Makers: Battling Burnout, a Quick Note
By: Emily-Alice Sesto
Tags: Journalling, Coding, Stress Management, Codingbootcamp, Makers

By far, my biggest challenge during Makers has been switching off at the end of the day. I’m seven weeks into the full-course and I’m still dreaming in code.

Last night, I woke up at about 3am, convinced that I’d just solved the coding problem I’d been working on before bed. I fell over on my way to the computer and then sat down to write several nonsense notes before going back to bed. I’d have forgotten the whole thing even happened if I hadn’t woken up to the notes in the morning, the most insightful of them being “delete the thingy at the top”.

This week, I’ve barely taken a break. Juggling the coding with script-learning and scene prep for acting classes, while trying to maintain some semblance of a social life has been tricky. Mondays are thirteen hour days for me; my eyes are often bloodshot by the end of the day and my tolerance for artificial light seems to be getting less and less.

Logically, I know what I should be doing to fight burn out. Below are some of the tactics that I know can work:

Take regular breaks (and do something away from any and all screens)

Talk it out.

Exercise.

Get enough sleep.

Meditate.

Unfortunately, although great ideas in theory, they can be hard to implement and even harder to stick to when things get tough. When a problem has been bugging you for hours, it’s kind of hard to relax and forget about it, even for ten minutes or so. Sometimes it feels physically impossible to think about anything else at all until an issue has been sorted, but that kind of work ethic is just not sustainable.

No developer can ever expect to be free of problems for any significant amount of time.

It was the above realisation that made me realise I needed to dedicate more time to finding a balance, lest I leave myself victim to several breakdowns a month for the rest of my career.

In the beginning stages of stress, meditation and yoga are often enough (for me, anyway) to keep the edge off, and the first few weeks of the course have been manageable in this way. But as the weeks have gone on, the stress has slowly piled up. It’s been sneaky, and has recently caught me off guard.

There were three red flags to note when things started to go south: irritability, inability to focus and nighttime anxiety.

The best way to deal with burnout depends on the person, and I can’t speak for everyone. The tactics I mentioned earlier may be more than enough for some people, but I need a little more than those to get through.

First and foremost, I’m a doer. If I’m stressed about something, my immediate reaction is to do something about the cause of stress. That lands me in a difficult situation when a problem isn’t immediately solvable. Talking about a problem is helpful when it allows me to put things in perspective or to put a plan in action, but aimless ranting can often just lead to wallowing.

In addition, it’s all fine and good to tell yourself to get more sleep when you’re exhausted, but if your brain starts firing anxious thoughts in every direction the moment your head hits the pillow, you’re going to need some more structured guidance…

Which leads me to the one tactic that never fails me. Journalling.

If, like me, you brain is fighting you every step of the way on your journey to relaxation, you’re going to need to reason with it. That’s where writing comes in. The trick to helpful journalling is to begin with word-vomiting. Don’t write with the intention of getting anything coherent down on the page.

Whenever I journal, the first 1–3 pages are nonsensical and often unconnected sentences. After the white noise has been purged, my thoughts begin to make a bit more sense. Once that happens, I almost always successfully manage to either solve a problem, create a plan to solve it, or process the problem and put it in perspective, lifting a huge weight from my shoulders in any case.

I used to have a habit of writing three pages every morning, whether I felt like it or not. It always left me with a clearer mind and better mood. Writing before bed also seems to work just as well, and massively helps with getting to sleep and reducing stress dreams.

I think of my brain as a creative space lined with filing cabinets. When the filing cabinets start overflowing, my creative process and problem-solving abilities get clogged up and my productivity and learning suffer big-time. As much as my instincts tell me to devote every ounce of energy to problems until they’re solved, there comes a point when the work overload becomes counter-productive. Knowing when to cut off will serve us all much better in the long run.