Using Stoicism to Prevent Burnout

Sometimes, we come across something that we wish were different. In the software industry, that might be a design choice, a toilsome process, or even a person whom we work with (or for). We’re often encouraged to fix something if we see that it is broken. This is good advice, and generally, it works - especially for simple, uncontroversial issues. Fixing an intermittently broken integration test can be rewarding, and everyone will praise you.

But how does one go about fixing friction with your co-worker? How do you change that annoying, entrenched, expense receipt submission procedure that requires you to manually scan receipts and email them via PDF to get reimbursed for your daily lunch? I guarantee you that writing an email of complaint will not help much.

How about the fact that 90% of the company still doesn’t have automated pipelines for deploying software? Everybody sharing one repo and making merge commits a nightmare? Can’t view another team’s metrics dashboard without asking them for creds to log in? Can’t just submit a PR against another team’s repo and have them accept it? Have 32 host upgrade tickets to do because of a new vulnerability and company policy requiring you to first rotate your creds? Aaaargh!

Lack of Control

All of these are complex problems that require multiple steps to a solution. In addition, they require cooperation and buy-in from multiple individuals - each of whom has better things to do than to listen to you complain about your problems (and are probably stressed out too).

There are very good ways to go about solving these problems, such as writing a Decision Record (DR). However, these efforts can sometimes take a while to bear fruit. In the meantime, it is easy to get frustrated with the fact that weeks later, nothing has changed. These frustrations add up over time and start to cause a noticeable background level of constant stress. After a while, a sense of futility emerges. We start to believe the illusion that no matter what we do, we cannot affect the outcome, and our work will continue to be stressful. After this goes on for a while, many people burn out. In fact, one of the leading causes of burnout is a perceived lack of control.

A Stoic Solution

The good news is that there are tools you can use to deal with this. My favourite is the Stoic principle of “dichotomy of control”, coined by a philosopher called Epictetus around 2000 years ago. The idea is to first determine what is in your complete control and what is not in your complete control. Once you know this, you can concentrate your efforts on changing those things that are possible to change, and not waste time and emotional energy on things that you cannot.

Here is a practical example:

My co-worker gave me a bad performance rating, and always interrupts me when I try to make suggestions to the team.

In my complete control:

• My performance on a specific task at a specific time
• My ability to politely make myself heard, even after being interrupted
• Clearly stating my suggestions to the best of my ability
• Requesting clarification and suggestions for performance improvement from my co-worker
• Actively seeking performance feedback from multiple people
• Requesting help from my manager in setting goals to meet expectations
• Setting my own goals
• Actively measuring myself against my goals and noticing progress

Not in my complete control:

• How my co-worker sees me
• How my team sees me
• How those present hear or interpret what I have suggested
• Someone's time, competence or desire to give feedback
• My manager’s time, willingness or ability to set accurate goals
• Whether people notice (or care about) my improvements

When you realise what is truly in your control, and you celebrate the achievements that you have made by exercising these things, then you will become less and less bothered by those things that are not in your control. You will also tend to make wiser decisions about how to spend your energy. Why waste time worrying about why a specific person seems to not like you? Maybe they’re just having a bad week. Rather focus on being fair, friendly and competent in general, and you’ll make many good working relationships.

A similar exercise can be done for any frustrating business process, such as the need to email payslips. First, start with what is in your control and ignore what isn’t. Make small incremental changes whilst keeping track of your desired end goal. Celebrate your achievements along the way, and always keep in mind what isn’t in your control - don’t let it get you down. 

For a great resource on Stoic philosophy and how to put it into practice, check out A Handbook For New Stoics.