How to get over burnout

I guess this goes out to the more senior people on this board who have experienced burnout before.

I have been working 100+ hour weeks for over 3 years so far, but recently I have become burnt out. I have lost my desire for anything and everything. I have no desire to work, make money, go out, buy crap, nothing! All I want to do is just sleep and be alone.

I'm not the one to bitch and moan about my problems, but this is the first time I have ever felt this way. I used to love working hard and long hours, but something just snapped and I lost my ambition.

How do I get that fire back? How do I get over burnout? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 
Stripstrapoption:

I work in a derivatives structuring group at a BB. Pretty much my job is to make the products for the market to trade. I work 3 Saturday's out of the month.

I think you posted this in the wrong sub-forum, but my best friend started doing structuring at JPM about two years ago (after 2-3 years of doing easier finance work). It's definitely ruined his life, he's never smiles anymore and is always tired. Dating a girl he doesn't like because he doesn't have the time or energy to find someone else. He used to be a lot of fun...going out late every weekend, picking up a lot of girls, funny, etc. It was a waste too, because he wasn't even making that much money. His total comp was only $10k higher than me, despite me being mid-back office and only working 40 hours a week.

I'd recommend business school and switching industries.

 
Stripstrapoption:

I work in a derivatives structuring group at a BB. Pretty much my job is to make the products for the market to trade. I work 3 Saturday's out of the month.

So you don't really work 100 hours/week then...it bothers me when people throw around 100 hour weeks as a proxy for being over-worked. I can promise you that if you were really working 100 hours/week on average, you'd be working 7 days, every week. I don't doubt your burnout is real, but the majority of people that claim to average 100 hours are way over estimating their actual hours. This leads to a false expectation for junior people in the industry.

100 hours in a week is 16/day M-F (8am - 12am every day) plus 10 hours each on Sat/Sun. It's nearly impossible to work 100 hours consistently in 6 days.

Junior people do work 100 hour weeks on occasion, as I did many years ago. Very few people come close to averaging that, and almost no one averages that over 3 years. It's not sustainable.

 

Ask if you can take a couple of weeks off and go somewhere, like a Caribbean island, sit your ass on a beach and just relax. 3 years at 100 hrs/week is pretty intense-like Opsdude said, and I've never been a consultant, but that seems far more than average based on friends who are or were. Or go back to bschool, look for an exit to another consulting firm or a job in industry. And talk to your bosses and see why you're working so much as a consultant.

edit: sorry, you posted this in the consulting forum. Still, ask for some time off. And the other advice.

 
Stripstrapoption:

I want to hear from someone that actually went through a burnout. How they coped with it and how it turned out for them.

When I was younger I worked at a firm that was pretty similar, although not in the trading or structuring world: very long hours week in and week out, very stressful all the time and there was no rainbow at the end of the tunnel, i.e. it wasn't going to get better for 5-10 years. The people were great, which was the only saving grace. I took a 2 week vacation after explaining to my boss that I was close to snapping (the most I took off for the previous two years of working were a few three day weekends and a couple of days at Christmas), visited some friends in Europe and went to the beaches of Spain. It cleared my head, took me out of the daily grind and gave me a different perspective. I think it's a great move to get away because when you're living it on a daily basis it's tough to think that your life can be any different. When I got back I simply started looking for a different job. It took a few months but ultimately a great move.

Maybe some people are meant to work 90+ hours per week for a decade, but I think that's why most analyst programs are 2 years. They know it's going to burn you out.

 

You need an immediate break and some perspective. Take a long vacation or leave of absence and immerse yourself in a different environment. This will let you remember all the things about life that you've forgotten. Then come back and find a new job or go to business school.

Going to the gym and drinking more water will do pretty much nothing in your type of situation.

