Does the thought of going back to work on Mondays make you cry?
Do you want to quit and give it all up? Do not worry, Dev; it’s not that you’ve stopped loving coding or that this profession isn’t for you. Instead, maybe you’ve already reached your limit, and you are experiencing the famous Burnout Syndrome in programmers or Burnout Syndrome, ubiquitous in the demanding universe of the tech industry.
What is Programmer Burnout Syndrome?
Burnout is defined as the physical and mental collapse caused by work overload and prolonged periods of stress.
The serious thing about this syndrome is that, besides causing emotional and physical symptoms, it slowly kills the passion and love for coding that you used to feel.
And when that happens, your whole life starts to feel strange.
You question whether you really love your profession or you made a mistake.
If you used to have goals, now you don’t know where to aim. As a result, your life becomes a vortex of misery, tiredness and lack of motivation.
When you least realize it, you feel that your work as a programmer no longer makes sense, and on many occasions, it makes you want to quit, give up and never want to create a single line of code again. It’s hard but true.
What are the most noticeable symptoms of Burnout?
Every programmer is a different world and can manifest various symptoms related to Burnout.
However, we have listed some of the most common signs that you may suffer from this syndrome. So you can identify them and take action in time.
Lack of motivation and weakening of passion for coding: The most common sign and the one that drains that enthusiasm and excitement we used to feel for coding. If you used to enjoy coding but now you start to notice that the passion is slipping away, you will probably feel ”mentally burnt out”. You open the code editor but don’t feel the energy or desire to code, and this happens continuously for weeks or even months.
Numbed or dulled emotions: Experiencing numbness in emotions is another clear sign that you are suffering from Burnout Syndrome in programmers. You feel so mentally and physically fatigued that you have no energy to code or enjoy other things in your life. Suddenly, nothing makes sense, and you feel empty, no longer motivated by hobbies or activities you used to enjoy doing.
Feeling of isolation and loneliness:
- You are working remotely.
- You do not live with many colleagues.
- Your only form of human interaction is through meetings or chats.
So, you start to feel isolated and detached from your environment. You feel disconnected and overwhelmed by an overwhelming sense of loneliness.
Lack of concentration: You can no longer focus on a single task as before. Your mind wanders, and you feel that you cannot order your thoughts and ideas. You have a hard time focusing your attention on one thing. Often, you feel unable to focus on your work. Everything becomes a distraction.
Lack of achievement and ineffectiveness: You feel that you are not achieving anything in your job as a programmer. You do not identify a single achievement or goal that you have accomplished. You self-sabotage and belittle your work as a programmer. You start to believe that ”you are not as good as you used to be ”you are not too good to be a programmer”, and you even think that you do not bring any value to the company you work for or your clients.
A general feeling of depression and anxiety:
Doing code makes you depressed and unmotivated; you feel very worried all the time, and your nerves are very sensitive. You may have cried doing your job as you experience a high level of frustration and severe exhaustion. You feel that your job as a programmer is torture that you must endure day in and day out, with no escape. But you also experience such negative emotions in other areas of your life.
Irritability: If you used to be a calm person or used to handle stressful situations well, now the slightest problem makes you irritable and fills you with anger.
From your boss interrupting you to do something else that cuts into your work, unexpected meetings with clients or your Internet slowing down by 1%.
Any obstacle or inconvenience triggers your anger and desire to throw your PC out the nearest window.
Loss of enjoyment of things you used to love: Activities you used to be passionate about, such as a hobby or starting a new course, do not generate any positive feelings. You stop enjoying and appreciating what used to make you happy. As a result, you feel empty and dull.
Insomnia and sleeping problems: Programmers’ burnout syndrome plunges you into a state of eternal tiredness and keeps your mind thinking about work even though your day is over. Your mind won’t shut up, so you keep thinking about your obligations to perform the next day. Consequently, you can’t fall asleep easily. And when you wake up the next morning, you feel like you haven’t slept at all. Instead, you wake up exhausted and fatigued.
Tachycardia or choking sensation: You probably usually feel chest tightness, shortness of breath or tachycardia in any stressful situation when doing an important project or trying to finish it before the deadline.
Thinking about the start of the workweek causes you anxiety and fear: We all feel lazy to start the week after a weekend of rest.
It’s completely normal. But when just thinking about Monday and going back to your work routine causes you an intense feeling of fear, anxiety and anguish. That state is a clear warning sign that Burnout is deeply rooted in your life. When you have Burnout Syndrome or Burnout Syndrome, you begin to feel a rejection towards your job and want to be as far away from it as possible.
How does Burnout Syndrome affect telework in programming?
Since remote work has become the norm in many companies and the work of a programmer can easily be done from home, we fall into the lie that the home office is an easy task when in reality, it can be more tiring and stressful than an office job.
Here are the ways Burnout Syndrome hits your performance as a remote programmer:
Total loss of control between work and personal life.
There is no such thing as quitting time. Instead, you try to beat the clock by using hours of your personal life to finish or advance programming projects. Frequently, you find yourself working even after you have finished your workday. This has taken time away from spending time with your family, pursuing hobbies, training or taking courses. Instead, your life now revolves around your work.
Problems managing and organizing your time
Burnout Syndrome in programmers makes us more disorganized and disastrous in terms of hierarchizing or ordering our activities in order to accomplish them in a reasonable amount of time. Maybe you have noticed that you dedicate more hours to a task or that you need more time to finish it. As a result, you fall behind and end up using your free time to cover scheduling tasks. It becomes a vicious cycle where your moments of leisure and time to focus on yourself are exchanged for more self-imposed workdays.
