well, the same thing applies to your manager. You need to have that communication loop. And if management is not communicating, they say, "Here's our requirements. Get this done," then you end up with a project that runs over budget and over time, and nobody is happy.

EDDY: You know, we're talking about burnout. And both Mike and Tad have mentioned that earlier in their careers, they dealt with burnout. And I can finally relate to that, and I don't know if that's a good or bad thing [laughter]. To give some context, you know, our group was assigned to accomplish not an easy feat. You know, it was a feature that needed to be out within, like, a month deadline.

TAD: Yes.

EDDY: And some of us found ourselves, you know, working extra hours, working over the weekend, you know, to make sure that we were meeting deadlines. And I found quickly that I was, towards the tail end of us meeting that deadline, and I found that we were missing, me personally, I was missing really simple syntax, you know, that was being called out on my peer reviews, right?

They're just like, "Oh, Eddy, you forgot, you know, you misspelled this [inaudible 18:42]." Oh, man. I'm like, I would have caught that any other time, right? But, like, when you're crunching and, like, you're in a tunnel vision, you know, you start missing really easy mistakes, right? And that's when I realized, I'm like, okay, after this is out, after this is in production, and there's something tangible that's working, I'm going to take a couple of days, relax --

MIKE: As you should.

TAD: Yeah, I find my brain is...they usually talk about, like, exercising your mind, like, working your mind. And this reminds me of...one time I was working at a company, and several of us were, like, "Oh, Go sounds like a really interesting game. We should all teach ourselves how to play Go." And during our lunch hour, we would play Go against each other.

And it's a very simple game, but you have to think really, really hard about it, right? You have to be like, okay, if he goes here, and I go here, and [vocalization]. And you have to take really many, many steps ahead. So, we'd do that over our lunch break, and then we'd get back to work. And we'd just be like, "Ugh, I can't even, like, work. Like, I can't even focus on my code because this activity I did for an hour is exercising the same part of my brain as I was needing to write code. And I just can't bring my brain to do that still, right? Like, I need to find something different. I need to exercise a different part of my brain, right?" Like, if I'm doing --

EDDY: You need to stimulate your brain [inaudible 20:15]

TAD: Yeah. Just, like, I'm doing left-brain activities, like, very intense. And I think Mike has mentioned, you know, go and listen to some music or play the piano, or, you know, interact socially, or things like that. That's an activity that's very different. And it lets that part of your brain rest and lets some other part of your brain, you know, take over and do something for a while.

MIKE: My first manager in software grew roses. You got to have something different.

EDDY: I play fetch with my dog because I have a backyard, sometimes.

TAD: There you go.

EDDY: And with us kind of transitioning over to winter, there is very less time you can do that now.

MIKE: So, you need to find another outlet, you're saying?

EDDY: Probably. Yeah, that sounds about right.

MIKE: [laughs] So, we've talked a little bit about some of the things that lead to burnout, and we've mentioned the lost autonomy and then overwork. Anything else that any of you have experienced? You know, it doesn't even have to be necessarily work. You know, this can happen in school or other situations.

TAD: Actually, I was mentioning, like you, you know, go interact with your family, things like that. Something that leads to burnout for me is isolation, where I'm just by myself. And there's been times in my career where it's...I've worked remote; I'm by myself. And the project I was given is, like, a three-month project or something like that, right? Where there's no one else I can talk to about the project. They're all doing their other things. It's just me and the project that's going to take three months.

And it's hard for me to care as intensely on a three-month project by myself as if, you know, I'm pairing with somebody, or I get a break, or I get some kind of variety or something like that. So, it's...maybe I'm touching on some other things as well. But, for me, that isolation aspect, if it's just me by myself all day, every day for many months at a time, I start to feel it. And it's not a workload thing. It's just I miss the interaction with people. I miss being able to talk through some things.

EDDY: So, that's why you go into the office is to avoid burnout [laughs].

