How to prevent burning out in the engineering industry
Richard, a mindset coach and a personal trainer shares his insights with us!
Intro
As much as we love our great engineering industry, it also has some downsides. These things are very common in our industry perfectionism, procrastination and feeling like an impostor.
All of such things can cause immense stress and can lead to burnout. But what to do to prevent such things from getting to us?
I have asked Richard Donovan, a Software Developer with over 22 years of experience, a mindset coach and also a personal trainer to share his insights on this important topic!
FYI: This is our second collab with Richard. If you are interested in reading our first collab, you can read it here: The importance of well-being in the engineering industry (paid article). You can read more about why well-being is so important in our industry.
Let’s get straight to Richard’s insights next!
Main reasons burning out is common in our industry
There are many reasons why burning out in the software engineering industry is so common. The factors are wide-ranging. They are driven by the organisations, the leadership, and the engineers themselves…
The Organisations
Many organisations offer a culture that is more likely to promote burnout than prevent it. Some of the worst offending insist on:
Working long hours and excessive workloads.
A blame culture when things go wrong.
Encroaching on personal time.
The Leadership
Unfortunately, leadership in our industry is often lacking, perhaps due to the focus on tech over people. It can result in:
Failure to provide feedback and recognition
A lack of guidance and support
Micromanagement
The Engineers
As engineers, we can sometimes contribute to our own downfall with things like:
Perfectionism
Difficulty Saying No
Not asking for support
We can quite quickly burnout if we are not careful
In my own experience with burnout, it was about 6 months before I recognised what was going on, but looking back, it was probably only 6 weeks for the signs to start showing.
I’d started a new job and felt imposter syndrome in a big way. I felt like everyone was better than me, and I needed to catch up.
I felt huge expectations from my boss. I started getting in early, leaving late, and continuing to work when I got home.
I leaned on exercise as an escape and ended up overdoing that, too. I dreaded going to work and started dreaming about things constantly going wrong.
One day, I found myself lying on the sofa physically and mentally exhausted, unable to muster the energy to vacuum the apartment.
Being naturally energetic, this was when I realised there was definitely something wrong. It’s difficult to put a timeframe on burnout as it’s very circumstantial and individualistic.
Many don’t see burnout approaching and find themselves deep in a hole when they finally realise it. It can take a significant amount of time to recover.
That is a big problem and that is why it’s so important to learn to recognise the signs as early as possible.
Recognising burnout can be tricky, especially if you’ve never experienced it before
The signs and symptoms could be caused by a million different things, as such, any one of them in isolation is not necessarily an indication of burnout.
However, it's super important to be aware of the signs and symptoms, and if you start to see an accumulation of them, it’s time to take action.
Some common signs that you could be facing burnout include:
Chronic fatigue and difficulty sleeping
Becoming overly negative and cynical
Feeling overwhelmed, anxious and depressed
Feeling a lack of motivation and a sense of detachment
There are some common behavioural signs, too:
Heavily procrastinating
Taking more sick days than usual
Withdrawing from social interactions
Turning to unhelpful substances to help you cope (alcohol, drugs, etc.)
What to do if you are feeling burned out? How to get out of it?
If you’re feeling burned out, something needs to change. Recognising what needs to change is difficult when you’re in the middle of it, so my first piece of advice would be to seek support.
Speak to a friend, a family member, a trusted colleague, or even a coach. They can offer a different perspective and challenge some of your thinking and circumstances that you might not think contribute to your situation.
It will be a huge relief to share how you’re feeling, be listened to, and have someone understand what you’re going through.
Next, it’s about identifying the contributing factors to your burnout. Awareness is key, without awareness we don’t know what to change.
Again, having support with identifying this is a huge help. When we know the contributing factors, we need to take action.
In one way or another, this is going to involve setting boundaries. That is to say, make time for and prioritise self-care, which often requires a mindset shift.
Essentially, this is about prioritising things you enjoy doing, making time for exercise, adequate sleep, and eating well. Learning to say ‘No’ is critical.
In addition, it’s super important to incorporate downtime, whether that’s a walk, mindful meditation or taking regular breaks during your day.
How to prevent burning out?
Preventing burnout is similar to dealing with it. However, I definitely recommend establishing your own personal baseline. This means going through a process of introspection.
Build awareness about strongly held beliefs and their impact. Define your core personal values and articulate what they mean to you.
Build a routine that includes time for exercise, rest and adequate sleep. Recognise that you don’t need to reach burnout to justify your effort.
High performance is achieved by recognising when to recharge before becoming too depleted.
Bonus: Focus on things that you can control
Many things outside of our control can influence burnout. However, we do have control over how we think, react, and respond to what is going on around us.
We can help to fend off burnout by being clear about our personal values, constructing a more helpful narrative about ourselves and reframing how think about certain situations.
Last words
Thanks to Richard for his insights on this very important topic! You can find him on LinkedIn, he also has a newsletter The Modern Software Developer and he also does Wellbeing Coaching. I would highly recommend checking him out!
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You are more than welcome to find whatever interests you here and try it out in your particular case. Let me know how it went! Topics are normally about all things engineering related, leadership, management, developing scalable products, building teams etc.
I think it's impossible to always prevent.
When I have felt I went above the healthy limits, I like doing a "post-mortem with myself". Just journal what I feel, and what I think I could have done differently.
This helps in not doing the same next time
Decent article, but would be better if you mentioned how burnout and impostor syndrome disproportionately affect those that identify as women, neurodivergent, or as part of a historically marginalized community. It would make the information more inclusive.