Decreases productivity and efficiency
Working while experiencing mental and physical exhaustion significantly decreases your productivity as a programmer.
You walk around without energy and are unmotivated all the time, so you don’t see your important tasks as you used to. You get things done for the sake of getting things done.
Also, with a disorganized schedule, you don’t know how to prioritize tasks and end up spending a lot of time on little things.
Your mind also feels so confused and tired that you start to suffer from severe deconcentration; you no longer pay attention to details as you used to, and you find it hard to focus. You also feel that the 24 hours of the day are not enough for you. You never get to accomplish all your tasks for the day when you used to be able to do them.
Paralysis and anxiety to start a task
Burnout Syndrome in programmers, as in any profession, can manifest itself as a feeling of paralysis or inability to get down to work.
You try to avoid starting a new task or project. You put off starting it voluntarily because Burnout makes you believe that you are incapable, that you will do a mediocre job, and that you will be subjected to a whirlwind of stress. Since you are working remotely from home, you take on household chores and use them as an excuse not to start your work.
You are late in handing in projects, or you do it at the last minute.
As a consequence of the previous point, you overrun deadlines or rush to finish the project at the last minute, immersing yourself in a state of pressure and stress to finish on time. You have been postponing the completion of the project because you felt anxious about tackling it. Perhaps you left some work half done or incomplete because you were “blocked” and could not find a creative solution to the problems.
What actions can you take to prevent or treat Burnout Syndrome?
First, let us banish the belief that, as programmers, we need to be in mode all day.
Although we work with strange languages for outsiders of the tech world, we are not robots: We are humans who also get exhausted, tired and demotivated.
The way out of Burnout is not the same for everyone, each of us will have to follow a different process and seek professional help if it is something that is out of our hands.
Even so, we want to help you by giving you some tips to avoid falling into the clutches of Burnout Syndrome or try to cope with it so that it does not harm your emotional health or job performance.
Tips to prevent or reduce Burnout Syndrome in remote programmers
Identify and respect your limits.
Don’t overextend yourself with your working hours; stay up late to “beat the clock” or overindulge in a task. Don’t confuse being dedicated with exploiting yourself to meet self-imposed requirements.
You will still be a good programmer if you decide to take a break and not stay up all night (unless it is something urgent for the next day).
Don’t ignore your body; it is wise.
Does your back or head hurt? Get off the computer and get some fresh air. Stretch and move your body; spending long hours sitting is not healthy and will not make you more productive. Instead, hydrate yourself, take short breaks to recover energy and calm down.
Do not forget to eat on time; do not skip breakfast or have a late lunch to have “extra time” to continue working. If you feel very tired and since you are working from home, it doesn’t hurt to take a 15-minute nap. If you feel very anxious, nervous or irritable, take a few minutes to breathe deeply. Listen to your body, understand it and don’t punish it with indifference. Remember that you are a human, not a robot.
Pomodoro Technique to give yourself healthy breaks and increase productivity
In the 1980s, an Italian university student created the Pomodoro technique to pass an important exam, using a timer in the shape of a tomato.
This method is used to improve the management of the time you dedicate to your activities as a programmer.
The idea is to break down the workday into small-time units of 25 minutes (Pomodoro), followed by 5 minutes of rest, taking longer breaks every four pomodoros of between 25 to 30 minutes. While the timer is running, you should work intensively and without distractions. During the break period, you should not perform any action related to your work; it is important that you disconnect.
You can use the timer on your cell phone or download apps that use this technique to apply it. There is an application called PomoDome, where you can apply this method easily.
Do not think that taking breaks is being lazy or unproductive; in fact, it brings great benefits to you. Believe it or not, taking a break is necessary to improve your concentration and eliminate stress.
Develop Stress Management Soft-Skills
Unfortunately, there will be situations that place you in a state of stress for a prolonged period of time. It is something that inevitably happens, and not just in programming but in any field. Even moms suffer from Burnout.
Knowing how to master stress will allow you to cope with and even avoid this Burnout Syndrome. Online stress management courses teach you soft skills on work stress management, giving you tools, resources, and techniques to reduce the feeling of overload and how to respond to it so that it affects you in smaller amounts.
Learn the soft skill of Time Management
One of the causes of Burnout Syndrome in remote programmers is due to poor time management skills.
In a traditional job, it is easier to organize our time. We arrive at a regular start time, have time for lunch, and leave the office when the clock strikes.
But in a remote or home office mode, things are now up to us.
Working from home means knowing how to better manage our time effectively on our own, so we don’t work chasing the clock or spending our personal time on work tasks or falling behind on project deliverables.
Develop the useful soft skill of time management by enrolling in online courses that provide you with a time management framework.
Many of them will explain techniques, strategies, methods, and tricks to organize your schedule, set goals, and prioritize tasks.
By learning the time management soft skill, you will be able to maximize your working hours, finish your deliverables on time and end the working day with a gratifying sense of satisfaction from accomplishing all your tasks for the day.
Prioritize your mental health by getting a tech position that offers you growth, better pay and challenges.
Did you know that being stuck in a job with repetitive tasks that don’t offer you the pay, flexibility and growth you desire triggers Burnout?
Changing your life, and relocating to a new position that fulfils you, will give you back that energy and happiness at the moment of elbowing.
At 4Mars, we prepare you for employability issues, helping you through mentoring to hack the selection processes of the tech industry.