[HN Gopher] You're not burnt out, you're existentially starving
___________________________________________________________________
You're not burnt out, you're existentially starving
Author : thanedar
Score : 158 points
Date : 2025-12-21 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (neilthanedar.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (neilthanedar.com)
| justchad wrote:
| 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!
| thanedar wrote:
| Thanks! And congrats on giving notice! Excited to hear what you
| do next! Cheering for you!
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Congratulations on breaking out and good luck, it's real
| powerful work ahead for you!
|
| I did that a few years ago and it's been transformative.
|
| HMU if you want help.
| justchad wrote:
| 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.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Yeah I've got three teens headed out the door so I've been
| there too.
|
| My un at icloud is best.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| 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.
| Christopgr wrote:
| 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.
| snek_case wrote:
| 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.
| asdff wrote:
| My advice would be to keep up with a schedule that still keeps
| you pretty busy and ideally waking up early at regular hours.
| Once you hit actual rock bottom burn out, you know sleeping in
| until noon and scrolling message boards for three hours before
| you realized you haven't eaten yet all day and the sun is
| already setting, it feels almost impossible to turn the switch
| back on when you need to. Even something like folding your
| clothes starts to feel like a monumental task pretty fast.
| antman123 wrote:
| get married and have kids
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This solves it for most, but secular society has lost any
| structural capability to succeed in this.
|
| Marriage rates have dropped over 70%.
|
| There are extremely thriving sub-communities in places though.
| Graft on to those.
| HendrikHensen wrote:
| > This solves it for most, but secular society has lost any
| structural capability to succeed in this.
|
| Can you explain how you see a causation between religion and
| marriage success?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Religion realigns order, people look up in the same
| direction instead of past each other when contemplating
| meaning.
| thanedar wrote:
| 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!
| belval wrote:
| 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.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| 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.
| belval wrote:
| > 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.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Kids with two parents are far less likely to get into crime
| and have mental health problems, so there is that.
|
| (Before anyone gets onto me I lived in a single parent
| household for years.)
| GMoromisato wrote:
| 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.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > have kids because they otherwise lack meaning
|
| 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.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| I think, until very recently, people had kids because the
| sex is good.
| HendrikHensen wrote:
| > 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.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I built a measurement framework for this called a cohesion
| matrix. You can rate your integration/coherence/cohesion based on
| this rubric:
|
| https://kemendo.com/CohesionMatrix.html
| amelius wrote:
| Looks more like a vector than a matrix to me.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| It computes a vector from two matricies so you're definitely
| right!
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Maybe unfair, but I can't read a title with this cadence anymore
| without assuming it's AI.
| StilesCrisis wrote:
| 100%. "It's not [x]. It's [y]." is highly overused by ChatGPT
| in particular. I hope this article isn't just AI slop, but
| that's not a great start.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| Unfair or not, same thing for me.
|
| 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.
| thanedar wrote:
| 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!
| hexbin010 wrote:
| You're not being unfair. You're showing wisdom.
| llmslave2 wrote:
| It definitely has a lot of signs of AI writing, but at the same
| time the flow doesn't really scream AI to me.
| unstyledcontent wrote:
| 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.
| StilesCrisis wrote:
| Sadly, having more money doesn't buy time. At least, not until
| you have enough money that you can hire assistants, but that's
| pretty extreme.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| I mean, it does for people like me who decide to work less as
| they don't need to earn as much.
| shrubby wrote:
| 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.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| 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.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| 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.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| X0-X127, easy.
| nekitamo wrote:
| Ah so their names are just ARM64 registers. Now I get it.
| Aurornis wrote:
| 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)
| lnsru wrote:
| 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.
| nxm wrote:
| Separately, what is a certified electrician - are you
| licensed in your state?
| lnsru wrote:
| 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.
