I'm burned out because I have to raise two young children, work a full time job in a demanding career, and then in the hour or two a day of time that isn't accounted for in those two tasks, I need to maintain a household and try to care for myself. I feel a strong sense of purpose caring for my family, but don't have enough time to meet life's demands. Maybe other people relate more to this post because they more money and no kids.
> Maybe other people relate more to this post because they more money and no kids.
I have kids, but I don’t think having kids or even a lack of money is necessary to experience the type of burnout you’re describing.
While everyone and every situation is different, my personal experience is that having kids led to less burnout for me over time. I expected the opposite after reading comments online, but it turns out that for me the time spent caring for the kids was energizing and purpose-providing. The job no longer felt like some isolated drudgery without purpose because it played a clear role in my family’s well being. I also learned how to manage time and prioritize better after having kids.
But I will never gatekeep burnout or try to differentiate burnout based on having kids or money. I can even think of someone who was clearly experiencing burnout despite having neither kids nor a job and while not having to worry about money. Burnout isn’t a simple function of life circumstances, personal circumstances and mental well being play a large role. In some cases, certain personality types can seemingly become burned out under any circumstances. It’s a heavily personal reaction.
I feel the same way about kids. For me, I think, it changed my perspective. Lots of things at work that would have bothered or frustrated me no longer do so. Having kids is a great way to develop a Zen attitude about some things.
Though, to be fair, you gain a whole new set of much scarier things to worry about.
I'm like this but four kids. The kids are my life, but in another way the two hours when they're in bed are my life. I try and get household shit done in tiny increments throughout the day - cleaning the kitchen in the morning before I start work, doing laundry at lunch, cleaning away dinner stuff while they brush teeth, so that I squeeze a little more self time in the evenings. In those hours, I have side projects I work on. And I do WAY too many. People would look at my life and say I need to focus on one thing to finish it, but I've learned (for me at least) that happiness comes from having lots of options when you have that free time. I forgive myself for not making major progress on things, not being productive outside of work, and I try to just enjoy my time whether it's writing fiction, building board games, hobby coding, messing with unity, reading, building models, casual gaming etc. lately I've been doing needle felting because I picked up a cheap Halloween decoration of a needle felt cute vampire. Halloween is long over but I'm not beating myself up about it. All my hobbies follow a pattern of things that I can pick up where I left off with minimum fuss. I don't do anything that takes an age to set up or has a minimum time commitment.
I would say hang in there, and once in a while give yourself permission to prioritise the "care for myself" over the "maintain a household".
Do things in little increments and don't torture yourself about not being full of energy all the time
When kids were added to the family, it actually improved my life. I actually had motivation then for making money—and making time.
Now, empty nested, I can see that I was both rudderless and identity-less before the kids. I'm wandering now (and retired) trying to find a replacement identity.
I'm still a father of course (and husband) but with less input and less to do. In fact I feel inclined to step back and let the girls have their lives now. So I road-trip, come up with projects to keep me busy, try to be an "educator".
Both of my parents worked full time. Neither of them seemed burnt out. Have plenty of friends where both parents work, neither seem burnt out. I'm always curious what makes it work for some an not others. Some of these couples are not high paid tech workers either. I'm even more amazed that some still find time for hobbies some how.
When you have over extended responsibilities you have to readjust expectations. Some adults never learn how to do that and feel miserable all the time.
I know a lot of people who DoorDash, have groceries delivered, have a house cleaner, and call a contractor for every small thing that needs to be done. They’re buying time.
It’s never quite as much time as expected, though. Each is a marginal addition of free time that brings its own complications (like my friend who did an alarming amount of DoorDash and is now investing a lot of time into dropping weight and managing cholesterol and blood sugar)
I am hardware developer and certified electrician as a hobby. I have regularly clients that are buying time while I do really simple things on the property. It’s really cringe to be asked to vacuum their dirt for couple hours. I am paid premium while the clients watch Netflix and later whine about running out of money. I tried politely ask to do rudimentary things by themselves, but it never worked out. I grew in poverty and have hard time understanding this.
My parents buy groceries delivery what is really useful and time saving on other hand. House cleaner is difficult topic, they do seldom a good job even when offered more money. Typical example: there is dirt under edges of carpet after vacuuming.
Yes. Not only that, but I can work with electricity meters and put seals. It’s in Germany and very complicated and best unemployment insurance I could find.
It's not about buying time though, it's about what you do with the bought time. I see a lot of people using these expensive services and then wasting the extra time - or worse, filling time while they wait for the completion.
Glad you brought up your friend in the 2nd bit there as it seems to have become relatively common for some people to make food delivery services a very regular part of their lifestyle without really paying attention to the staggering amount of saturated fat they are ingesting even from the majority of "healthy" options available on these services (nevermind the even worse fast food options)
Of course this has always been a thing with prepared restaurant food (just listen to various comments Anthony Bourdain made over the years about restaurants and butter use) but I'm somewhat convinced the friction removal of having these foods delivered at nearly any time of the day is going to cause an uptick in middle age heart disease in a group of people who are going overboard in trading money for time without thinking of the long term consequences.
