I’ve always been the type to share coding snippets and technical stuff here, but this is the first time I’m opening up about how I really feel. I’m not sure if this is the right place for it, but honestly, it feels like it’s time to share what’s been on my mind.
For almost two years now, I’ve been working remotely as a software developer at a small startup. The flexible hours are great, but the pay isn’t, which is probably normal for early-stage startups. Yet, what’s been bothering me more is the shift in my energy levels and focus.
Lately, I’ve become too lazy and stuck in a cycle of procrastination. I want to work on my side projects—dreams I had for so long—but when the weekend comes around, I end up scrolling through my phone or sleeping. I’ve started getting migraines on weekends too, which might be from the stress or exhaustion of the week. Sometimes, I work overtime (with no extra pay), and I wonder if that’s making me too drained to do anything else. But it’s not just the overwork. The truth is, even though I know about habits (thanks to Atomic Habits), I’m still not making the progress I want.
I should be able to dedicate at least 2 hours a day to my projects, right? But after my office work, I’m just too tired to open my laptop again. I have all these desires—projects I want to complete, content I want to create, and a vision to earn from my work. But here I am, doing nothing.
I love building products. In fact, during college, I earned good money from projects I built. Unfortunately, they eventually failed due to certain circumstances in my life. It’s a tough pill to swallow, seeing something you worked on crumble, but those experiences shaped me.
As an introvert, I also struggle with not feeling comfortable in my job. I do well enough—everyone at my company is happy with my work—and I’m proud of the good job I’m doing. But if I’m honest, I’m only doing this job because it pays the bills.
It’s frustrating because I tried building something of my own—through websites and content creation—but after graduation and job, everything was left abandoned. And now they sit there, untouched, while I’m stuck in this routine.
When will I get back in my zone?
Top comments (30)
I went through a period of time where I was feeling fatigued and unmotivated. After sharing this with my doctor during an annual checkup, the results showed I had low vitamin D and lower testosterone than the prior year. Getting a vitamin D supplement and making an effort to lift weights helped to boost my energy and focus. This takes care of your baseline health but don’t underestimate the importance of social interactions.
It may also help to start exploring some new hobbies that are social to help break up your current routine and introduce you to new people.
On the career side, you may want to start speaking with some career coaches or just more senior leaders that can provide some mentorship. This should help you to get prepared for a new role and/or a promotion.
Hang in there and hopefully one of these avenues can help!
In general, getting a full blood panel from a doctor can be useful, including some other tests depending on your situation and where you live. I live in a rural area and so I got checked for Lyme disease, which can make you exhausted (among other things). I also got checked for EBV (commonly known as "mono") because that can also give you exhaustion.
There could be other things worth checking on depending on your situation. It can be really hard to work through without help (and even still WITH help!).
Thank you so much for your valuable advice ✨
I will take your advice, althought my annual checkup was a month ago and it came back just fine, although i still feel that something is missing and that weightlifting and perhaps going for a run in the evening sound really nice.
I agree with this. I would emphasize exercise (weights) and social. Also, try to do your hobbies before work. You're the most focused first thing so don't give that time to someone else.
It is easy to go fast and do a lot when you're young and think it will keep going on. But we all change. The unfortunate truth is that we all have a limited mental juice. So doing extra work is okay sometimes, but it always comes with a cost: eventually you need time to recover.
So get yourself possibilities to rest, and especially sufficient amount of time away from doing anything. I mean literally anything: not watching a video, not reading news or articles, not reading a book. Just simply let your brains have a moment. This is easiest to do if you can get into a silent enough place, and human mind tends to like nature the best. Also learn to enjoy being bored for a while. Bored now equals productive later.
Even little daily things help out: allow yourself to have moments during work time that you don't really do anything productive. It is totally okay not to be doing stuff continuously. Learn to have breaks. Unproductive days are also okay, they will eventually happen. They're the cost days when you pay for being (over) productive in the other ones.
Learning not to stress and to not get frustrated when being unable is a good skill to learn. It makes it easier to become or stay able and energetic. And of course mental health overall is a good thing to maintain. We're not pure logic balls we pretend to be, feelings are what keep us going.
Then of course there's all the standard eat and sleep healthy, make sure you do enough physical activity, all that will help out in maintaining mood and good energy levels.
I've been doing this IT stuff (Linux Sysadmin Webdeveloper, PHP-Developer,...) for about 20 years now and in the last years I didn't have so much time for any side projects because family is the most valuable and important thing nowadays. I would give you the advice to use your free time to meet people, friends and / or family. Companies / tools / frameworks will change much more often than people you care about.
I think part of it is the “need” factor as opposed to the “want”. It doesn’t seem like you “need” to work on side projects so when the weekend comes around, there isn’t an incentive to do that work… and that’s completely fine! I’ve been in mental ruts like that and there just wasn’t enough pressure to take action. In fact, sometimes I’ve only started working on side projects when I get sick of procrastinating on them - that’s the pressure kicking in. I wonder if others agree, but I think it’s as simple as that - we have pretty nice jobs, we make more than the median income (usually) so working on side projects is just not as motivating… which again is totally fine and makes sense! But it’s good to be aware that you’re not doing anything wrong, there’s just not enough pressure or actual “need” to build outside of work sometimes 🤷
Just like you, I used to worry about this. But going to the the gym changed everything:
You don'thave to be a hustler, life is not Instagram, take it easy.
I share same experience.