TAD: Yeah, like, I come into the office so I can talk anime with you. And you heal my burnout, Eddy.

EDDY: To the listeners out there, to avoid burnout for Tad, he likes to have conversations and go on tangents about anime [laughter].

TAD: Because I know you're a huge fan. But I am someone that probably needs to pair more than maybe other developers. I've got a buddy who works for Google who his ideal situation would be he's in the forest in a glass box so that, like, you know, he's somewhat protected from the elements, but he could still see nature. And he would be able to do that all day, every day, for the rest of his life.

He doesn't need to talk to anybody. He doesn't need to have anyone check in on him. He would just sit in nature by himself. And he's content, right? He's fulfilled with just that. But if your needs aren't getting met, is when you hit burnout. And, for me, I have a social need that I need to take care of periodically, or else I get that fatigue and that burnout.

EDDY: Change of scenery, Tad. I think that's awesome. It's a great idea. When you really mention it, anytime I do go physically in an office, since I do interact with more people to get that social stimulation in my brain, now that I'm thinking about it, it's very seldom that I do reach or hit burnout from the days when I do go to the office.

I can't do this anymore. I have a backyard patio, and I have a bunch of trees, and I have a garden couch. The couch is designed to be outside. And I would sit down, stretch my legs because it's a long couch, right? And I'd sit back and, you know, recline a little bit. And I'd find myself just hearing the birds. Suddenly, that's kind of soothing.

TAD: That's interesting because I have a spot on my balcony where I've set up a hummingbird feeder, and just going out on the balcony...every developer they get hung up on something and just kind of, like, stare off in the near distance and just kind of, like, ugh [laughs]. And just being able to watch the hummingbirds flit around while I do that has been beneficial for me.

EDDY: The power of nature.

MIKE: Are you familiar with the idea of forest bathing?

TAD: I am, yes.

MIKE: It is a Japanese idea. It's a practice of going to the forest, and it's not literal bathing of your body. It's kind of bathing of your mind. My understanding is it has been shown to be very therapeutic, nature, in particular, getting out of the office, outside into the woods and that glass box, wherever it is [laughs], someplace where you're exposed to somewhat unmodified [chuckles] universe around you. That could be the stars, right? Seeing non-human created environment changes you, and I don't have deep insight as to why that is, but I do have deep experience. That is very therapeutic for me. And I wonder if it's somewhat related to the socializing and that you're communing with the universe in some way.

EDDY: I haven't necessarily done forest bathing, unless you consider listening to a soundtrack of a forest. That's what I've done before trying to fall asleep, you know, and I take my mind elsewhere. I will say, like, "Hey, Alexa, play some sounds from the forest," you know, and just hearing birds chirping, and, like, the wind and trees being brushed and stuff like that, maybe it has a similar effect.

MIKE: Why wouldn't it, right? [laughs] Whether it's visual or audio, it's all a similar experience. I was thinking, as were talking about isolation, in prisons, they will put somebody in solitary confinement sometimes. Sometimes, that's treated as punishment. And whether or not it's treated as punishment or just keeping somebody safe, I read that it's associated with severe negative effects on mental health. It's, in general, not good for people to be alone, and, usually, it doesn't result in very good software either, oh, not as good; I'll say that. You know, software, in general, is done better in a social context like most things.

EDDY: You know, I'm pretty sure I've read something, like, a psychological somewhere a long time ago, where we've done studies that, actually, isolation is, actually, bad for individuals. And prolonged isolation does horrendous things to the body. I'm not saying that being a developer is coexisting with isolation [crosstalk 27:03].

TAD: It makes you [inaudible 27:04] crazy?

EDDY: [laughs] I'm not saying it makes you crazy, and it's relatable to prison. But --

MIKE: Right. They're different in degree, for sure. And I don't want to diminish the suffering of somebody who's in that degree of isolation; rather, to give an example of an extreme case and the deep trauma it perpetrates against your mind. And in a much lesser degree, like with my experience at work, you know, could lead to burnout.