Hiring a housekeeper to come every couple of weeks has pretty much directly bought me time, at a pretty reasonable price. I like living in a neat and tidy home, but never cared much for scrubbing grout or polishing the stovetop in my free hours. I’m delighted every time she comes, and I never wake up Saturday thinking I’ll have to vacuum under the couch cushions.
That’s the best improvement to my life ever. I migrated from a normal-person rental to a million-dollars house, but to me the true luxury is, having someone to set the house back to impeccable state. I should have done that in my 42sqm flat.
Enough money to not work and care for your children is the correct answer.
But sadly the people I know who made enough money to be able to retire young are workaholics that will hire people to raise their kids. Because their workaholism is what made them rich in the first place. See Elon for an extreme example, I doubt he can even name all his biological children.
Who needs assistants? I'll make do with enough money to draw a monthly stipend covering my expenses and leisure from for life. You know, like a salary, but without wasting my time on pointless tasks that give me no satisfaction.
I decided to breathe for a while after a startup was out of runway and minimized my consumption while figuring out what to do once grew up.
It was a revelation to find out how little one needs materially to feel happy.
But a basic income or something is mandatory IMO as it's the only thing that can remove us from the rat race and free us from the zillionaires. Oh, sorry. We need to get rid of the zillionaires first, the last thing they want is normal people who aren't hungry and desperate for pennies.
It’s a missed opportunity for posts like the link to also mention and reinforce the importance of family planning. Many go into setting up a family because of peer pressure without assessing that it’s a very long term commitment. I’m sure you’re doing the best you can, of course. Maybe raising awareness that having kids is no longer an imperative for humans living in the 21st century could be something we do more of.
This is factually false :) and if you’re really worried, there are many options available to you to preserve what you will need or consider adoption - there are so many humans being born without a family after all.
Which is also OK. It's financially smart to realize you don't have the resources and not have kids.
If {some subset of the government, rich people, people who control the economy} want more people to have kids, which is something I keep hearing from that class of people: They need to collectively figure out how to put more money into the pockets of people. Higher salaries, drastic tax cuts, cheaper housing, more people will be financially ready and more kids will happen as a result.
having kids is no longer an imperative for humans living in the 21st century
on the contrary. global population growth will plateau in a few decades, and negative population growth is already a problem in many countries, like all western countries, south korea, and also china.
I have more money and no kids, I still relate to your comment.
I burned out basically because I'm stupid and decided to work a demanding full time job while also remodeling my house by myself. Like all renovation jobs, it ended up being bigger than planned (I actually expected it to grow from us discovering something that had to be done during the renovation, I just never expected the thing we found to be as large as it was: we had to redo the whole foundation of our 1840 house, and because a machine wouldn't fit through the doors, we ended up digging out around 16m3 of hard packed dirt by hand and carrying it out of the house, also by hand)
What was supposed to be a kitchen upgrade turned into roughly half our house looking like something out of tomb raider for a year. 8 hours of intellectually demanding office work followed by 8 hours of grueling digging in "the mine" as came to nickname the ground floor really did a number on both me and my wife.
She crashed out first, which left me with no choice but to keep pushing long past what I felt I could handle. Saw a doctor who diagnosed me with burnout and told me to rest for 6 months,I instead held out for another ~6 months until my wife was back on her legs before allowing myself to rest.
The 6 months of sick leave the doctor prescribed wasn't nearly enough.
But hey, my kitchen is fucking gorgeous, so there's that, at least!
Kids and work definitely increase the degree of difficulty! I'm juggling three young kids while going full-time in politics and publishing my first book this year. What I've found is stretching to launch Positive Politics now is absolutely more work and I could be relaxing instead of writing on a Sunday but this truly gives me more energy. One big unlock was finding a job in politics doing investigative journalism fighting corruption truly lights me up. It's less money and a nonprofit, but this work plus my book truly have me chasing me my highest purpose and Positive Politics grow to be huge on its own too.
Btw, if you want a great investigation, check out Michael D. Griffin and his relationship with Elon Musk (and the Golden Dome program). That really blasts existential questions/politics wide open.
I feel you. The answer is that you need help. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Also, it's good for kids to be spending time with other good people, too. Continuing in the way you describe is bad for you and you know it so the only thing left now is to figure out how to change it. I hope everything goes well with you.
I find the presentation of this article jarring. Bold, italics, underlining, yellow highlighting, light yellow highlighting.
I would argue that content should never highlight anything. Highlighting should be reserved for the reader to highlight the parts they find important or relevant. Authors have plenty of other tools at their disposal - all of which this article uses - and the preemptive highlighting is distracting and almost.....offensive in a sense that the author thinks I can't determine the relevant parts simply based on the fact that they are also in bold.
The high level of visual distraction detracts from the article as 20 elements on screen are all screaming for my attention and making it significantly harder to read the content in its entirety. It's like the text-only version of a mobile website filled with ads popping in and out.
I'd argue "buy my book" posts, especially ones posted by the author, shouldn't make the front page of HN. Especially from YC alum. Is this an ad in disguise?
