While maintaining an open source project can be fun and fulfilling, it can also be very draining. Many maintainers struggle to get the support they need to keep going.

Common problems include:

  • being the sole maintainer for a project, and feeling unable to take vacations/time off
  • having to take on unexpected roles, such as a developer who finds themselves acting as a licensing expert, community manager, and/or product manager
  • feeling overwhelmed by community requests, especially those framed in an angry or entitled way
  • a lack of funding can limit the amount of time maintainers have for a project, increasing overwhlem, and inducing a feeling of being taken for granted

In all of these cases, the maintainer is feeling forced to put the project above their own individual needs, such as their need for time off, their need to pay the bills, or their need to focus on the kind of tasks that give them joy.

It's actually not the sacrifice itself that causes burnout. Sometimes people have to put the needs of others before their own! But in healthy relationships, this give and take is mutual, and if the situtation is really painful or stressful for someone, both people in the relationship work together to fix it.

In other words: the core problem facing most burned out open source maintainers is not that they have to do things they don't want to do. It's that they don't feel they have anyone they can bring these problems to, that will collaborate with them to find a solution that benefits everyone.

How to fix this situation is an open question and a topic for another post. This post is about recognizing when you're starting to burn out.

It's important to catch burnout early on. It's tempting to "just push through" when things aren't so bad yet, but reversing burnout requires fixing the situation that's causing it, which can take a lot of work - work that's hard to do when you're already drained and miserable.

(For men, who make up a disproportionate share of open source maintainers, this is especially challenging. Western society conditions men not to pay attention to their emotions or admit when they need help.)

So I've created this simple checklist. If you answer "yes" to one or more of the questions, you may be on the road to burnout.

Open Source Burnout Checklist

  • When you see a notification that someone has opened up a new issue or PR in your project, are you excited that someone is contributing, or do you feel something more like exhaustion or dread?
  • Do you like talking about your project to other people? When someone asks you how your project's going, do you feel bad, good, or a mix of the two?
  • Do you find yourself hesitant about going to meetups and conferences where people might ask you about your project?
  • Are there ongoing issues with the project? Do you feel hopeful about your ability to eventually resolve them, or hopeless?
  • How often do you enjoy working on the project? Are you able to lose yourself in the work, get into flow states, and emerge from a work session energized and satisfied? Or do you tend to spend your time on things you don't enjoy that much, and that you're only doing because you feel obligated to?
  • Do you feel guilty when you can't address an issue or review a pull request right away?
  • Do you feel like users/contributors are demanding too much of you?
  • Are there specific users/contributors/collaborators who you have to work with, but wish you could avoid?
  • Are you anxious that you're being asked to do things you don't know how to do? When you're working on the project, how often are you afraid that you'll get something wrong?
  • Do you feel like you could ever take a break (weekend, sickness, vacation, family emergency) from the project? Or can't you leave it alone even for a single day without stuff piling up?
  • Do you get paid to work on your project? If yes, does that make you feel like you can't work on the things you enjoy? If no, do you feel like your work is taken for granted?
  • Think back to what first drew you to the project, whether that was a specific technical challenge, the joy of problem-solving, getting into flow states, collaborationg with others, or participating in a project that had a meaningful impact on the world. Do you still feel that when you work on the project, or is it getting drowned out by other feelings?

More Resources

Here are some additional resources related to open source maintainer burnout: