What's everyone's experience with burnout?

[brilliantyears]

Extensive.

The more concise answer I could have given

[Ani]

You should consider that you're only polling the active users on the forum, which is almost by definition people who aren't burnt out and by and large study languages for fun.
I've only felt something close to burn out twice. In both cases I had set a very strict progress goal. The solution was switching from study to reading/watching so it wasn't really true burnout.
I've come to accept that I'm a really lousy goal setter. Anytime I try to complete a certain thing by a certain date, it ends badly.

[Stefan]

How do people distinguish between burnout and the regular urge to give up?

[philomath]

How do people distinguish between burnout and the regular urge to give up?

For me, burnout is just a feeling of not being in the mood to study my target languages. I still want to learn them in the long run, but I can't get myself to actually sit down and study in the moment. I don't ever feel the urge to actually give up studying my target languages... I think that indicates a more serious problem than just being burnt out.

[picklelanguage]

How do people distinguish between burnout and the regular urge to give up?

I would say burnout would be having the desire to continue learning but not having the energy while the other would be the opposite.

[Ani]

How do people distinguish between burnout and the regular urge to give up?

I've literally never experienced that

I wonder if goal related? Not that one way is better or more correct than another, but I study because I like the activity in the moment. The study itself is my dopamine hit. Maybe if you study with more externally focused goals ( like being able to do something), but you don't love your study, it gets more frustrating? Just musing...

[kulaputra]

My brand of burnout is something like the sentiment described in T.S. Elliot's "The Hollow Men":

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

[Ogrim]

In occupational psychology, "burnout" is quite clearly defined and its symptoms are very close to clinical depression. The psychologist who coined the term, Herbert Freudenberger, defined burnout as a set of symptoms that includes exhaustion resulting from work's excessive demands as well as physical symptoms such as headaches and sleeplessness, "quickness to anger," and closed thinking. He observed that the burned out worker "looks, acts, and seems depressed". The term "exhaustion" is really key in theory around occupational burnout.

OF course, people often use the term in a less precise way, as can be seen from some replies here. For me "language burnout" would be more than just a feeling of not wanting to study any more or not having the energy. In my view it would be a situation where you have become totally exhausted because of having been put under (or put yourself under) excessive pressure to improve, leading to a depression-like state.

I have given up languages more than once in the past, but never because of a burnout. Sometimes I would lose motivation, often I would give up because of lack of time to do regular and meaningful study, but never because I got exhausted or felt too much pressure.

[Cavesa]

I'm joining the "extensive" crowd. And also Ogrim, as burnout is a bit of a different issue than what people usually mean.

The usual descriptions are like:

• physical and emotional exhaustion;
• feelings of cynicism and detachment; and
• a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/high-octane-women/201205/where-do-you-fall-the-burnout-continuum
And yes, I have a lot of experience with that. If you are experiencing this, if you have gone so far to find yourself in the descriptions of the symptomes (there are like ten or fifteen rather well described on that page, but this is just a page found by quick googling), I recommend finding a therapist and/or a doctor. And/or big changes in your life. I won't go in too many personal details, some readers of my logs have already found out a lot, perhaps too much. But I can tell you these symptoms are horrible and affect one's life considerably. Should everything else in your life be ok and language learning be the obvious source of such problems, I suggest you stop it completely and never return.

So, if we take it back to the languages and the way we usually talk about it, I would like to take it further from this point:

How do people distinguish between burnout and the regular urge to give up?

Just wanting to give up sometimes, that is normal. Learning a language is sometimes difficult, we may not be progressing like we feel we should, we may have some discouraging experiences, and so on.

What is more closer to burn out: strong negative motions connected to learning. Even if you rationally know you "want to keep learning", it just makes you tired, angry, or annoyed without much of a reason. You are no longer looking forward to the language learning sessions, you procrastinate. This hobby is suddenly taking away from you instead of giving. You might even experience psychosomatic symptoms, when you should be learning.

I'd say most learners experience the first and it is only natural and we need to learn how to deal with that. It forces us to reconsider our goals, methods, our expectations of ourselves, and so on. It can be a good opportunity for growth. The second is more likely to happen, when you are already having difficulties in other aspects of your life and are burnt out in general. That is one of the big signs of the real burn out. All the unpleasant stuff spreads from the source-usually the job to other aspects of life too, including the hobbies. Normally, the language learning hobby is a bit help in my general burn out prevention and a lot of added value to my life. But when I am having too many and too strong burn out symptoms in general, even a normally enjoyable language learning activity is suddenly a torture.

The prevention has already been mentioned. More fun activities, realistic goals, and so on. In languages and the rest of the life. When it hits despite that, I recommend taking a break from the language, a hobby shouldn't torture you. And focusing on the other areas of life, especially if those are the main source of the problem. A change completely unrelated to language learning can have a high impact on it.

[picklelanguage]

In occupational psychology, "burnout" is quite clearly defined and its symptoms are very close to clinical depression. The psychologist who coined the term, Herbert Freudenberger, defined burnout as a set of symptoms that includes exhaustion resulting from work's excessive demands as well as physical symptoms such as headaches and sleeplessness, "quickness to anger," and closed thinking. He observed that the burned out worker "looks, acts, and seems depressed". The term "exhaustion" is really key in theory around occupational burnout.

OF course, people often use the term in a less precise way, as can be seen from some replies here. For me "language burnout" would be more than just a feeling of not wanting to study any more or not having the energy. In my view it would be a situation where you have become totally exhausted because of having been put under (or put yourself under) excessive pressure to improve, leading to a depression-like state.

I have given up languages more than once in the past, but never because of a burnout. Sometimes I would lose motivation, often I would give up because of lack of time to do regular and meaningful study, but never because I got exhausted or felt too much pressure.

Yeah, I think the clinical definition of burnout and the sort of common usage are important things to deferential. Mainly because I feel that the regular burnout is something that you can manage. Maybe restrict your flashcards or put some series on hold to not burnout. Being burned out in the clinical definition is not something to toyed with. It should be something that becomes a priority to deal with.