Agreed. The first half of this post is actually interesting, but the second half quickly transforms into an ad. That disappointed me, because I believe the author has something interesting to say.
Maybe this hits for millennials and older but as a gen-z I think it's safe to say we're burnt out because everything we want is simply too expensive, our degrees are useless, dating and relationships have become damaged because of the apps, and we are inheriting a world that is broken and continues to shatter.
The older generations have everything and still feel burnt out and unhappy? Cool. Cool cool cool. That will certainly help with the nihilism.
Hey there, early Gen X here. We lived with the existential dread of nuclear war (The Day After traumatized a whole generation), our parents left us on our own with just 3 channels of TV for company because they both had to work, and our sexual awakening turned into a horror movie because of fear of AIDS (a death sentence at the time).
Yes, housing, education, and medical care are way more expensive now than in my era. There's no sugar-coating that. Education, you already have, don't try to buy more unless the math works out. You're young so hopefully you don't need much medical care. Housing is a big problem, I agree. If you can move to a cheaper state (Ohio? New Mexico?), that might help.
The real problem is dating and relationships. I think that's where we all need to focus. Are there any AI matchmakers yet? [Just kidding, maybe]
But don't worry about the world. The world has been broken ever since we discovered fire. My parents were born literally in the middle of World War II. Somehow it all worked out.
By any objective metric the world is less broken than ever before. But people who want to be defeatist and cynical can always find a plausible sounding reason to justify their negativity regardless of the facts. I'm part of an older generation and not burnt out or existentially starving or whatever. And more importantly I'm not actually starving or dying of plague or being sent off to die for my king or any of the other horrors that were a routine part of human existence for most people before the modern era.
As an American, I am surrounded by people who are so convinced that their country is awful that they want to basically abolish vast swathes of the government. Their elected representatives say extremely negative things about my beliefs, literally every single day, including veiled and not-so-veiled threats.
The world may be physically comfortable but I do not feel safe. And that's because they do not feel safe from me. I don't want to sound defeatist but there is no objective way to describe it without sounding cynical.
They want to be able to afford a house. Historically, in the US at least, for lower and middle class people that has been within reach. Now that's not the case. If I was in my late 20s and was lighting thousands per month on fire in rent, it'd be pretty darn alienating. Sure, if you zoom out far enough, the standard of living for zoomers is pretty good, there's not a mass casualty event when the potato crop fails. But if you don't (and I'd argue, you shouldn't) it's pretty clear that their economic prospects are worse than their parents. That is pretty bleak. It's no wonder why they're politically more radical than the other generations.
Put in the simplest terms: Economic nihilism happens when no house.
Speaking for my friends in their mid to late 20s, if you have a reasonable plan to get to a point where you can invest in your future as opposed to simply burning every last drop of income on mandatory expenses like food, housing and insurance I agree. When you can't foresee a way to get there you lack economic agency, economic nihilism is a rational response.
I don't think anyone is comparing to old monarchies or etc, they're mentally comparing it to the 1950s and 60s and the postwar economic boom times.
You can point out that things weren't as good as they're presented back then either, or that people are falling for advertising, but no one is really impressed that their living standard is better than the 1800s or earlier.
I think this is the only comment that captures the message of the article. I feel for everyone who is priced out of life, those are very serious problems, but it wasn't what the article is talking about.
If I was seeing lots of comments say something like "The cost of life is preventing me from pursuing my dreams" then the article would be relevant to that.
Man, posts like these always strike a nerve. I graduated in 2008. "Everything" wasn't just handed to us, we had our own share of horrible to deal with as well. And guess what? You'll get through it too.
I wasn't a fan of the article either but I think at any point in history you can make a convincing argument that the world is ending. I don't have any good advice as to how to defeat this perspective, but I am constantly reassured that because I'm not the only one that thinks things are shattered, there is a path to fixing it all.
Join some like-minded individuals and do something amazing. Fuck it, create a dating app without perverse incentives.
This resonates with me right now. I helped build a unicorn startup over the last 10 years but feel empty and burnt out when I’m working now. I feel like I’m wasting my time in exchange for a paycheck. I recently turned in my notice, I’m going on sabbatical. I’m hoping to find my passion and follow that. Finding that is something I’m struggling with though. Anyways, great article!
Also resonates with me. I helped my previous company scale and get acquired and then helped scale the new team some more. Then decided I wanted to go into a high-caliber start-up because I was kind of burned-out and after a year I did. I work with brilliant people, building a product that democratizes investing in my small EU country and seeing a company grow again is fun. The problem is we lack excitedness and the feedback loop is bad so my motivation hasn't picked-up. What helped me is a new hire that brought some emotions and excitedness to the team.
I have also been thinking of giving my notice for a while now, but I'm also struggling with finding a purpose so that part also hit me hard. I'm actually scared of leaving my job in case I find out it was the one thing that gave me purpose and I won't be able to find something better.
Congrats on doing it, and please do send a message if you do find something that gives you more purpose, it will greatly help me.