I was working with a company managing a couple of apartments as an AirBnB property Manager and host. Yes the job was taking care of my bills and more and my bosses were happy with my effort but I was over working myself. At first I didn't realize it. I was just working and trying to please my client and be productive.
I handled the business as if it was mine.
We were a small team. While my bosses focused on other aspects of the business, I was handling bookings, maintainance, social media, customer relationship (enquires and complains), financial reports, among others.
I was putting in the hours, for the 2years and 4months I worked with them, I never had a holiday nor break. I worked even during the weekends and on holidays. My phone was always active and I cannot silent it even at night because I need to always respond to calls to guests.
I did all these but never asked for a raise nor overtime. I saw it as an opportunity to learn. But then I was hurting myself.
I have been trying to learn Full Stack web development, but I always never could. Whenever I wanted to learn, there must always be a disruption. The only time I could squeeze out to learn was early mornings between 4am and 7am. But then most times I coundn't as instead I will just sleep.
Because I knew there would be disruption, whenever I had free time during the day, I will end up watching NetFlix.
I became overly fraustrated and depressed. I couldn't take it anymore. Towards the end of last year I noticed it affected my productivity and my relationships.
As an introvert too, I found it hard to speak to someone or to seek professional help. I kept my issues to myself and my journal.
Then I decided to quit and just focus on my dream of becoming a Software developer.
So I informed my bosses on first week of December last year, and gave the 6months to get someone to replace me (The company ended up employing 4 people to handle the workload I was handling) and then I left the company the end of last May and took a month off to clear my head before now studying full time.
I suggest you have a talk with the company if possible and discuss your situation. If they are interested in your well being they will understand.
Take sometime off work (some days) and disappear to a place where all you do is reflection and healing. Detach yourself from your phone during this period.
From my experience, you will get back your productivity and drive to focus on your personal projects and stuff.
Stay busy and motivated by exploring new opportunities. If your current job isn't providing opportunities to update your skills, consider making a change. Stagnation can negatively impact your future job prospects, so don't get stuck in a company that's not investing in your growth. Alternatively, try freelancing or creating coding videos to diversify your experience and stay engaged. Remember, it's essential to continually develop your skills to remain competitive in the industry
To me, it sounds like burnout: getting overworked and not having much time to do what you want to do outside of work.
hey bro it's ok to not be productive all the time, you never know what can happen tomorrow so don't worry about it you are still an individual with skills and that will never be erased, when the moment comes to learn or make something new then you'll know that it's worth it because it ignited the inspiration back in you, so don't sweat it you'll be fine it happens to the best of us and it's completely normal
also the world we live in kinda forces us to feel like this because of production focused upbringings, it's ok to just chill sometimes
Hi buddy, I know you may not have a lot of money on the table now, but I suggest going to psychotherapy. You may have something like that mild ADHD. I have side by side with diabetes, so it's better to evaluate your health status first or any other mild stuff you may figure out you have. I don't know if migraines is truly diagnosed or not yet, but you'll get better if you take care of health things; you'll be better; you only need some time, believe me you will be back to your zone, hope this comment helped you.
You're an engineer. Happiness and life satisfaction requires just as much careful thought and engineering as any program.
You know something isn't right, now do some engineering. Identify the problem and then decide on the best way to solve it for this context, then execute. Iterate if it doesn't work! Identify the issues, then execute again, and again, and again.
Sometimes we don't have all the answers. That's where we turn to experts. If you don't have the answers you need, look to a doctor or therapist perhaps. A mentor in the field perhaps?
Once you know the problem, you can work on solutions to fix it! If they seem impossible, ask yourself if they are indeed impossible, or rather just very large and long timelines to fix? If so, make a plan, start executing, and look for ways to accelerate that timeline.
You got this!
It took me a LOT of therapy and talking to people and acceptance and reading on things to figure stuff out for me. I hope you figure it out for you much faster than I did!
Feel free to ask any questions if I can help!
Reach out to find friends who are interested in building your project and collaborate together. Your partner will be a source of motivation when you're tired or feeling lazy. It's not easy, but we have to acknowledge that it's hard to succeed alone.
hey, sad to read this.
I don't know your situation to stay with that startup, but for me it's a big mistake from the founders/managers to leave you in that state.
Keep in mind that at the end of the day it's just a job and you shouldn't put yourself throw all that, affecting your personal life for a paycheck.
If you haven't already, try to discuss with them this issue and that you won't be able to continue that way for long.
Burn outs need to be taken very seriously.
Take care of yourself 🙏
In my opinion, you're not in a position to work on side projects right now, and things might only get worse. You should consider doing the opposite of what you usually do. For example, stop using a computer for a month, walk the Saint James Way, or go to Morocco, rent a motorcycle, and explore it for at least 20 days. Do something that pushes you out of your comfort zone. Pain and discomfort can help reset and refocus your mind.
PS. I didn't realize you're from India. It's a great country to explore, and you can do similar activities there, like taking a trip to the Himalayas.
You are not alone. Every advice given by the fellow colleagues in the comments are golden.
Take care of your body so it can give you the energy to build stuff. I also have a problem with vitamin D and Fe, feeling tired all the time... But as we are biological machines, we need to give our body and mind what it wants - exercise, good food and social interactions. Like our servers needing maintenance, our body needs it too.
Reality is that non-tech people don't give a damn about our development processes and struggles, they just see the end result. So, my advice is to not overthink and overengineer your ideas, keep it simple and define an ending - finish it and publish it, no matter the quality or complexity. I learned this the hard way, as an IT entrepreneur.
Best of luck, soldier!