alt Hacker NewsI'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.
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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
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".
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.
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!
It's so simple it's hard to really appreciate. Accepting what is and acknowledging that all you can do is your best and other mindful practices can really help. Easier said than done. I'd highly recommend the Healthy Minds app as a nice, no cost place to start learning. It grew out of a University of Wisconsin program and, as far as I know, is funded by donations and grants.
Healthy Minds https://hminnovations.org/meditation-app
> 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.
I relate so much to this comment. We love our kids but it's hard to balance various demands.
Often times ourselves get the short end, but others find a way to give each their due including themselves
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.
Appropriate responsibility. Let the kids assume even the most minor appropriate responsibility. maintain an healthy neutrality.
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.
interesting, there's the burnout where you love what you do but there's too much, and then there's the burnout where you cannot love what you do no matter how you spin it. both uphill battle but different scenarios
good luck to you though
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.
> 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.