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Discussion on: Avoiding Burn Out as a Web Developer

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Vesa Piittinen

My recent solution to the issue was to reduce my work hours: I do six hour days now. I had already the other basics covered: sleep and exercise. However I didn't get into the worst burnout field as I've had the experience earlier on in my life: I managed to get depression and burnout while not being in the work life. I simply like doing stuff quite a lot, but didn't know how to deal with it 15+ years ago when in the middle of worst of it.

Another thing that feeds burnout for me is that I'm almost never sick. This means I don't get enough downtime, there is nothing that would break me out of the work mindset. Eight hours is enough to capture the whole day and week of your thoughts and there is very little capacity left for your own time.

With this experience I think 6 hour workdays should become the norm. 8 hour days in a brain heavy job just results into wasting time just to fill up the needs of a clock and don't really add concrete productivity over the 6 hour days.