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Saturated fat is not the demon we've been lead to believe
| for the past 30-40 years. Sugar is. And there's a lot of
| sugar in prepared food too.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| 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.
| macNchz wrote:
| 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.
| eastbound wrote:
| 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.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/parents-under-pressu...
| Aurornis wrote:
| > 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.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| 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.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| If you don't have a zen attitude around a three year old
| you're going to have a bad time
| GMoromisato wrote:
| LOL! Totally!
| thanedar wrote:
| Zen about kids and warrior about work!
|
| And work = highest purpose!
| sdeframond wrote:
| > the time spent caring for the kids was energizing and
| purpose-providing.
|
| Depends. At 3am it's not.
| nnutter wrote:
| That's a pretty short period in the grand scheme of things.
| Before you know it they'll be driving and just a year or
| two from leaving the nest and you'll wish you could have
| had more time with them.
| thanedar wrote:
| 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.
| zoomdahl wrote:
| 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.
| yawnr wrote:
| #ad
| m463 wrote:
| Appropriate responsibility. Let the kids assume even the most
| minor appropriate responsibility. maintain an healthy
| neutrality.
| isodev wrote:
| > because I have to raise two young children
|
| 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.
| lm28469 wrote:
| If you wait until everything is planned, ready and accounted
| for you'll never have kids.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Even if you reach that point, you're likely now at the age
| where fertility problems become a real issue.
|
| If you want to have kids do it when you're in your early
| 20s.
| isodev wrote:
| 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.
| lovich wrote:
| I agree with you on a factual basis, but you understand
| that a large amount of people have a deep emotional
| instinct to not be ok with those options, right?
| toxik wrote:
| Most people I know realize they should have had kids
| sooner once they have them. Adoption is also not that
| easy, there are plenty of cases where adoption causes
| kidnapping.
| dheera wrote:
| > you'll never have kids
|
| 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. Also, work
| hours need to be standardized at 4 hours /day per person OR
| costs of living need to be designed that 1 parental income
| is enough.
| toxik wrote:
| I think those people realize this, but it's a bit like
| global warming. They like their lifestyles.
| em-bee wrote:
| _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.
| isodev wrote:
| Stop looking it country by country. Globally, the trend is
| that of an increasing population. And fast. Humans are
| reproducing at unsustainable level.
| amarant wrote:
| 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!
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I don't know the circumstances but this sounds very wrong.
| The moment you find a problem with the foundation, you call
| professionals. DIY has its value but your story is well
| beyond DIY.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 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".
| CrossVR wrote:
| People underestimate how quickly you burn out when you're
| completely on your own. It's the people around you that give
| you purpose and motivation.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| 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.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| 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.
| brational wrote:
| 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.
| bdbdbdb wrote:
| 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
| aster0id wrote:
| 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).
| QGQBGdeZREunxLe wrote:
| I was hooked by the first few paragraphs but the immediate
| switch to focus on work was disappointing.
|
| The happiest people I know treat work like the necessary evil
| to be endured to fulfill all other facets of life.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| The happiest people I know don't work or love their work. I
| can't think of any that fit your description.
| tverbeure wrote:
| 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.
| asdff wrote:
| There is danger to that as well. Work can be an addiction.
| It is often solitary and removes you from focus on your
| actual self, friends, family, or community, in favor of
| "the work."
| thanedar wrote:
| What were you looking to read about in that spot?
|
| 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.
| homeonthemtn wrote:
| 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.
|
| Etc etc
| oh_nice_marmot wrote:
| I feel the same way. That I'm just put through the consume more
| and more treadmill and it's on social media, news feeds,
| YouTube, tv and so on.
|
| So, don't condense your thought here, I would love to read
| everything.
| pepperball wrote:
| > Community is dead, culture over generations is dead, building
| and making is dead, even cooking your own food is dead - "just
| order it".
|
| And people sit around stupidly asking why everyone is pissed
| off and angry.
| randallsquared wrote:
| 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.
| stanleykm wrote:
| probably doesnt help that we spend 1/3rd to 1/2 of our lives
| making some other asshole rich
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Work for an unproven startup and odds are no one is getting
| rich!
| olivierestsage wrote:
| 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.
| HendrikHensen wrote:
| 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.
| llmslave2 wrote:
| 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.
