Avoiding burnout

Mary Thengvall: Yes, I think burnout has a tendency to hit people in developer relations that much harder. I'm a people person and that sometimes means that I never get a chance to switch off.

I'm at conferences frequently and when I'm not at conferences, I'm interacting with people on Twitter, or on Slack, or helping people out. I have such a drive to help people and to provide whatever I can for them that I lose that balance of taking care of myself.

I really do need to make sure that I have that downtime. I think burnout can hit all of us in these roles because we don't want to turn off that side of ourselves. Interacting with people is what gives us energy and meaning. The problem is that we're not paying attention to how much energy we give to our jobs versus the energy that we need to keep going with our day.

Part of what's fascinating to me is that there's a commonly held notion that people in community...