Let your team know you’ll be offline for the vacation period, the world will continue while you take a break.

See how you feel on your return.

Now is 4 months the magic number? I don't know, but 2 weeks would seem to be the minimum. But also a seemingly large part of it was going to a new job afterwards, where I was starting fresh (although previous job switches had about 0 impact on burnout, so I'm not so sure how much the job change helped).

Same building, same room, just fresher.

clearly an option for OP. why do you think its otherwise?

Secondly, in case of burnout (or similar), it’s not unheard of (at least over here in .nl) that you stay at home for extended periods of time, and gradually restart picking up your workload. That kind of thing is very different from vacation.

You should never have to reveal the nature of any health conditions to an employer to take sick leave.

i've had aquantances that walked out with 3 days of sick leave (in Germany) - not even connecting to a weekend

A one month litmus test is a good call, IMO.

On that Netflix topic... You'd be much certainly better of simply trying to sleep or do relaxation exercises. Also trying to code during that time does not help relaxation. Try to establish clear boundaries between these different modes in your life.

    loss of interest in sex (lowered libido)
    erectile dysfunction
    hot flashes
    loss of bone density
    bone fractures
    loss of muscle mass and physical strength
    changes in blood lipids
    insulin resistance
    weight gain
    mood swings
    fatigue
    growth of breast tissue (gynecomastia)

Heavy, strength-focused type of excercises are a real cure for depression and bad mood. They siginificantly increase the amount of Testosterone in the body.

Try Squats, Deadlifts and weight lifting in general. Push yourself a little bit and it's gauranteed you will feel amazing.

Random anecdata from HN not so much.

It sounds like you're taking other very good steps (exercise, eating well, social life).

That feeling of not wanting to get out of bed/watching Netflix can also be associated with depression. Most of us experience some form of depression throughout life (brief or chronic). Have you considered seeing a doctor about this?

"Should I just take a couple of weeks' vacation?" My sense is that two weeks would be bare minimum. Can you take 3 or 4 weeks off? And as others have recommended here, resist the urge to do side-projects and spend as little time online as possible.

Regarding your team, in my experience people respond really well to honesty about what's going on. "Hi team, my energy and motivation are not where they usually are and I'm experience what I think might be burnout or a small bought of depression. I've decided to take X weeks off of work so I can recharge. This might mean that you need to step up and do XYZ while I'm away but I know you're more than capable of it. I look forward to seeing what you've all accomplished when I'm back and feeling better." This helps others understand that it's OK to not always feel 100% and that they too should prioritize their health (mental & physical). You're giving your team permission to be a healthy version of themselves in a world where that often isn't a priority.

This is a journey. You got this.

1. Heads up to my boss: good communication releases the pressure of keeping the same pace and support from the company assuming it's a good one.

2. Start delegation to my "right hand": This is important because you need someone to take care of your team.

3. Get into maintenance mode: This is for me the most important bit, when you are burned out, you can't be productive. Trying will burn you out more, and it's going to be harder to recover. I usually try to have as little meetings as possible and just focus on the things I can do; small tasks if I need to code, documentation, among other stuff.

4. Enjoy the things: I usually game, but I also find myself watching Netflix in bed. Enjoy it, there's no shame on doing so. Guilt is dangerous, and reminding yourself you're not being productive is not good. So just enjoy yourself.

Hope this advice help!

So, every year, I take two weeks off in a remote location where there is no electricity, let alone reception. I am going off the grid. That comes in addition to regular holidays, like a week every three to four months. On weekends I turn off all notifications.

We are not machines, your body and your mind need to have different activities, apart from your regular schedule. You need to have time to think, to do nothing. I think we need to come to terms with the fact that our time does not have to be productive 24/7. Life should be messier than the optimized version of it we try to will into being.

Once you come back, reduce your hours to just working hours. Close your mind to anything coding after the day is over. This is a must. Otherwise you'll fall into the same situation. If your work won't support you then you'll have to start looking for a new job.

For the time after work look for a hobby that you can do where you can have fun and disconnect. Your goal is to use the hobby as away for your mind to disconnect from work. Do not obsess over it since then you'll fall into the same mindset that will lead to burn out.

All this will only help the situation but only time will heal you but you need to reduce your obsession over work. Otherwise you'll be in the situation again, relatively soon.

You can continue without doing anything and in 2 years from now you'll be in the same situation. The best thing you can do now is start the process of healing.