| kevinh wrote:
| 15 years ago this exact comment would have been written
| swapping out millennials for gen x and gen z for millennials.
| spoiler wrote:
| As a late millennial: yep. We're in the same boat. Nihilistic
| optimism isn't the worst coping mechanism, though!
| GMoromisato wrote:
| 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).
|
| Also, there were no jobs.
| llmslave2 wrote:
| Perhaps. And if it was true back then, it's even more true
| today.
| nabnob wrote:
| Everything is noticeably more expensive than it was 15 years
| ago, though.
| scruple wrote:
| Sure, but I also make ~6x as much as I did 15 years ago.
| Despite that I still think everything is too fucking
| expensive.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| This is a such a cop-out. We millennials had it easy compared
| to zoomers.
| McAtNite wrote:
| That's true, graduating into my "once in a lifetime"
| economic meltdown made the second one barely even register.
| lovich wrote:
| I only felt the empathy someone can have when they have
| also lived through the same events, for all the zoomers
| graduating into the post Covid job market.
|
| Millennials and younger are all fucked for the same reasons
| and are going to continue getting fucked over unless some
| revolutionary change happens.
|
| We'll also be in this together as we watch our boomer/genx
| parents burn up the last of any existing generational
| wealth sitting comatose in a nursing home because they
| refused to accept that they will actually die some day, and
| so made no plans for it
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
| rozap wrote:
| 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.
| icedrift wrote:
| Per Atrioc
| asdff wrote:
| They don't want just a house though. They want a house in a
| "cool" area. Look at median home prices in rust belt
| cities. Mortgages around $2k a month or so. Very doable for
| a lot of people but you never hear a drum beat about this.
| You never hear about people moving to these cities unless
| they have family there already to remind them that, hey,
| this is in fact a great deal.
| lovich wrote:
| Are there jobs in those cities who sit in an area named
| after their economic collapse?
|
| Do student loan costs go down if you move to a low cost
| of living area?
|
| We had some movement in the direction of people
| immigrating to low cost areas like that with the rise of
| remote work, but then execs decided they didn't like not
| having control over their workers live and did RTO. To
| their offices in the cities with high rent and home
| prices.
|
| You never heard about people taking that "great deal"
| because it's not a great deal. Like really, you think
| there's money left on the table like that and there's not
| at least some low double digit percentage of the
| population that would have sought out the benefit? Or is
| it more likely the market evaluated the option and it's
| not good
| techblueberry wrote:
| A yes, the rust belt, where folks are famously living
| like fat cats.
| nemomarx wrote:
| 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.
| nradov wrote:
| People should be impressed. We're doing a terrible job of
| teaching history. "Everything is amazing right now and
| nobody is happy."
| icedrift wrote:
| 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.
| jfengel wrote:
| 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.
| asdff wrote:
| Everytime someone says something like "how can I bring a kid
| into this world" I assume they know absolutely nothing about
| history at all. Be thankful your ancestors didn't think that
| when they were faced with actual life and death on the line,
| versus these people today being miffed that their apartment
| isn't as large as they'd like or they have to commute a
| little farther in or live in a city not featured in mass
| media.
| YC543897594387 wrote:
| Under liberal capitalism, how you feel about the state of the
| world/economy is going to always be tied to how much money
| you're bringing in every month, so making a comment about how
| things are actually fine and Gen Z are "negative" and
| ungrateful is pointless if you're not going to make clear
| your own economic standing relative to others. I would be
| surprised if you're delivering Uber Eats with a Bachelor's
| degree, as many of Gen Z are doing today, considering the
| sentiment expressed.
| mariusor wrote:
| Are millennials the "older" generation now? Ooof, my bones...
| GMoromisato wrote:
| Don't give up--it gets better.
|
| 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.
| Jare wrote:
| > we're burnt out because everything we want is simply too
| expensive
|
| Perhaps the problem starts with the fact that we continue to
| steer society in the direction where everything we want costs
| money.
| techgnosis wrote:
| 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.
| nzeid wrote:
| 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.
