Hi Folks?
I don't know if you have gone through this feeling. For a couple of weeks, I am not finding interest in programming or coding. I am just doing what should be done for the deadline at the last moment. I can't concentrate on.
Did you ever feel this kind of block? What have you done to get rid of it?
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Top comments (15)
Some day...
...But to the point, I think if you're feeling de-motivated or unproductive, a little time away can go a long way. Fresh air, exercise, literally heal your brain a little bit. Then come in with fresh perspective and motivation.
I felt this many times. It is called burnout...
I've also felt it many times. sometimes because of burnout and sometimes because of impostor syndrome.
As everyone else is saying, this definitely sounds like burnout. It usually comes when you've been working too hard for too long, without giving yourself an adequate break. And I don't mean that like you need to "take a long vacation", but rather you need to learn how to "take time every night to rest". And actually rest, getting to a place where you leave your work on the desk and don't think or stress about it until the next day.
An important thing to understand is that it will pass. Don't just give up and throw in the towel now. Take a step back, slow the pace down, for sure, but don't give up programming completely. On the other side of this, you will hopefully find a better way to balance your time and energy to try and avoid this in the future.
Yep mix of imposter syndrome, burnout, and stress. The best I can recommend is find something to take a break from this. If you can focus your mind on something else and help yourself feel successful.
It happens. Comes and goes. It’s like writers block. Take a break, work on something else and come back to it later. Don’t push on and on regardless - I did that too often and in the end it cost me the better part of a year as I burned out completely. I spent 9 months at home...
Sure I have!
I think the moment we're living right now is not easy, so I'm trying to turn this time into a productive thing. I'm reading more books (not necessary technical ones), listening to music, meditation, learning some Spanish and just figured out that I like drawing! Drawing makes me so relax and I'm trying to learn some techniques to improve it. =]
After making different activities, the interest and inspiration in coding come back again!
From the programming never, from the work a lot of times. Like one of the post wrote is burnout, you need a little vacation or maybe change your work. Why don't you binge a series something with a lot of comedy you need a good laugh my friend. May read something about burnout will help you.
cheers
Yup it happens very often - burnout, I would say take a huge long weekend ( 2 weeks ), play some games, change your company, change your project, change the place where you work (from home to office, or from office A to office B or from home A to home B ) etc.
Yes. Everytime we start a new project. The amount of details always feels overwhelming. Not the code per se, but everything around it. How to design the infrastructure to optimize experience for everybody (ops, devs, customers, etc)? What are our next few scaling bottlenecks what will we do about them? What is the least costly way to setup cloud resources? Can our previous coding tactics be made better? How can we fit with customer timeline? And so forth. I drive myself mad constantly reassessing answers to these questions as new information comes in.
I end up burning most of my vacation days by taking a day here and there to get away from it. I call it a mental health day, a term I heard from a co-worker. It gives me a break from the stress and let's my brain process it in the background. It also refills my creative energy meter. Eventually, a solution crystallizes and concrete tasks fall out of that. The cycle repeats with incrementally smaller amounts of stress as the project goes on.
When you feel like that, then it's time to step away from programming.
Everyone's situations are different. In my case, I was getting impatient learning React and spend too much on my computer than I should. Then one day, I've lost the mere thought of opening a text editor makes my body feel tired. When I discussed with everyone on Twitter, it turns I was experiencing early symptoms of burnout and advised me to take a break which I did and felt better than before.
So what you can do is:
When you take a break, you'd slowly, but surely started getting interested in programming again.
There has been times when I didn't feel satisfied nor joy with the work I've done.
That's when I knew I needed a break, if I can't take one, I try to learn new stuff that is completly different with what I am frustrated with (that usually gets me exited about programming again).
Those usually do the tricks for me, I didn't feel like leaving programming entirely yet.
Feeling it right now, been feeling it for the past several months. Impostor syndrome + bad coworker who's the only other one on my team = burnout
Tbh I had this thoughts all the time when I was a junior and still have them from time to time.
You need to get some rest mate. All what you said describe perfectly what is a burnout.
Do some things different from code: read a book, play some games, watch movies, things to you.