Sometimes it's possible to take an unpaid leave for six months or a year and then come back if you want to. If you perform well at your job, no reason they wouldn't want you back.
For all the yammering in this thread you’ve centered on the real problem no one can admit here.
You burn out creating value for others that you end up either not owning or it not materially contributing to your immediate community.
We evolved to work for ourselves and our tribe again immense satisfaction from that. Cleaning your house, pulling weeds volunteering locally. Etc.
But endlessly serving shareholders (ownership class or not) while giving up way more value then you out in yields a deep sense of happiness because we can’t express the unfairness woven into our life so deeply.
Thanks, I might take you up on that. I’ve mainly been in the work, kids, sleep loop the past decade so I need to find some hobbies and passion projects to work on.
I agree with the premise but take issue with the measure for "success": do you feel excited to get up and work on Monday?
We're humans and no matter what you're pursuing, you'll hit a point where your brain will adjust to the new reality and things will start feeling mundane. This is called the hedonic treadmill.
To me, what has helped is developing hobbies and relationships outside of work. We're social animals and need connection with others to feel fulfilled. Personally, my own life feels way more fulfilled right now than when I was just working on interesting projects at work or on my startup (that went nowhere).
Or you totally love doing what you do at work and, after spending a week at the beach, you can’t wait to go back because you’re so close to solving that interesting problem you’ve been working on for more than a month.
One thing that I always try to bring up in these discussions is that “burnout” and “overwork” are two different problems, and I think this author would agree with me.
If your problem could be fixed with a raise or a nice vacation, that’s overwork. 996 schedules, crunch time, and a high cost of living make overwork.
Burnout is when you stat asking yourself “what’s the point of doing any of this?” and your life is overwhelmed with apathy and anhedonia. Closer to a career-induced bout of major depression.
I think the described problem is real, but I'm astonished at the "went into politics" solution. I would expect that the lab work was a much more concrete, achievable, and lasting good than anything that will come of engaging with zero-sum or negative-sum games.
I also wonder about the "now it's time to lift everyone else into abundance" earlier in the article. I don't disagree that this is valuable, but it doesn't solve the existential "why", it just puts it off for a few decades until the poorest humans are as rich as wealthy Americans are now. "What a problem to have!" one might say, but literally that is the problem that the article is about, right? Going back to power-level everyone else doesn't actually solve the problem of what to do when someone reaches the level cap.
Ultimately there is nothing that is obviously and provably more important than the individual reading or writing this, as there kinda was in previous eras. Some candidates include religion, panhuman expansion or thriving (Musk), building a successor entity or entities (Altman), and the State or politics (the OP). I don't know of any argument better than personal preference, at the moment.
As an aside, I really don't like these kinds of titles. They presume a lot about the (potential) reader without knowing anything about them. And it sounds like it's stating some kind of a fact but it really isn't. Different people are afflicted by different problems, you can't just make such a blanket statement about everyone.
This first half of this definitely struck a chord. I spent the first three quarters of this year taking care of a terminally ill parent, then seeing them through hospice. If that sort of experience doesn't make a person step back from their life and question what they're doing nothing will.
I decided to step away from my job as an engineering VP and try something I actually wanted to do. It's terrifying, especially in this economy, but I wake up and feel excitement in the morning instead of dread for the first time in as long as I can remember.
Damn true. I figured it out by myself a while ago, when I was in the middle of a crisis after my son was born. TBF I’m still in the crisis on and off, but now I feel better.
What worked is:
- Realize that not loving my work is fine, as long as I have something else that I love and want to do.
- YouTube channel “Napoleon Hill Notes”. Yeah, it is AI voiced and I have no idea whether what it says makes sense or not. But it works for me, tremendously. Whenever I fell into a low mood, I boot up a session and I felt better afterwards. Now I use it to brainwash myself into a better version.
I think a lot of people work on their career kind of "on credit", assuming it'll pay back in lifestyle improvements somehow. If this isn't forthcoming, the credit runs out.
If you come from immense privilege (growing up in an 8 figure household), have good health, and rich relationships and that isn't enough to curb your existentialism that's ok, but I find it hard to take this piece seriously as this is written like it's targeting the average financially stable worker. It strikes me as out of touch at best.
I've been in an engineering manager role on and off for the past 7 years at two different companies. Both of which are highly regulated and incur a ton of audits, attestations and this impenetrable knot of distributed dependencies for segregation of duty and other 'stuff'. As a result I'm in meetings 75% of my working hours and rarely get involved with anything close to the actual technology my team delivers.
In the past two months I've been on two 4-6 hour incident management calls due to failures in our service providers and it's been quite some time since I felt that good about a day's work. No meetings, no planning, no bullshit...just raw collaboration and tactical problem solving. Even got to flex some of the skills that have been dormant for far too long.
Overcomplicated take. Burn out comes from lacking a feeling of forward progress and tractability to your problems, regardless of current objective state.
The "You're not x. You're y." format reads as AI generated to me. I know that seeing AI syntax behind every corner is a problem that is only going to get worse and that I need to shift my mindset; nevertheless, it tinged how I reacted to the entire article.
