How not to burn out
Working as a programmer/developer introduces a lot of opportunities into our lives — wide career options, access to education, high salary, remote work, and many other benefits, but there is nothing “without a price”, is there? In this article, we will look into the psychological aspect of being a developer, what possible troubles it could cause, and how to deal with them. Just to be clear, this topic is common for many professions, but we will focus on it from the IT perspective.
In the everyday reality of developers, there is often a huge amount of work and responsibility — multiple projects, estimations, development itself, deadlines, deployments, etc., but not everyone is able to cope with all of that without a good portion of “self-harm”. At some point, it becomes “normal” to push yourself to the limit until you begin to feel that something has gone wrong…
So, we are getting to the point now— if you experience chronic fatigue, depression, decreased interest in work and work efficiency, detachment, mental and physical exhaustion, you seem to have encountered burnout syndrome. Burnout is a sign of a latent conflict between some aspects of work and personal attitudes. We understand that the work we do is important and useful, but the process itself gives nothing in return or is not fulfilling enough.
Types of burnout and possible causes
In most cases, when people talk about burnout, they are referring to professional burnout. However, there are other factors to consider if you’re feeling the symptoms.
According to Dr. Maslach, there are three separate types of burnout:
- Individual — caused by excessive negative self-talk, neurosis, and perfectionism.
- Interpersonal — caused by difficult relationships with others at work or at home.
- Organizational — caused by poor organization, extreme demands, and unrealistic deadlines that make you feel like you’re missing the mark and that your job is in danger.
We won’t go too deep into each of the types, but here are the most common preconditions for all three of them:
- Unclear responsibilities. When every day feels like you’re chasing a moving target, it’s easy to become exhausted and upset, it could make a person believe that their own fatigue is work-related.
- Reduced personal accomplishment is the tendency to negatively evaluate the worth of one’s work, feeling insufficient in regard to the ability to perform one’s job, and a generalized poor professional self-esteem. Individuals with burnout syndrome may also develop non-specific symptoms including feeling frustrated, angry, fearful, or anxious. They may also express an inability to feel happiness, joy, pleasure, or contentment.
- “Straight-A student” complex. Fear of mistakes is especially common for junior developers. The desire to get external approval, “to be the best”, constant need to prove something to someone. In reality, the only thing that matters — whether you completed the task within the scope or not.
- “Invisible” or “useless” result. One of the most frequent problems: the code is written but how will it be used? No idea whether a customer is happy with the result, manager didn’t return with any feedback, the next task is already awaiting, no acknowledgment of what was done for several weeks, so there is absolutely no motivation for a new assignment.
- No contact in the team. This can be both conflicts within the team or a lack of communication when everyone is doing something without interacting. In this case, the situation is quite unfortunate, since the team, whether in the office or remotely, is the first level of support. If team members are not supported, the chances of burnout increase significantly.
- High expectations. You are expecting perfect results from yourself and being too self-critical. After receiving a complaint from colleagues, you beat yourself up instead of getting together and finding a solution to the problem.
Actions to take
The first thing to remember — efficiency is not determined by the number of working hours. In an effective company, what matters is not how many hours you spent working, but what the result is. And it will only work if you have somewhere to draw energy from. Therefore, you need to be able to correctly use your energy during the day.
Workspace. Effective organization is about the requirement of minimal effort to sustain the work itself. Before you start making a plan, organize your workspace so you don’t have to waste time looking for anything. A programmer usually doesn’t need much.
Plan your work. It takes a lot of effort to keep a to-do list in your head and come back to it all the time. It is much easier to prepare such a list in advance with specified priorities and to do one thing at a time. When planning, try to break tasks into smaller chunks and make those tasks more specific. Always try to “think about things” once. Don’t jump straight to work unless the planning takes as much time as the completion.
Start of the day. It’s important to complete your most complicated task when you are rested and have the least amount of distractions. Having completed the most difficult task immediately frees you — after all, the main thing that was planned for the day has been done. In the evening, you won’t have to stay late but go home when you’re still fresh. Of course, this approach requires self-discipline, but the effort will soon pay off.
Do one thing at a time. Multitasking makes us less efficient: it impairs attention and associative thinking. For example, if you listen to a speech, your visual cortex becomes less active, so when you are simultaneously on the phone with a client and typing something on the computer, you literally hear less of what the client says.
One of the most important points — keep your communication hygiene. Avoid communication that does not lead to comfort and personal growth. Reduce time of communication with people, who make you feel overwhelmed. Look for healthy contacts — people who are easy to talk to. Finding “your” people is difficult, but it is extremely important to feel in place.
Time to study. Learn new technologies and programming concepts, improve your qualification. Studying helps not only to change activity but also to expand the scope of the current profession.
Breaks during the day. It would seem that taking breaks is wasting valuable time but experience has shown that pleasant distractions during the workday are beneficial. A slight decrease in productivity for short intervals of time greatly increases the total productivity.
Work-life balance. You cannot “live for work”, especially if you love what you are doing. You won’t have somewhere to draw new ideas and energy from. It is imperative to have other activities, preferably as far as possible from the profession.
Set boundaries. If you stay up late, take part of your work home, or your colleagues and your boss write to you in the middle of the night to discuss something urgently, you won’t be able to rest normally. To cope with professional burnout, it is necessary to set boundaries. Try to work within normal business hours, turn off notifications of the work-related apps, and reply less to work messages outside of business hours.
Final thoughts
It would be fair to say — emotional burnout is a serious matter to deal with once it happens. But no need to panic, there are a lot of recommendations and techniques, which would help to either prevent it from happening or to find a way to cope with it. Besides, do not exclude the possibility to talk to a professional psychologist.
Burnout can also be perceived as a sign that it is time for a change. Obviously, if it happened to you — something went wrong, so it is important not only to deal with the consequences but also to find time for personal growth and development. It could be a great opportunity to redirect energy somewhere else or start looking for a new source of it. Think about yourself first, take care of your physical and mental health, try to keep your work and personal time separated, learn to relax, and take your time.
We are ACTUM Digital and this piece was written by Yevheniia Smolanka, Front End Developer of Apollo Division. Feel free to get in touch.