EDDY: What are some of the actions or the things that you guys do while working to help productivity and also, in essence, avoiding burnout? I feel like some of us would say we listen to music. Anything else?

MIKE: I can't listen to music while working. I love music.

TAD: [laughs] --

MIKE: And that's why I can't listen to music while working because I can't do both [laughs]. I used to do it when I was younger. And if I need to have deep focus, I cannot also have something else that is taking my focus. You know, some people have ambient music that they can pay less attention to. To me, that's hard. I'm somebody who likes to think about the structure of the music.

Part of my experience of the music is maybe decomposing a little bit, thinking about the parts, thinking about the baseline, drums, you name it, or, you know, thinking about the harmonies or, like, oh, there's a key change, and kind of self-evaluating how it makes me feel. And with music I like, I'm going to go listen to it thinking about the lyrics, you know. I can't listen to music. It's stressful for me because it requires me to focus on two things at once.

TAD: Would something like the sound of rain or, you know, the ocean or something like that where it's maybe got some pattern, but it's not really musical and that structured...To be a developer, a lot of times you have to have a very analytical mind. And I'm guessing that deconstructing music is kind of the same muscle as breaking down code and analyzing code. So, that's going to be competing in your mind, right?

MIKE: You got a point. I bet I could listen to rain, and it would probably be fine and help push the other things away because it's close to white noise. It has a beautiful structure but one that's largely chaotic; you know, there's not a pattern that can distract. It's a good thought. Maybe I should give it a try.

TAD: I've kind of been thinking about different things. Maybe there's a lot of things that cause burnout for me. But I was thinking about a startup I worked at, and their value proposition was all the other people in this industry take your data, analyze your data, sell your data, invade your privacy, you know, all these things, and we don't, right? And that was their sales pitch. And that was their special niche that they're like, we only sell your data if you want us to, you know, we could partner up. We'll sell it. We'll give you a little bit of a kickback. But by and large, we store it, encrypt it, and it's private, and all these things.

And that was something that I really kind of believed in. And I'm like, yeah, like, people's privacy, and we don't sell their data. And I'm kind of proud that we're the only people in this particular segment of the industry that are doing that. Then, the company got sold to a much bigger company. And one of the first things they did is like, oh, yeah, we're going to make a ton of money by selling off analytics of everybody's data.

And when those values shifted, so they didn't align with my values anymore, suddenly, my enthusiasm for my job just went way down. I'm like, oh, okay [laughs], we're doing the same things that everyone else is doing. And we're not cool and awesome and an ally for people. We're just exploiting people [laughs] like everybody else. And that probably caused some burnout for me, just because I didn't care. This isn't cool. This is just a job that I'm slogging through now. And it's kind of something I'm doing. And I don't necessarily love myself when I do this. It's causing friction against my personal values.

SPEAKER: And I think that it happens with every change in management, when there's a big change in management and the philosophy changes. That's what happens because you are used to have the same vision. And it happened to me. I was working at a startup. And we were, like, disrupting the proptech ecosystem in Mexico. And there was a CEO, did something wrong, and they needed to replace him.

And this guy was, like, a big person in the ecosystem. But it was an old guy, like, really married to how things were done 50 years ago, and he wanted to take the company back to that. And I was very happy on how we were disrupting. And when this person came, it's like, the whole happiness of me working there it was off.

TAD: Would you say that caused burnout for you?

SPEAKER: Yeah, it was like, oh, no more happiness when you wake up. And, you know, you don't feel like going to work. And it's like, oh, this guy is going to ask...what [inaudible 32:27] project is he going to ask now? [laughs]

MIKE: Similar experience I had working for a company that got bought out. The company that bought us out started doing some things I found really shady. [laughs] And it bothered me more and more till one day I left [laughs]. At first, you know, things were fine. But as things got shadier, I got more and more uncomfortable; not just me, but the entire development team actually walked out. Not a good thing for your company, by the way, when your entire development team walks out [laughs]. Try to avoid doing shady stuff.