This is absolutely going to fall on deaf ears here, but I moved with my wife and 1 year old to China for 4 months and became the most productive in more than a decade.
Safety, convenience, infrastructure, everything around you isn't solely designed to price gouge you and exploit you, and all of that was just a minor benefit. The biggest thing I felt was an immense existential dread lifting from me. It's like the world millennials were promised when we were young actually exists - working on meaningful things with mental space to breath.
There's too much that can possibly be said of this, but up until now I genuinely thought there was only one way left and we were all doomed to fail, trying to pound sand into intractable problems. I somehow have hope in my life again.
Mh. Would like to hear the full story. My initial mental reflex is one of „es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen“, that is, „there is no right life in the wrong one“, as Adorno put it.
I think it's simpler to just appeal to every entrepreneur's spider sense - go where the great people are. It really does feel a bit like how Silicon Valley and San Francisco felt in 2000s-2010s. Caveat of course, which is even before 2008, aware insiders of SV were trying to warn that the Goodness of the internet was being squeezed too hard, that VC was turning to rent seeking too soon, the cart is way too far ahead of the basic research pipeline, etc. And of course, there's corruptible people, terrible overwork, insane competition, bad stuff etc in China too.
But there's a determined, undeniable sense of "we're going to make the world a better place", and you can physically see and touch it in China. Once you take a big inhale of that air, you realize just how much you missed it and needed it.
This is literally my first time hearing this. All the stuff I see from china is about lying flat, giving up because no matter how hard you work it won't make a difference? Is this a Shenzhen attitude?
Good stuff. You will enjoy my short essay, I want to give a lot of fucks! [1], which argues against the typical conclusion reached by people working at big corp long enough: "Stop caring. Stop giving a fuck. Focus on things outside of work".
The core insight it, if you start to feel the need to stop caring, instead of changing your character and values, treat it as a strong signal to change your environment.
Gonna try to be charitable, but this really feels like gaslighting. There's a lot more to the story of how much someone is thriving than "Nice place to live. More than enough stuff. Family and friends who love you." I'm burnt out because my fancy job requires me to live in an area with a cost of living so high that it's a genuine family crisis when the washing machine breaks because we don't have enough disposable income to replace it. It's not just a meaning problem out there.
I am condensing down a much longer thought here but I would argue that this is the result of consumerism.
You work to earn, you earn to buy.
But buying is not meaning. It's a momentary sugar high that's lost to the wind the moment the transaction is over. No deeper life meaning can be derived from this.
When your culture is based around constant self satisfaction, there's nothing bigger than the self.
Community is dead, culture over generations is dead, building and making is dead, even cooking your own food is dead - "just order it". There's nothing for us to do except our individual parts, and our individual parts often feel like we're just putting a quarter into a machine that spits out a paycheck.
I think this is, in part, what the article is arguing. Community, and multi-generational culture and tradition, were a technology which helped populations thrive in what we now consider abject poverty. As the world gets wealthier, due to more recent technologies like widespread markets, staying in the same place and interacting with only the same 100-500 people for one's whole life is no longer something that almost everyone has to do, which explodes the basis for those earlier techs.
With TFR rapidly falling, current and future children are much less likely to even have any family other than parents, which cuts out another pillar supporting community and tradition, too.
I don't have a pat answer or know where this is going, but--assuming humanity survives--unless we want to turn into Asimov's Spacers, we'll have to find something to care about.
> It feels like you’re stuck in the ordinary when all you want to do is chase greatness.
Gave up on greatness a long time ago, I'd settle for an "ordinary", where people just kind of try to NOT make bad things worse, or good things less enjoyable.
Blogging has always required aggressive titles. My best posts for years all used this "you" or "we" focused framing too. Trying to solve people's biggest problems!
Then I'm not even focused on the content more than I'm scanning through it for signs of AI slop writing so I don't have to waste brainpower consuming that which took no brainpower to produce.
Also unfair perhaps but I think writers in particular, like the author of this post, should be aware enough of the patterns of AI written slop to consciously avoid them nowadays.
It doesn't matter if you used to write like this, the reality is people will question you now if you do.
I don't think people should have kids because they otherwise lack meaning, but it's absolutely true that kids change you in ways you would never have believed. If you think you might want kids but aren't sure, just do it.
> I don't think people should have kids because they otherwise lack meaning
I'm past the age where I can (or rather should have) kids and I have to say, the past decade or so I'm more and more thinking that people SHOULD have kids to have (more) meaning in their life. Put it another way, I've begun thinking that having children is a nice way to have a default baseline of meaning in your life. I really see that with all my friends, who all have kids.
I'm married with three kids! And that's great! But like I say in the post, I still know I'm capable of making a bigger positive impact on the world, so that's how I focus my political work!
It's interesting that you get downvoted for what is, from a historical perspective, a very down-to-earth reasonable take.
I don't have kids but I am at the age where more and more of my friends are having kids, there definitely does seem to be something there. They are exhausted but most definitely have a renewed spark of sorts.