 
Best Response

I worked at GS in IBD for three years after business school and registered for this site just to respond to you. I went through what you are going through and really encourage you to take what you're experiencing seriously. 100 hour weeks are bad for your physical and mental health. Some ppl can deal with it better than others, and if it's affecting you you must take note and change something. My decision was to leave and work in a job that had more normal hours, and it took me about three years to decompress and start to feel like myself again. I saw many of my colleagues suffer from anxiety, depression, and very serious physical illnesses driven by the lifestyle.

Not all people are built the same. I really encourage you to listen to what your body is telling you. It's your life.

 

Seconded @"Unity" , I don't see how 100+hr weeks are sustainable and a few weeks on the Amalfi Coast and some expensive champagne will set you right with the world (how could it not?) but in your situation it's like putting a band-aid on a head wound. I wish you the best of luck, I'm sure it can't be easy.

 

My friend burned out and quit. A few things I noticed, watch the caffeine, you could have adrenal fatigue, look it up. Avoiding caffeine on an empty stomach can help as your body won't expend so much energy at once and then shut down later.

Figure out how to sleep more, whether it's not going out on the weekends or whatever. A lot of people I know, myself included, would work and barely sleep all week, and then come weekend, drink hard to unwind, and get extremely poor quality sleep / very little. Rinse, repeat, week after week. This resulted in complete exhaustion, and basically the I don't give a fuck attitude about anything. Nothing matters because, before I know it, I'll be back at work, or in the jungle as I used to call it.

Next, look into getting a different job if you feel that's what is necessary,....there are all sorts of finance jobs that have good career paths that will give you more balance, or just another company.

Take some time off - 1 day, 2-3 days, a week, whatever you can manage. Literally tell your manager, "I need to take X time off, I'm exhausted".

 

My 2 cents...

Went through something similar - it took me a year to discover I did not care about anything, all I wanted was being alone,etc...just like you described. I lost my quality of sleep, waking up several times per night,..

I took a more stable consulting job, less hours, less pressure...things did improve a bit, I was able to sleep again, but I did not fully recover (was still subject to stress and depression at each problem).

I finally went to see a doctor, who then referred me to an institution specialized in treating burnouts and depressions.

The bad news is: there is no easy and quick solution. It's a comprehensive and lenghty process of adapting the way you eat and drink (see previous comment about coffee, for example), the way you live (started going to the gym and contacting friends again) and deconstructing what brought you to this situation with the help of a psychologist. It took months to notice a difference, but things are slowly improving.

Do not underestimate the psychological part - it is really important and completely changed my perspective on the subject. Do not assume you will simply recover with time off and vacations - your probably need to change a number of things in your life.

Good luck!

 

I agree with you here and although I said take a vacation earlier in these posts, it's not simply about taking a vacation sipping drinks with umbrellas on a tropical island or whoring around, in my mind, it's about taking time off and gaining some perspective. I believe it's nearly impossible to get a good perspective on things when you're stuck in the middle of it and living it daily, and that's not simply with regard to a job. In my circumstance I took a couple of weeks off and realized that the position I was in wasn't a good long term option, although I had no physical symptoms of stress so if that's the case then someone needs to seek professional help. For me it was just realizing that I was going to be working 80+ hours every week (and not a bullshit 80, but a real 80 every week and 100 hours 1 out of every 2-3 weeks) stuck in my office on a regular basis with good but not great pay, and good advancement options but not for a while. This was also not my first job so I wasn't trying to get out of the analyst grind.

If you stay in this line of work, finance, for a while your job will have stress and long hours. If you can't handle it then this isn't the career for you (not you Rene personally) and there's no shame in admitting that. Life's long but short. Don't blow it wasting 60-70% of your 168 hours/week doing something you don't like or don't want. As you advance long hours stop being stuck in the office until 2 am and turn into flying to some ungodly place and instead of sitting in the office you're sitting around in your underwear in a hotel room in Shenzhen at 3 am on conference call because the rest of your world is 12 hours opposite. Then pulling another full day in China.

Just like what you do.

