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Ask HN: What helps you push through?

by metah on 8/7/20, 5:56 PM with 22 comments

When you are overworked, tired, have low motivation to continue and possibly on the brink of burnout.. what helps you drive what you're working on to the finish line?

  • by lcuff on 8/7/20, 9:12 PM

    Exercise. Enough sleep. Good food choices. Take care of the body first, then, (for me) things that make me laugh in a wholesome way. Hugs from loved ones. It's all counter-intuitive, because it's "taking the foot off the gas". The drive to the finish line is fine if it's truly close, but you sound like you're part of the legendary death march, which can go on for a loooong time. We think for a living. Thinking works better in rested, relaxed bodies and excited, curious minds.

  • by quickthrower2 on 8/7/20, 10:08 PM

    Where I work we try not to work like that. We break up work into manageable chunks. If someone is sick they take sick leave. If a project is too big for two shoulders it has probably been broken up anyway. Treat work like it’s the teams (although each item has one owner at a given time). Also avoid fake or real deadlines, but do provide estimates. This all fits into knowing your velocity and working standard hours such as 40h.

    Outside of work, choose to relax, which might mean leaving a lot of stuff you should do go. Maybe the house doesn’t need to be tidy, or the kids can watch tv without you feeling guilty. Or use ubereats instead of cooking, or pause the side project, skip the run etc.

  • by Arjuna on 8/7/20, 10:39 PM

    Gus Fring said it better than I ever will:

    "What does a man do, Walter? [...] A man provides. And he does it, even when he's not appreciated, or respected, or even loved. He simply bears up and he does it, because he's a man."

  • by verganileonardo on 8/7/20, 6:11 PM

    Slowing down. Most things can wait another day, so I do my best to take the time I need to relax and recover.

    A stress-free, relaxed brain used for 6 hours is much better than stressful brain used for 10h.

  • by helph67 on 8/7/20, 10:48 PM

  • by johnwheeler on 8/7/20, 9:19 PM

    Turning forty and having kids has been awesome. I spent the prior 20 years so ambitious and so worried I wouldn’t make something of myself. I was always reading books and watching YouTube videos on business,leadership, and self improvement. Staying up all night coding.

    I got pretty lucky and created a small business when I was 32. That business is still alive today, but I don’t put anymore effort into it aside from doing customer support. That’s probably a big part of why I feel like I can finally sit back and enjoy my life and children. I’ve always had low expectations, and I feel like I accomplished more than I thought I would. I haven’t made that big of a dent, but it’s been enough for me.

    I don’t know where I’m going with all this. I’m just glad I’m not constantly thinking about success—it can be so draining. I used to be worried about becoming who I am now, satisfied, somewhat complacent. It’s the happiest I’ve ever been.

  • by sciencewolf on 8/10/20, 11:05 PM

    Surprisingly, it's the skill of doing less than I can. The act of holding back has actually significantly boosted my focus. I write about it in https://algodaily.com/lessons/how-to-have-a-slow-and-boring-..., but purposely moving slower does the following:

    1. It makes you focus on the task at hand, since you're no longer thinking about another vector (speed)

    2. It guarantees that your daily energy reserves are enough to keep you interested

  • by TbobbyZ on 8/7/20, 11:43 PM

    My wife and kids. I'm the sole breadwinner and want to give my kids a greater life than I had. My dad was (still is) a deadbeat and didn't support me and my siblings at all.

    A routine also helps me stay driven and avoid burnout because I know what to expect each day and there is a clear end in sight.

  • by logicslave on 8/7/20, 6:19 PM

    My family. I wanted to quit my job with nothing lined up, and even went so far as putting my two weeks in. They told me to shut up and get back to work, and in hind sight, its made all the difference in keeping me as a productive member of society

  • by t0mmel on 8/7/20, 11:31 PM

    I would question why I was not planning to go somewhere else. If that’s how you feel, then you should be changing direction. This might come off elitist, or arrogant, but you have one life. One life to spend, not only for yourself, but with the ones you love, and with the things you would like to deal with. It shouldn’t be something that makes you feel miserable, if you have any kind of choice.

