I once worked at a job that was a 1 hour car commute or a 2 hour bike ride. I typically did the bike ride. Eventually work demands were intense and I felt like I needed the extra two hours. When leaving, I was given some of the best advice I had ever received. I was told that as soon as I started sacrificing those very long hours on bike, that my balance clearly went askew. That was the middle of a bad burn out. The advice was that work and life balance are connected, they are both gauges. Work always is a drag down, and your life being out of balance will drag both life and work down. The only way to increase both is to raise the life part of the equation. So while work will knock you down to 80%, having a life raises that back up to 90% so it can then go back down to 80% and repeat. Working better, harder, better projects (unless you are a founder or something special like that), never increases these gauges. So it's not a work/life balance per say, it's living life that allows you the capacity to do work at 100%.
Second, I've taken several extended breaks and they have helped. That was before pandemic. I found you need to take long enough where you start wanting to do work again. That is the sign burn out is over. How long that takes can really vary. Sometimes it's been 3 weeks, once it took 3 months, and another time it almost 6 months before I was ready to work again.
Some responses to your questions:
> If I continue working, is there something in my working environment I should try to change? Think of senior engineer in a typical DevOps-y SaaS startup.
Sometimes the key is to stop trying to change the things you cannot. Work is work, divorce yourself from some aspects of it and you will be freeing yourself from unnecessary stress of things you will not be able to change.
> Should I take time off? How much?
I'd say take a long weekend. See how much recovery that gives you. Maybe it'll give you a gauge of how long you will really need. My gut says at least 2 weeks.
> Is there anything specific to working in tech and burning out that I should know about? I feel like this isn't exactly rare.
This is a golden question. WTH do we all burn out so much?
Second, I've taken several extended breaks and they have helped. That was before pandemic. I found you need to take long enough where you start wanting to do work again. That is the sign burn out is over. How long that takes can really vary. Sometimes it's been 3 weeks, once it took 3 months, and another time it almost 6 months before I was ready to work again.
Some responses to your questions:
> If I continue working, is there something in my working environment I should try to change? Think of senior engineer in a typical DevOps-y SaaS startup.
Sometimes the key is to stop trying to change the things you cannot. Work is work, divorce yourself from some aspects of it and you will be freeing yourself from unnecessary stress of things you will not be able to change.
> Should I take time off? How much?
I'd say take a long weekend. See how much recovery that gives you. Maybe it'll give you a gauge of how long you will really need. My gut says at least 2 weeks.
> Is there anything specific to working in tech and burning out that I should know about? I feel like this isn't exactly rare.
This is a golden question. WTH do we all burn out so much?