 

I think you need to ask yourself why you loved working hard and long hours in the first place, and where that fire came from to begin with. And why did you snap and lose your ambition? That's the first step in figuring out how to get back on track.

For example, I picked this industry to work in because of a simple cost benefit analysis. I wanted to make the most money with the lowest possible amount of effort, while still clearing a certain level of money. Where else can you do that besides finance? Not a whole lot of other places. So I put in a lot of effort to learn how things worked, and as I learned more, I got better at it, and I started to like it for more than just the money. Competence gives you a sense of accomplishment, which is satisfying. But make no mistake, the money was always the overarching motivator and I never lost sight of that being my reason for being here at all. It's what gives you the fire. Intellectual curiosity is well and good, but it don't pay the bills and certainly doesn't get you through 3 years of 100+ hour weeks. No matter how much you love something, do it too much and you'll be sick of it.

Recently I've been going through a phase where the probability of hitting the payoff I had initially envisioned has been steadily declining. Perhaps it's a function of the environment (regulation, overcrowding leading to scarcer alpha, etc.) or maybe I'm only now starting to be more realistic. But it was a huge blow because that dream of bumming off to a beach at 35 was my main driver; without it, there was no fire. I'm still good at my job, partly because it's an easy job and I'm also somewhat competent, but nowhere nearly as good as I could be if I still had that fire. It's just gone.

I haven't resolved my issues yet, but one thing that has made it psychologically easier to get out of bed 7 days a week and grind it out at the office, is just considering all the options you have. Given that you are at this point in your life, where can you go from here? Do you quit and do something more meaningful, or something with shorter hours, and give up some money? Do you go to business school? Do you try to maneuver into a different position at your bank? Think through all the options and if one of them sounds good, go for it. If none of them do (or you're not willing to make the sacrifice entailed - in my case, money) then I think it makes it a little easier to get through the grind. My current situation is pathetic compared to my initial dream scenario, but it's still better than all the other alternatives. So ask yourself, why did you come here to begin with? What changed and is making you unhappy? And what are you willing to give up for something that will make you less unhappy?

 

I think the grind kills you if for some reason you realise, or think (sometimes falsely), that you won't achieve your career or personal goals through the route you're currently on. OP, your comments on what you think is a bad undergrad experience and a limiter to your future goals ("can't go MBA") sound like you feel trapped and that no matter what you do, you're fucked. And that's not right. I can see this leading to depression and all consequences that come with it.

I think it comes down to identifying your career and personal goals and then working out a path to those. If you really need an MBA to get there, check your assumption about how you can't get in coming from Baruch with your GPA. If you don't need an MBA, I don't see your problem. If your career and personal goals are anything but finance, get out, life is too short.

Seeing a psychotherapist may really help you get perspective also.

 

I always felt like burnout is what happens when you start losing your sense of purpose. Your mind starts getting filled with doubt and you begin asking yourself questions like "Why am I doing this?" or "What's the point?"

To avoid burnout, you need to keep your eyes on the prize. For a lot of junior people in this industry, the ultimate prize might be transitioning to a role on the buy side or even becoming your own boss one day. Stay focused. Don't lose faith. Keep your eyes on prize.

 

I echo other points already. You need to take a vacation. I don't 100 hr weeks, but I will do work 60s and come home and work on new processes to implement as well as my own personal endeavors. This is done in a bad work environment with lots of bad energy all around. Plus, I've also renovated a few homes by myself over the past five years. So I was starting to burn out. I took off a week and went to Cancun just to relax on the beach. It not only gave me rest, but cleared my head to really see what all I was doing. It also showed me that it's about time to move on to the next thing.