Unfortunately this is difficult to A/B test. So I'd avoid having kids to fix burn out.
I mean marriage is a global concept but it feels like the US makes a huge deal about it.
Like two people can't be together without being married.
But mostly it's a low effort low with quality comment that adds zero value and implicitly passes judgment on those who are not married and don't have kids.
As if married people with kids are the happiest people in the world lol.
> I mean marriage is a global concept but it feels like the US makes a huge deal about it.
I should have made that part clearer but my comment was solely on the kids part of their statement. I don't think marriage is inherently different from any other long-term partnership when it comes "existentially starving".
> As if married people with kids are the happiest people in the world lol.
That's not what I meant at all. The article is about how burnout is a catchall that hides that at our core we actually struggle for meaning. "When facing the existential vacuum, there's only one way out - up, towards your highest purpose". Children do in a lot of way give meaning to your life, suddenly you have a reason for suffering. It's a hell of a stretch to call that happiness, but it's definitely something.
I have kids, but I don’t think having kids or even a lack of money is necessary to experience the type of burnout you’re describing.
While everyone and every situation is different, my personal experience is that having kids led to less burnout for me over time. I expected the opposite after reading comments online, but it turns out that for me the time spent caring for the kids was energizing and purpose-providing. The job no longer felt like some isolated drudgery without purpose because it played a clear role in my family’s well being. I also learned how to manage time and prioritize better after having kids.
But I will never gatekeep burnout or try to differentiate burnout based on having kids or money. I can even think of someone who was clearly experiencing burnout despite having neither kids nor a job and while not having to worry about money. Burnout isn’t a simple function of life circumstances, personal circumstances and mental well being play a large role. In some cases, certain personality types can seemingly become burned out under any circumstances. It’s a heavily personal reaction.
Though, to be fair, you gain a whole new set of much scarier things to worry about.
Depends. At 3am it's not.
I would say hang in there, and once in a while give yourself permission to prioritise the "care for myself" over the "maintain a household".
Do things in little increments and don't torture yourself about not being full of energy all the time
Now, empty nested, I can see that I was both rudderless and identity-less before the kids. I'm wandering now (and retired) trying to find a replacement identity.
I'm still a father of course (and husband) but with less input and less to do. In fact I feel inclined to step back and let the girls have their lives now. So I road-trip, come up with projects to keep me busy, try to be an "educator".
It’s never quite as much time as expected, though. Each is a marginal addition of free time that brings its own complications (like my friend who did an alarming amount of DoorDash and is now investing a lot of time into dropping weight and managing cholesterol and blood sugar)
My parents buy groceries delivery what is really useful and time saving on other hand. House cleaner is difficult topic, they do seldom a good job even when offered more money. Typical example: there is dirt under edges of carpet after vacuuming.
Of course this has always been a thing with prepared restaurant food (just listen to various comments Anthony Bourdain made over the years about restaurants and butter use) but I'm somewhat convinced the friction removal of having these foods delivered at nearly any time of the day is going to cause an uptick in middle age heart disease in a group of people who are going overboard in trading money for time without thinking of the long term consequences.
But sadly the people I know who made enough money to be able to retire young are workaholics that will hire people to raise their kids. Because their workaholism is what made them rich in the first place. See Elon for an extreme example, I doubt he can even name all his biological children.
It was a revelation to find out how little one needs materially to feel happy.
But a basic income or something is mandatory IMO as it's the only thing that can remove us from the rat race and free us from the zillionaires. Oh, sorry. We need to get rid of the zillionaires first, the last thing they want is normal people who aren't hungry and desperate for pennies.
It’s a missed opportunity for posts like the link to also mention and reinforce the importance of family planning. Many go into setting up a family because of peer pressure without assessing that it’s a very long term commitment. I’m sure you’re doing the best you can, of course. Maybe raising awareness that having kids is no longer an imperative for humans living in the 21st century could be something we do more of.
If you want to have kids do it when you're in your early 20s.
Which is also OK. It's financially smart to realize you don't have the resources and not have kids.
If {some subset of the government, rich people, people who control the economy} want more people to have kids, which is something I keep hearing from that class of people: They need to collectively figure out how to put more money into the pockets of people. Higher salaries, drastic tax cuts, cheaper housing, more people will be financially ready and more kids will happen as a result.
on the contrary. global population growth will plateau in a few decades, and negative population growth is already a problem in many countries, like all western countries, south korea, and also china.
I burned out basically because I'm stupid and decided to work a demanding full time job while also remodeling my house by myself. Like all renovation jobs, it ended up being bigger than planned (I actually expected it to grow from us discovering something that had to be done during the renovation, I just never expected the thing we found to be as large as it was: we had to redo the whole foundation of our 1840 house, and because a machine wouldn't fit through the doors, we ended up digging out around 16m3 of hard packed dirt by hand and carrying it out of the house, also by hand)
What was supposed to be a kitchen upgrade turned into roughly half our house looking like something out of tomb raider for a year. 8 hours of intellectually demanding office work followed by 8 hours of grueling digging in "the mine" as came to nickname the ground floor really did a number on both me and my wife.