Do nothing work-related for a while ( as much as possible), so you don't feel stressed.

Counter point of view: if one of your devs had this, what would you want them to do? Is your position to that transferable to your upper management?

Good luck man. Had it too and kept working.

What happened to me: After work i went straight to bed and back up to work ( i seriously reduced after work requirements, which was okayish to do since i mostly plan for being able to take a break). Took 2-3 months since i didn't want to go off my full-time work, as the overload happened in combination after hours...

Fyi, going straight to bed was the first 2 weeks and then it slowly improved. "Broke" after deadlines and where the 2 words went in serious overdrive for a while due to unforeseen circumstances ( 19 hours/day for 4-5 months).

Breathe out. Let them ask their questions. Respond with "I'm unable to do that right now" to anything that sounds too hard to do right now. Even if that means everything.

Let them take care of the rest. Only answer their work calls.

Call your parents/siblings.

Highly intense high-pay professional jobs (oncologist, software developer, bond trader) don't have the sabbaticals baked in. Those of us with that kind of job have to cope with burnout on our own. There's no well-meaning dean or bishop saying, "go take a sabbatical. I want to see a five-paragraph paper describing the insides of your eyelids. It's due in three months. Getouddahere! Go! Now!"

Nobody's going to do it for us. We have to do it for ourselves.

You say you don't want to let your team down. That's great. Keep in mind that they don't want to let you down either. So trust your team members to keep doing what they do, but without your presence for a few weeks. Talk to some of them about it.

Then talk to your managment / front office about it. Come to that conversation with a tentative plan. Say something like this.

"I am fried. I propose to take six weeks off and go snorkeling in the tropics / cut my grass with scissors / build a bicycle of bamboo and ride it to Taos NM / whatever.

"Joey and Anne know what needs to be done in the farkle and framis modules, and they're well-respected by the rest of the team. I know this team; I'm confident they'll continue to do great things while I take the break I need to take.

"What do you think of this plan, boss? Is it workable? Would any changes make it workable for you?"

That opens the conversation in a respectful way. Good managers will probably see how the company benefits ... give responsibility to more people ... keep you "in the socket" even if you're powered down for a while ... build a reputation as an employer with respect and compassion.

If your proposal angers your boss or starts a riot in the executive washroom, well, then you know that about your company as you consider your next options.

A blunter way of putting this is "Always work yourself out of any job you hold. It's the only way you'll be able to do anything new."

I have ADHD which makes engaging in tasks you're unenthusiastic about excruciatingly difficult, and my position recently changed so my strengths are no longer utilized and my weak spots are where I need to produce most consistently. It all seems to be based on a dopamine deficiency, and 80% of people with ADHD have comorbid anxiety and depression, so I deal with depression a lot. But I'm one of those people who always seems calm, upbeat and together interpersonally even when I'm struggling with absolute basic tasks. That's convenient in some ways, but it's tough when you really need the help because you need to explicitly ask at a time where it's most difficult to do that.

And work is ALWAYS the place that suffers first/most. I love my long-time coworkers and they love having me there. I hate letting them down and I'm sure I can be incredibly frustrating to work with... which of course makes the whole thing worse. These things tend to operate in feedback loops.

The lists of signs or red flags you tend to see on the net aren't definitions for depression or lists of prerequisites— they're annoyingly nebulous, incomplete collections of hints. For example— you won't always see smoke pouring out of a window if a building is on fire, and smoke pouring out of a window doesn't automatically mean the building is on fire, what you see might not even be smoke, but it's a pretty strong hint. You won't always see fire trucks outside, and they might be there because someone is having a medical emergency, but it's a pretty good hint. Like that. Also, therapists are only human and can miss the forest for trees— you should plainly ask them for help evaluating yourself for depression.

It could be that you just need a solid break, but if you burn through two weeks of vacation and return to work with the same emotional block, you'll be adding some new toxic emotional patterns to your existing ones. Taking several more reputable online questionnaires for these sorts of things can actually prove quite useful. They led me to enlist a neuropsychologist to evaluate me for ADHD and that's really helped me out.

So from a cold hard company numbers standpoint, they'd rather i took my vacation right away, be off for 2 weeks, and then be back to full productivity when i get back. Rather than, say, work at half productivity for a month, and then take a 2 week vacation, which adds up to having "lost" ~4 weeks of productivity.