See it's not just the work. It will become the challenge of seeing how much you can accomplish. How much you can take. Taking pride in how much you can do compared to others. It's not even just the job. It becomes a mentality. If you don't change your thinking you'll take it with you. You'll accumulate things but won't enjoy them. It leads to fast think and as another poster said future stress will trigger the physical and emotional responses. Don't get lost in the current challenges. Yes, remember where youre trying to get, but don't burn up yourself in the current situation. Remember you've got to put the hustle behind ya muscle. Don't fight just to fight. Make sure you're moving forward at all times. When you get back from vacation and you realize you're stuck in the mud spinning your wheels, get out.

 
mmko:

I like big books and I cannot lie!!!!!!!!

Did you seriously make an account to post that thoughtless comment?

Thanks for the recommendations OP, I like to call myself an avid reader but often times I put a book aside and don't get back to it for a long time(or find myself jumping from book to book without finishing the one before). Any tips on staying consistent with your readings?

 

Life is short because it is finite.

Because it is finite, it is impossible to do everything that you want to do. Even if you did everything you wanted to do, surely you'd want to some of those things again.

Not to mention that when you are dead, there is absolute nothingness. It always amazes me that people aren't more afraid of death. You and every person you have ever met will be dead and forgotten in a nanosecond on the cosmic time scale. That is absolutely terrifying. We're floating in space on a fucking rock orbiting a giant flaming sphere people!

Why aren't people talking about this more often?

 
DickFuld:

Not to mention that when you are dead, there is absolute nothingness. It always amazes me that people aren't more afraid of death. You and every person you have ever met will be dead and forgotten in a nanosecond on the cosmic time scale. That is absolutely terrifying. We're floating in space on a fucking rock orbiting a giant >

lol, reincarnation my man, trust me
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Because it is the number 1 fucking thing people fear. The human condition requires us to BELIEVE that we are in control. That we ultimately are (especially the finance folks) masters of our ships, and the truth is far from it.

Death is such an interesting idea, because it dilutes everything thing in your life; every goal, every accomplishment, into nothing. And people hate that. They hate the idea that they're meaningless. So they stay plugged into the modern matrix.

I think- therefore I fuck
 

I was going to write some stupid line as to how you have a grim outlook on life, until I read the comments. The ideas presented are thought-provoking and I'm actually glad I looked before writing this comment as it changed the entire nature of it.

#REF!
 

I love reading, but it happens in a random fashion and usually when out of town - away from computers, people and, most of all, the Internet - thus extremely rarely. Even then I find myself reading the first half of a book in one evening and then starting a second one on the next day. For example, currently I have about four books in progress without a good reason for not finishing one before starting the other. I would say it has to do with my personality, because I sometimes find myself trying to finish several things at the same time (we all know how that goes). However, if I find a book truly intriguing I am done with it in no more than two days and keep on reading until my eyes start hurting.

Also, definitely checking out Body By Science. Thank you!

 

If you want to start an epic fantasy series read 'The Way of the Kings' by Brian Sanderson. The second book is out well called 'Words of Radiance'. It is supposed to be a 10 book series so its a good time to get into. Granted I will admit each book thus far has been 1250+ pages but they are well written, engaging and thought provoking.

Another book I am slowly making my way through is the 'Elements of Statistical Learning'. So if epic fantasy series aren't you thing you can always step up your statistics and machine learning.

“I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.” ― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
 

I love books, the more I read, the more patterns I see . its also interesting how one author will believe in an idea and another author will have a totally different use for that same idea.

example: fully immerse yourself in the moment and do not think about the past or the future-- live in the present.
2. the other author immerse himself in the details of his memories, recalling them, to strengthen his mind -Devil At My Heels (or the better version of Unbroken).

 

I recently re-read Man's Search for Meaning and a Dover Thrift Editions' Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Both are great reads and worth the time.

I appreciated Meditations the second time around as I could see and appreciate how Marcus Aurelius, the most powerful man on earth during his time, wrestled with the same ideas, thoughts, worries and fears that we do.

Meaning, no matter how successful you get or high you rise - the essential aspects of human life are largely immutable.

 

Is this the lamborghini guy from those youtube commercials?

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