| ecshafer wrote:
| The happiest Gen Z I see are the ones that go to Church. Being
| religious is a bulwark against nihilism. And Church youth /
| under 30 groups are basically marriage express lanes, which
| takes the App /hookup culture hell out of the equation.
| jcims wrote:
| 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.
|
| Feelsgoodman.
| primaprashant wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1]: https://anandprashant.com/posts/i-want-to-give-a-lot-of-
| fuck...
| parpfish wrote:
| 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.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| I think you need to rework some definitions or vocabulary if
| "overwork" is solved by "raise".
|
| 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.
| thanedar wrote:
| For sure. That's why I focused on the Monday morning meaning
| problem.
|
| 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.
| SkyeCA wrote:
| > 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
|
| I know I'm burnt out (increasingly severe burnout at that) and
| I ask myself that question daily. The truth is there is no
| point and I can't motivate myself anymore. I don't see any
| solution to the problem and I expect I will lose my job sooner
| or later at which point I'm not sure what I'll do.
|
| I've largely come to the conclusion that what I need to be
| mentally healthy and what society needs from me are
| fundamentally incompatible things.
| HPsquared wrote:
| 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.
| bnj wrote:
| 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.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| 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.
| randallsquared wrote:
| 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.
| Arainach wrote:
| 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.
| kgwxd wrote:
| 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?
| AlexB138 wrote:
| 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.
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| I'm not the author. I just found the article, read it and
| found it interesting enough. I don't know who the guy is or
| even what he does.
| james_pm wrote:
| Same. I can identify with the subject matter, but the whole
| thing was just so off-putting. Trite, sound bites.
| AlexB138 wrote:
| 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.
| thanedar wrote:
| Love how you highlighted your morning excitement now! That's
| what I was going for in this post!
|
| 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!)
| Induane wrote:
| I am existentially starving AND burned out.
|
| 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.
| kgwxd wrote:
| > 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.
| icedrift wrote:
| 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.
| dluan wrote:
| 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.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| 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.
| dluan wrote:
| 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.
| mr_world wrote:
| 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?
| tolerance wrote:
| Am I the only one who is overwhelmed in my capacity to parse
| across the various means of emphasis that colour this page?
| highfrequency wrote:
| Overcomplicated take. Burn out comes from lacking a feeling of
| forward progress and tractability to your problems, regardless of
| current objective state.
| asdff wrote:
| That is part of it but there is also something to be said about
| what is going on biochemically IMO. Even if you are feeling
| forward progress and comfortable about the scope of your
| problems, if you give yourself no time to rest and get out of a
| subconciously anxious state, that isn't very good.
|
| Anxiety is meant to have your senses heightened to perhaps hear
| the tiger stalking you and encourage you to seek out a safer
| environment where you can comfortably rest. You aren't built to
| be in an anxious state for such extended periods of time. The
| tiger would have gotten you by then, with the way this system
| was designed. You aren't built to constantly run from the
| tiger.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| The purpose of life is not only to be happy. It's not a useless
| metric but don't over-index on it
| nis0s wrote:
| Politics are marketing tools for frameworks and candidates, they
| don't provide the frameworks, or any deeper meaning to life
| itself. What a shallow and dangerous approach.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I'm burned out because:
|
| 1. I'm intelligent enough to raise questions about the point of
| life.
|
| 2. I've always been an outcast, having it extremely difficult to
| build meaningful relationships, which are number one predictor of
| quality of life.
|
| 3. I live in a dirty, noisy, overcrowded city full of people who
| don't share my culture and work for a company that has no
| morality.
|
| There is nothing for me to look forward to, and no
| straightforward way to build anything. I'll never have a group of
| friends to do things with, I'll never feel loved, and I'll never
| be important in any sense of this word. I'm an autistic ant in an
| anthill.
| kledru wrote:
| the number of comments indicates that MANY OF US crave for some
| wise words about burnout... but the text we are presented with
| feels strangely empty of substance -- as if the author just wants
| to make some money with a book on a hot topic...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-21 23:00 UTC)