She crashed out first, which left me with no choice but to keep pushing long past what I felt I could handle. Saw a doctor who diagnosed me with burnout and told me to rest for 6 months,I instead held out for another ~6 months until my wife was back on her legs before allowing myself to rest.
The 6 months of sick leave the doctor prescribed wasn't nearly enough.
But hey, my kitchen is fucking gorgeous, so there's that, at least!
I would argue that content should never highlight anything. Highlighting should be reserved for the reader to highlight the parts they find important or relevant. Authors have plenty of other tools at their disposal - all of which this article uses - and the preemptive highlighting is distracting and almost.....offensive in a sense that the author thinks I can't determine the relevant parts simply based on the fact that they are also in bold.
The high level of visual distraction detracts from the article as 20 elements on screen are all screaming for my attention and making it significantly harder to read the content in its entirety. It's like the text-only version of a mobile website filled with ads popping in and out.
The older generations have everything and still feel burnt out and unhappy? Cool. Cool cool cool. That will certainly help with the nihilism.
Also, there were no jobs.
Yes, housing, education, and medical care are way more expensive now than in my era. There's no sugar-coating that. Education, you already have, don't try to buy more unless the math works out. You're young so hopefully you don't need much medical care. Housing is a big problem, I agree. If you can move to a cheaper state (Ohio? New Mexico?), that might help.
The real problem is dating and relationships. I think that's where we all need to focus. Are there any AI matchmakers yet? [Just kidding, maybe]
But don't worry about the world. The world has been broken ever since we discovered fire. My parents were born literally in the middle of World War II. Somehow it all worked out.
The world may be physically comfortable but I do not feel safe. And that's because they do not feel safe from me. I don't want to sound defeatist but there is no objective way to describe it without sounding cynical.
Put in the simplest terms: Economic nihilism happens when no house.
You can point out that things weren't as good as they're presented back then either, or that people are falling for advertising, but no one is really impressed that their living standard is better than the 1800s or earlier.
Perhaps the problem starts with the fact that we continue to steer society in the direction where everything we want costs money.
If I was seeing lots of comments say something like "The cost of life is preventing me from pursuing my dreams" then the article would be relevant to that.
I wasn't a fan of the article either but I think at any point in history you can make a convincing argument that the world is ending. I don't have any good advice as to how to defeat this perspective, but I am constantly reassured that because I'm not the only one that thinks things are shattered, there is a path to fixing it all.
Join some like-minded individuals and do something amazing. Fuck it, create a dating app without perverse incentives.
I have also been thinking of giving my notice for a while now, but I'm also struggling with finding a purpose so that part also hit me hard. I'm actually scared of leaving my job in case I find out it was the one thing that gave me purpose and I won't be able to find something better.
Congrats on doing it, and please do send a message if you do find something that gives you more purpose, it will greatly help me.
You burn out creating value for others that you end up either not owning or it not materially contributing to your immediate community.
We evolved to work for ourselves and our tribe again immense satisfaction from that. Cleaning your house, pulling weeds volunteering locally. Etc.
But endlessly serving shareholders (ownership class or not) while giving up way more value then you out in yields a deep sense of happiness because we can’t express the unfairness woven into our life so deeply.
I did that a few years ago and it’s been transformative.
HMU if you want help.
My un at icloud is best.
We're humans and no matter what you're pursuing, you'll hit a point where your brain will adjust to the new reality and things will start feeling mundane. This is called the hedonic treadmill.
To me, what has helped is developing hobbies and relationships outside of work. We're social animals and need connection with others to feel fulfilled. Personally, my own life feels way more fulfilled right now than when I was just working on interesting projects at work or on my startup (that went nowhere).
The happiest people I know treat work like the necessary evil to be endured to fulfill all other facets of life.
Work shouldn't be treated as a "necessary evil".
Reconciling the work vs. meaning split is hugely important.
Even if it means making less money short term, aligning work and purpose through work like politics and writing can make us way happier long-term.
If your problem could be fixed with a raise or a nice vacation, that’s overwork. 996 schedules, crunch time, and a high cost of living make overwork.
Burnout is when you stat asking yourself “what’s the point of doing any of this?” and your life is overwhelmed with apathy and anhedonia. Closer to a career-induced bout of major depression.
Maybe in extreme cases where a raise translates into big time savers like a maid, but those are not the type of raises you while keeping the same job.
Dreading work is very different than overwork.
I'm arguing we replace the "what's the point?" question with a "what's my highest purpose? exploration.
In that second answer is the solution to what many are calling burnout.
I also wonder about the "now it's time to lift everyone else into abundance" earlier in the article. I don't disagree that this is valuable, but it doesn't solve the existential "why", it just puts it off for a few decades until the poorest humans are as rich as wealthy Americans are now. "What a problem to have!" one might say, but literally that is the problem that the article is about, right? Going back to power-level everyone else doesn't actually solve the problem of what to do when someone reaches the level cap.