From your team perspective, you need to take vacations yourself to set the standard for others, that it's ok for them to take vacation regularly, otherwise they'll start forcing themselves and burn out and feel miserable the same way you are.

You can also think of it from the extreme ends, would your company be happier if you pushed yourself for a couple more months until you completely burned out and quit, or would they rather you took vacation for multiple months and then continued working at the company afterwards. I would imagine most companies would choose the later, unless you worked at, say, a triple-A gaming studio, and then they wanted you to burn yourself out until the shipping deadline, and then they want you to quit so they don't need to pay you a severance package.

- I train other engineers. It takes up a lot of time, it's fairly monotonous, and low risk. It has the added benefit of opening up the opportunity to spread load some of your work, which could be adding to your burnout.

- I take time off. I do this twice a year in two week blocks, generally in spring and fall. Those times are perfect because there's already a lot of people out in December and January, so I have one red-hot period in the middle of the year where the bulk of my work is done.

- Stop coding. This may be personal to me; enterprise software has really ruined the passion I have for software. When I'm off, I don't code. I go hangout with my girlfriend and play video games.

- Limit time spent doing work things. In software, we let companies leak into our lives in many ways. Shut these signals down completely with good boundaries: don't let your phone ring at night unless you're being paid to answer it, don't buy into company "hackathon" events whereby a company gets free IP by removing the constraints of the backlog, etc...

- Don't intermingle "work friends" and real friends. Work friends like to talk shop, that's great over a beer after a stressful day, but if I'm trying to relax on the regular I limit my time spent with work friends. By virtue of our shared employment they will likely never know me beyond git clone --depth 1 until they leave the company or I do.

Hope this helps.

Patting yourself on the back for having a better outcome when you're not even curious about the context says more about you than them.

I am indeed lucky for having great mental and physical health (and so does every family member). But if I was ever to get sick I would get free health care from the state.

There is a mix of luck (health and being born in the rich part of Europe) and wise choices (I am not a French native but I moved in the south of France to further improve my life).

Point is that I don't know nobody personally that ever had a burnout... it is very uncommon here.

I'm sure you did make wise choices in addition to your good luck. But unless you were born to a well-to-do family in the United States, those wise choices would not have been feasible. The choices you'd make in their place, no matter how prudent you were, would likely yield less. There's a good chance you'd likely end up exactly like the OP. That's the whole point of those benefits— they aren't just for your convenience. They give you opportunities and protect you from risks through no action of your own. Not being born into those benefits is not a moral failure.

Proudly pointing out your avoidance of someone else's work or mental health problems when you have vastly more work and mental health support, in general, is utterly obnoxious. It's like someone living off of a trust fund pointing out that they also made prudent financial decisions as justification for publicly touting their financial solubility in the face of someone else's poverty.

The former (environment) can, with time, sometimes fix itself. Not everything has to be under your control for it to improve your conditions. For example, if a particularly intensive project concludes, or if you are transferred to another team with a fresh set of people and different problems to work on. This is kind of similar to getting a night's sleep. You didn't do anything (well ok, you slept), but the next day (i.e. your environment changed) suddenly you feel a bit fresher and the things that preyed on your mind the previous day seem farther away and less intrusive.

More superficial, simple things like reducing caffeine and exercise can help, and may even solve your problem if it's not too deep. But I've found these work better as enablers for the above-mentioned two-pronged solution rather than a treatment in themselves.

Hope this helps.

Try an isolation tank.

I recommend this for two reasons. The high amounts of magnesium have the cool effect of calming you physically. I always feel like a wet noodle afterwards. It's very pleasant.

And second, because it's a deep restful state of sleep you sometimes fall into that energizes and motivates you.

You probably need more than that to recover from burnout. But if you have not even tried that as Step 1 then by all means... do that. It might not be enough, but try it and see.

I don't have a ton of answers for you, but I will say that you are responsible for yourself first, and your team second. When you get on an airline flight and they tell you in case of emergency to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others... this is the same concept. You are not taking care of your team if you are not OK yourself.

If you’re in a bad way it will likely take a few months before you feel better but it does work. I now find it helpful to go into this mode whenever I get the slightest hint of burnout coming on.

Good luck!

First, if you can, take a two week vacation (longer if you are able). If you can afford it, travel to someplace that you enjoy, turn off all notifications, don't check your email, hell don't turn your phone on if you don't have to. Don't even use a computer, don't surf the web, don't keep your usual routine. (two weeks here, because it takes some 7-10 days to really separate yourself from work) Also, don't spend all the time at home, laying in bed, watching tv.