TAD: [laughs] It sounds like values and culture are big factors, yeah. I'm actually able to handle a higher workload if I enjoy the people I'm working with and I believe in what I'm doing.

EDDY: I hope I attribute to that.

TAD: [laughs] Of course.

EDDY: [laughs]

MIKE: We've identified several things that cause burnout. And if these are the factors that cause burnout, what's the opposite of that? Because I think we can take practical steps to avoid each of those things. And I think that'd be a great way to round out our time here. And the first one we all jumped to was overwork. So, what did we do?

RAMSES: I think you mentioned this earlier, Mike, but one of the main things, at least, I try to do, with my own work is set boundaries. I try not to work too much. I personally try to get up from my desk at least every hour. It's a little bit harder because my chair is so comfortable [laughter], so I can sit there all day. And then outside of work, I just try not to think about work too much; you know, I might be working on a problem in my head, but you just have to put it away until the next day.

MIKE: You know, and our listeners don't know, but Ramses is a machine. He gets a ton of code written. Realize that when he's saying he takes breaks, that means he's exceptionally effective with the time he has.

TAD: It feels like the Pomodoro thing sweeps through the software development community periodically, where you work for maybe 25 minutes, and then you take 5 minutes of break. And then you work for 25 minutes, and you take, like, 5 minutes of break. And in those 25 minutes, if something comes up, like, oh, that's a distracting thought, you could write it in a notebook, knowing you'll give yourself 5 minutes to address it later on. And you could free your brain from worrying about it, right? And I don't do that well, but there have been times where, you know, doing that kind of timeboxing has been effective for me.

EDDY: Disconnecting from work, I think, is crucial to avoiding burnout. In certain occasions, I've wanted to uninstall Slack on my phone, on the weekends. It's one of those things where I instinctively check to make sure nothing's on fire. But you can't really disconnect from work if you always have that connection wherever you go. I actually hid the icon...

MIKE: [laughs]

EDDY: Somewhere else where I'm not used to looking for it as a way for me to...if I [inaudible 35:31] try to go for it, I have to go out of my way to find it. And then I catch myself, and I'm like, oh, okay, no, I shouldn't be checking it. So, I think disconnection from work I think it's important. And also, try to avoid thinking about stuff over the weekend.

MIKE: And it's hard if you're on-call. You know, if you're responsible for a project, you have that obligation, but you can still timebox it. You can say, "Well, you know, I need to check on this. So, I'm going to check it at..." and you pick your time and then set it aside, unless there is an active push notification, you know, something that's pulling you in. And you can set up your notification preferences appropriately; you don't go back. There's more of that boundary setting.

I get off work. I do have Slack on, you know, if somebody needs to get a hold of me or they text me. I put my phone in my pocket, and I walk away. Yeah, maybe I'll use my phone to read something, but I will walk away from my desk. And that willingness to walk away has made such a difference. I used to really struggle with that, having that boundary, having an edge. But I've learned that, you know, I need to if I want to be effective at either side of that [inaudible 36:35].

EDDY: Early on, my wife would catch me on there, right? And she would be like, "What are you doing?" "Oh, I'm just answering the message in Slack on my phone."

TAD: [laughs]

EDDY: And she's just like, "Why? Aren't you off work?" I'm like, "Yeah, but I can provide input. Like, let me go ahead and do this." Eventually, like, she's like, "Babe, like, you're off work. Distance yourself [inaudible 36:54]. They'll live without you until tomorrow." Imagine I wasn't on-call.

MIKE: Well, and I schedule some time. I know that people might have some needs. So, I generally try to take 15 minutes to check Slack in the morning and in the evening, so I'm keeping, you know, a regular cadence. So, if people are stuck, I can do that.