Ultimately there is nothing that is obviously and provably more important than the individual reading or writing this, as there kinda was in previous eras. Some candidates include religion, panhuman expansion or thriving (Musk), building a successor entity or entities (Altman), and the State or politics (the OP). I don't know of any argument better than personal preference, at the moment.
I decided to step away from my job as an engineering VP and try something I actually wanted to do. It's terrifying, especially in this economy, but I wake up and feel excitement in the morning instead of dread for the first time in as long as I can remember.
What are you trying now that you actually want to do? Cheering for you!
(And please let me know what you would've liked to see in the second half! Blog posts are easy to edit!)
What worked is:
- Realize that not loving my work is fine, as long as I have something else that I love and want to do.
- YouTube channel “Napoleon Hill Notes”. Yeah, it is AI voiced and I have no idea whether what it says makes sense or not. But it works for me, tremendously. Whenever I fell into a low mood, I boot up a session and I felt better afterwards. Now I use it to brainwash myself into a better version.
In the past two months I've been on two 4-6 hour incident management calls due to failures in our service providers and it's been quite some time since I felt that good about a day's work. No meetings, no planning, no bullshit...just raw collaboration and tactical problem solving. Even got to flex some of the skills that have been dormant for far too long.
Feelsgoodman.
I haven't been lucky enough that startups I got in on early panned out so I don't have the ability to take a sabbatical.
Safety, convenience, infrastructure, everything around you isn't solely designed to price gouge you and exploit you, and all of that was just a minor benefit. The biggest thing I felt was an immense existential dread lifting from me. It's like the world millennials were promised when we were young actually exists - working on meaningful things with mental space to breath.
There's too much that can possibly be said of this, but up until now I genuinely thought there was only one way left and we were all doomed to fail, trying to pound sand into intractable problems. I somehow have hope in my life again.
But there's a determined, undeniable sense of "we're going to make the world a better place", and you can physically see and touch it in China. Once you take a big inhale of that air, you realize just how much you missed it and needed it.
The core insight it, if you start to feel the need to stop caring, instead of changing your character and values, treat it as a strong signal to change your environment.
[1]: https://anandprashant.com/posts/i-want-to-give-a-lot-of-fuck...
You work to earn, you earn to buy.
But buying is not meaning. It's a momentary sugar high that's lost to the wind the moment the transaction is over. No deeper life meaning can be derived from this.
When your culture is based around constant self satisfaction, there's nothing bigger than the self.
Community is dead, culture over generations is dead, building and making is dead, even cooking your own food is dead - "just order it". There's nothing for us to do except our individual parts, and our individual parts often feel like we're just putting a quarter into a machine that spits out a paycheck.
Etc etc
With TFR rapidly falling, current and future children are much less likely to even have any family other than parents, which cuts out another pillar supporting community and tradition, too.
I don't have a pat answer or know where this is going, but--assuming humanity survives--unless we want to turn into Asimov's Spacers, we'll have to find something to care about.
So, don't condense your thought here, I would love to read everything.
And people sit around stupidly asking why everyone is pissed off and angry.
https://kemendo.com/CohesionMatrix.html
Gave up on greatness a long time ago, I'd settle for an "ordinary", where people just kind of try to NOT make bad things worse, or good things less enjoyable.
Then I'm not even focused on the content more than I'm scanning through it for signs of AI slop writing so I don't have to waste brainpower consuming that which took no brainpower to produce.
Also unfair perhaps but I think writers in particular, like the author of this post, should be aware enough of the patterns of AI written slop to consciously avoid them nowadays.
It doesn't matter if you used to write like this, the reality is people will question you now if you do.
I'm past the age where I can (or rather should have) kids and I have to say, the past decade or so I'm more and more thinking that people SHOULD have kids to have (more) meaning in their life. Put it another way, I've begun thinking that having children is a nice way to have a default baseline of meaning in your life. I really see that with all my friends, who all have kids.
That's how life on earth worked for 3 billion years. I think that assuming humans are somehow above that is unwise. We're not.
Marriage rates have dropped over 70%.
There are extremely thriving sub-communities in places though. Graft on to those.
Can you explain how you see a causation between religion and marriage success?
I don't have kids but I am at the age where more and more of my friends are having kids, there definitely does seem to be something there. They are exhausted but most definitely have a renewed spark of sorts.
Unfortunately this is difficult to A/B test. So I'd avoid having kids to fix burn out.
Like two people can't be together without being married.
But mostly it's a low effort low with quality comment that adds zero value and implicitly passes judgment on those who are not married and don't have kids.
As if married people with kids are the happiest people in the world lol.
I should have made that part clearer but my comment was solely on the kids part of their statement. I don't think marriage is inherently different from any other long-term partnership when it comes "existentially starving".
> As if married people with kids are the happiest people in the world lol.
That's not what I meant at all. The article is about how burnout is a catchall that hides that at our core we actually struggle for meaning. "When facing the existential vacuum, there's only one way out - up, towards your highest purpose". Children do in a lot of way give meaning to your life, suddenly you have a reason for suffering. It's a hell of a stretch to call that happiness, but it's definitely something.
(Before anyone gets onto me I lived in a single parent household for years.)