I always felt juggling things made me more productive. Everyday, I code, research and write, take online courses, and attend programs I signed up for. At first, it was an interesting feat to have my days occupied from start to finish doing something productive. However, I was having a dysfunctional life without even knowing it. I was skipping meals, didn't even know what it felt like to see a movie, my fun time comprised of either watching youtube videos on a particular course or researching a script, it also became extremely hard to keep up conversations with people; but it was okay as long as I was doing the things l loved to do. I always kept telling myself "when I reach that point I was aiming for, I'd normalize everything". But who was I kidding??
The joyous feeling I felt when it was time to code soon started dying, I would sit in front of my system watching a tutorial, and before you know it I'm rewinding to know what was said because my mind took a trip on its own to God knows where. Things I loved to do started feeling like chores. At first, I thought I was slowly losing the drive to be what I always wanted to be. But no! I was overworking myself, and my body's way of retaliating was making me lose interest in things I loved dearly. Sleeping wasn't even an option, I felt guilty sleeping knowing I still had 70 more days of courses to cover in my 100 days of code.
In my country of residence, constant electricity was not a thing, so whenever there was light and I was coding, my prayer was for the light to go off, and every time it did, I ran straight to my bed to nap; and on days it didn't, I waited till my eyes were closing before slowing dragging myself to bed.
You are probably waiting for a paragraph on how I dealt with it, trust me that's gonna be a long wait.
I'm still here sitting in front of my computer staring at the code that won't write itself, silently praying for either the light to go off or inner strength to pop out and have me coding in minutes.
Top comments (26)
Dont wait for the electricity to go out. Set a notification to rest every few hours to rest, no matter how much you've done. Because, in the end, you will complete it. Keep on going!
yeah and naps every now and then help your brain to retain information!
It's how to rid myself of the guilt that comes with not working
it's not that you are not working, you are just working smart, if you take a nap an wake up energized, it'll end up helping you to understand things faster & retain that information for longer, or just do what I did, go to an extreme, I had like 3 days of coding the bare minimum, just to directly fight that feeling, pretty effective I'd say. just did some physical work instead
I think I would feel more comfortable doing the 3 day thingy😂
Agree. If I go a few nights without sufficient sleep I message my boss and tell him that I need a few hours to catch up on rest. He completely understands.
Sleep is like defragmentation. When we're rested our minds process things faster, we're less likely to make time-costing mistakes, and our mood is better so there's less of an energy cost while we're working.
When we are rested we can get better quality work done in a lesser amount of time.
😂😂
Very true, thank you sir😌
Sure then, it seems more productive too.
I would try this...thank you so much for your contribution😊
Our minds are not designed to stare at a screen without moving. You need "moving" breaks; walk around, get outside, have a look at a tree or at the sky, do such a movement for 10 minutes every hour. Productivity is a weird thing. With the right amount of breaks I can get more done in 2 hours than a whole day with no breaks.
Never knew this mattered...thank you so much!😊
Hello, I am autistic and as such I go through autistic burnout, instead of dealing with my life I focus on an interest so much so that nobody can speak to me in the same room. As a result my life and relationships suffer. Could you be like me?
Before I started officially working in tech, I HAD to complete projects ASAP. I won't bore you with all of the details but at one point I think I even went slightly insane. I knew that if I ever got a tech job I was going to have to get that under control. I would always have a backlog and I can't skip meals and sleeping because my queue isn't clear.
I "reverse engineered" my thoughts in a sense. What do I feel? When else do I feel this way? What do I imagine when I feel this way? What other things in my life are these feelings linked to?
The concept of "just relax" sounds difficult because we don't have details yet. It's like somebody handing us a laptop and saying "It's broke. Can you fix it?" How is it broke? Likewise, behind your productivity obsession are all kinds of microprocesses. Perhaps finding balance is as simple as finding out which of those microprocesses you need to terminate or alter.
Another thing I often ask myself is what I'm going to regret at the end of my life. Coding is fun, but I don't want to do it so much that I miss out on things like spending time with my wife, going out for a drink, or watching an old TV show.
I hope you find balance soon. You're a hard worker. Any time you have to yourself has been more than earned.
Thank you so much for this🥺
Yeah I don't want coding to take over the role of people in my life, I would definitely work on this....thank you once again🥺
Recognizing burnout is the first step to preventing it so you're already on the right path! Productivity is such an addictive feeling and it can be hard to recognize when you've taken it too far - taking breaks throughout the day is key and you'll end up getting more done in the end anyway as you'll be refreshed and ready to hit the ground running
Best of luck - you got this!
Yes, that feeling of learning new things would keep you at it for hours.
I would try taking little breaks tho, even though I have to try not to guilt trip myself...thank you very much😊
To me it sounds more like tutorial hell. I would rather focus on building stuff yourself with the knowledge you currently have. You will run into problems but instead of watching someone dealing with it already (in a tutorial) you will solve it yourself and even if it takes hours there are more than 1 way to solve things. This mindset of puzzle solving is refreshing and will keep you swimming.
I work on my projects too
I had experienced burnout after getting to the point I wanted to be. I thought that life would be better when I reached my goals, but the truth is that I felt empty, so the only options was finding another goal, to feel empty again when I reach it or maybe understand why the burnout, to me the explanation was that life is not just my job.
I understood that I had to live my life, family, friends, health, MYSELF (must important) and my job.
Yeah, I am tryna to be very intentional about making the best out of life now...thank you🥺
Take a few days off as needed. Letting burn out get to you will only accumulate and make it worse as time goes. You're better off taking a few days of rest, doing other things you love, and when you come back to coding refreshed you will be much better at it and you will think more clearly.
This will be hard😂....but will try it thank you😌
Do sports to get a fresh mind.
I myself go running every two days.
Not exactly a sports person
Thank youuuu....love it😚