  • by k00b on 8/7/20, 6:45 PM

    For me it's learning but mostly technical learning. This isn't the same for everyone though. It took me a long time to stumble onto this.

    Think about finding what motivates you like you think about finding the right diet: experiment and iterate.

  • by dave_sid on 8/8/20, 11:21 PM

    There’s got to be more to life than this. I know a lot of people will reply with motivational techniques and philosophies, but being ‘on the brink of burnout’ isn’t a thing that should be accepted as normal in our work lives. Life is too short to live it like that.

  • by the_resistence on 8/8/20, 3:01 AM

    Step away and do something completely frivolous for a few hours. Usually a pink panther film I have seen countless times or FPS going after zombies. I need to access another part of the brain and "turn off" the area that has been overworked. At least that is how it feels.

  • by muzani on 8/8/20, 3:33 AM

    I've done it before, the late nights, the 100 hour workweeks. It's difficult to push yourself and it always take out a good chunk of you long term like physical exertion would.

    Learn to pull yourself, either with self-motivating goals or habits.

  • by bingobongo1 on 8/8/20, 11:15 PM

    You must find time to relax guilt-free.

    Look into Shamatha meditation which is single-pointed concentration, it's relaxing and good for your mental state.

  • by kierank on 8/8/20, 2:10 AM

  • by john4532452 on 8/8/20, 11:45 AM

    Reminding that everything is temporary

  • by shoo on 8/8/20, 2:19 AM

    to challenge the premise -- it is worth thinking this through: why is it necessary to drive what you're working on over the finish line? if you reduced your inputs of energy, time and caring to moderate levels that can be sustained without negative physical or mental health impacts -- would you personally receive comparable output?

    re: burnout

    > [...] level of caring couldn’t be sustained in the absence of results.

    > My clients are perfectionists [...] They have very rigid ideals in terms of win-lose [...] Their expectations of success are through the roof, and when their reality doesn’t match up with their expectations, it leads to burnout—they leave no room for error or failure at all in their formula.

    > Older workers, as it turns out, have more perspective and more experience; it’s the young idealists who go flying into a profession, plumped full of high hopes, and run full-speed into a wall. Maslach also found that married people burn out less often than single people, as long as their marriages are good, because they don’t depend as much on their jobs for fulfillment. And childless people, though unburdened by the daily strains of parenting, tend to burn out far more than people with kids. (This, too, has been found across cultures; in the Netherlands, a recent survey by the Bureau of Statistics showed that twice as many working women without children showed symptoms of burnout as did working women with underage children.) It’s much easier to disproportionately invest emotional and physical capital in the office if you have nowhere else to put it. And the office seldom loves you back.

    -- https://nymag.com/news/features/24757/

    re: not burning out

    > Poor is the person without Slack. Lack of Slack compounds and traps. Slack means margin for error. You can relax. Slack allows pursuing opportunities. You can explore. You can trade. Slack prevents desperation. You can avoid bad trades and wait for better spots. You can be efficient. Slack permits planning for the long term. You can invest. Slack enables doing things for your own amusement. You can play games. You can have fun. Slack enables doing the right thing. Stand by your friends. Reward the worthy. Punish the wicked. You can have a code. Slack presents things as they are without concern for how things look or what others think. You can be honest. You can do some of these things, and choose not to do others. Because you don’t have to.

    > Most times are ordinary. Make an ordinary effort.

    > Make sure that under normal conditions you have Slack. Value it. Guard it. Spend it only when Worth It. If you lose it, fight to get it back. [...] Make sure to run a diagnostic test every so often to make sure you’re not running dangerously low, and to engineer your situation to force yourself to have Slack.

    -- https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/slack/