Second, stop all the side tech related side projects. You are probably burned out from lighting both ends of the problem solving candle. You need to give your mind a break from problem technical solving. Have you considered picking up a hobby that isn't connected to technology. Learn to sew, read a book, pick up an instrument.

Third, if it has been a while go see a doctor and get a physical. Gotta rule out anything physically wrong with your body.

> How can I manage responsibilities and deal with this at the same time? Should I delegate my work to someone else for a while? Should I just take a couple of weeks' vacation? I'm kind of lost at the moment.

You have to take care of yourself first. I'd make an appointment with your therapist to create a plan of action, a way to break this cycle. If you are close and feel safe with discussing this with your boss do so. You may have to delegate some of your load, you may even need to take a short leave of absence.

Finally, if you don't already, start taking daily walks outside and start journaling. Walks to help clear your mind, journaling to sort out your thoughts.

I'd say burnout is when you have worked at a greater capacity than what you are capable of for so long that your mental, physical, spiritual, or social well-being becomes comprised. You can be overworked by your management or for self-imposed reasons. When one or more of these aspects of your life has become severely damaged, your performance decreases, and you feel negative emotions toward your job or aspects of your job duties.

No longer enjoying coding is much different. Like anything else, people change over time, and their preferences change. Some people stop enjoying coding because it's no longer challenging, or they are tired of repeatedly solving the same problems. Some people stop enjoying coding altogether just because that's how they are now.

I would suggest some introspection and soul searching. Ask yourself the question, who am I today? What do I care about today? Am I burnt out? Which aspects of my life have become damaged due to burnout?

Good luck. I hope everything turns out well.

It seems correlated to overwork, but that's probably not the reason. So I'm not sure if vacations help much. If you have a therapist, I'm sure they'd have good advice.

As for the team, many have gone through it and will understand. Speak to your manager. Bigger companies often have a procedure for it. It's why we have unlimited PTO, but some places might put it under sick leave.

If you're an athlete paid multimillions and you broke a foot, nobody would expect you to keep playing, nor would they fire you. You're not letting anyone down, it's more of a work hazard. But let the team know of your plans. It's likely they've figured out you were burned out.

If you recover, you'll know you have a helping hand and it will either set you up for being able to take on higher level issues, or at least reset expectations for team velocity for those times when you're down. If you don't recover, at least this sets up the team to be able to continue without you, so you don't have to bear that guilt if you leave.

I recommend doing this before taking time off. Otherwise you would just come back to the exact same scenario and burn out again in a couple of days.

Use the time to invest in yourself. Pick up a new hobby (sailing worked for me). Get therapy. Exercise and stop staring at a screen for 8-12 hours a day.

One of the best pieces of advice a friend gave me last year was “Right now forget about your $job. The only job you have right now is to get well. That’s your full time job. Go play video games and don’t feel guilty”

Take a month at least. Go somewhere that's not connected. Don't do email. Don't do social media. Don't watch TV. It'll be hell for a week until your mind finally slows down. That's when the healing can begin, and 3 weeks is the bare minimum healing time.

Doing manual and physical, repetitive things can help, so long as they don't come with responsibility or commitments or require brain work.

What worked for me was talking to my manager, and arranging to unplug by taking a significant amount of time off. For me, this was two weeks initially, which I extended to three. IMO, three weeks is the minimum I would consider taking if I get into this state again.

If your manager is a good one, they will support you. If your organization is a healthy one, your team will understand and empathize.

Burnout is real, and, in my experience, it's unlikely to resolve by staying the course.

I'm sure they can relate and help you going through this and covering you while you're trying to recover from this.

This will also help them understand that they should avoid disturbing you during your healing vacation and make sure you will be on work-free mindset.

Take as much time as needed. Even unpaid leave if needed.

Wishing the best

The only thing that helped me with burnouts so far: taking a long break. For example I took 2 weeks off and just biked through the country. I didnt plan anything ahead, I made random decisions on the spot (where to eat, what to do). After a week I started to feel much better.

Some background / video and context here: https://itrevolution.com/understanding-job-burnout-christina...

So yeah, I recommend taking time off. Maybe a lot.

One thing that might work. Spend a year outside of programming with low stress.

But rather than listen to me maybe make a plan with your therapist?

But you'd rather quit over ruin your work history, in current position and next ones.