Sometimes, in my current role [laughs], I have a lot of requests. I'm looking at 65 right now, and I recognize that it's not even possible for me to get to all of them. And you have to make a choice that you're going to be okay with that, that you can't get it all done. So, you have to prioritize and do what's most important, and then walk away. And that's really uncomfortable because I think we all want to do everything. And that recognition that we can't is hard but necessary.

TAD: The hard thing is that answering people's questions, helping things out, I mean, that's part of your job, and that's part of the reward of doing your job. If you didn't enjoy that stuff, then you would have a different job. So, it's hard, but it's something that you enjoy where you get positive feedback from it. Like, if Eddy is on, you know, helping me out with something, I'll be like, "Hey, Eddy. Thanks," you know, thumbs up, high-fives, and stuff like that. And it's hard to put that away sometimes.

MIKE: And we have to remember that we're not an unlimited well. You can drain it dry. That water table has to be replenished. And if you're not in a healthy spot, it's hard to help anybody else out. There are finite boundaries. We absolutely should celebrate, I think, that willingness to help and also recognize that, you know, if you destroy that ability to help, you're not helping anybody, and those boundaries make a difference.

Living without boundaries will only destroy yourself, and that's a difficult thing to realize. The answer is no [laughs]. You can't do it all, so you have to choose, but vital. And the same thing applies in lots of different contexts. If your business can't do everything you'd like to do, you got to choose. And in our personal lives, we have to choose. You have to choose to do the things you can do within your allotted time and then be done.

So, there's a lot to be said for choosing wisely, spending your day saying, "Well, these are the things I need to get done today. I'm going to work on the most important things first," or else you get to get the end of the day, and you're going to have that lost autonomy because you haven't done the most important things, and you're stressed out because they're not done. And you feel like they were taken away from you. But a lot of times, we do have some agency there. We can choose what we do first, and that, I think, goes a long way.

EDDY: You mentioned something that kind of harmonized with me where you said, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable with doing so, right? Well, I'm paraphrasing, and you said [inaudible 39:35]

MIKE: I think you said it better than I did [laughs].

EDDY: The thing is, at least for me, it was a lot harder to do that early on in my transition to a developer. When I first started, and I'm going on five months now, it was really hard to disconnect because I really wanted to hit the ground running. I was pushing 200 miles per hour, trying to make sure that, like, no one made mistakes, and I'm providing the value that I said I would, so I'm not trying to make a liar out of anyone.

But the longer you go, you know, the more experience you get; I think it becomes easier to disconnect and be putting yourself in those uncomfortable situations. So, for anyone listening who's starting to transition or starting to get their foot in the door, just know that it gets easier the more experienced and more wise you grow.

MIKE: It stays uncomfortable [laughs]; I can say that. But like you say, you become more mature at it and okay with it. You've made a conscious choice to embrace imperfection. A lot more gets done when it doesn't have to be perfect. So, we've talked about priorities and how vital it is to set priorities. That also helps some with autonomy. It helps with your time because it allows you to set those boundaries and give yourself some time.

So, boundary setting, prioritizing, and I don't know if there's much else to be said about the autonomy aspect because priorities has a lot to do with that. It was also mentioned that willingness to communicate is important, that when you see something you don't like, you say something.

TAD: It's nice if you're safe saying something.

MIKE: Yes. And that kind of yields the final point. If you're at a place where you don't have autonomy, when unethical things are happening around you or things that don't coincide with your values, and where you're being overworked, the answer is you probably need to leave. And, again, sometimes you just need to make that choice. Look around yourself and say, "Well, this is not the right environment for me." And that's an okay decision. You'll live through it [laughs].

And maybe that's a good place to end today. We've talked about the problems. We've talked about the solutions. Thank you to everybody who's participated today. I think we had a great discussion. For our listeners, thank you for joining us again on the Acima Development podcast. You'll hear us next time.