Burning out on software development 2024-09-16

This is a subject that everyone, no matter the field or hobby, can relate to. Burnout is a curse that affects us all at some point. There's people that think just because they love to do something that they will never get burned out on it. Its effects are completely dependent on the person, same goes for how you go about "treating" it as well. Everyone knows of burnout. You might have a friend or family member that is burned out, you could be burned out at your job, one of your favorite hobbies, maybe even a game or TV series. It's terrible to experience.

Writing this all out I want to just communicate where I am with my burnout and explain what I have been doing to alleviate my burnout and the stress that comes with it. This is just my experience, my thoughts, and how I'm handling it. everyone seems to have their own experience, feelings, and methods, which does not help when you're looking up "how to deal with burnout". You get a bunch of generic answers, and in my opinion, advice that is not really helpful. My method is a tad nuclear and might not work for people that program or do the thing they are burnt out on in general for a living, however I felt like I could afford it since any programming I do at my job are optional scripts I use to automate tasks.

Setting myself up for failure & Ignoring signs

To understand where I'm at now we have to know what issues have been with me since the beginning. Things that have taken a toll on me over time and forced me to handle things differently than most people, but in the end only forced me down the burnout path harder than normal.

Quickly these started taking a toll on me when I was learning and trying to build bigger projects. It made it a much steeper road to figure out how things worked and how they were built. I wanted to feel like I was in the frame of mind of the people that have built all these systems and software we use and take for granted every day. I wanted to feel as though I was learning that logic, but the more and more I tried looking at projects on GitHub (to try to understand how they work) the more I was getting frustrated because I really did not understand. I wasn't getting it at all, and when trying to build projects that were more complicated I felt that I am not good enough. Which crippled my motivation.

The more time that passed the more I started prioritizing my projects over breaks and my other hobbies and interests. Eventually all the videos on YouTube that were tech related started to invoke that feeling of fatigue. The same feeling started triggering when I would pick up a tech book, and eventually just whenever I was programming whether it was a small project or not.

The tipping point was when I was working on part two of the network programming in C series. I realized I needed a more thorough understanding on how LSP's worked, which then led me into the needing to learn the process for building a C/C++ project. I was staring at CMake's documentation and I just couldn't look at it anymore. I understood what it was telling me but, I was so far off from what my goal was, and I just wanted to get back to writing the program, but I was too exhausted. That is the moment I decided I needed to take a long deserved break.

The break

When I started the break it sucked and I had a rule, I was not allowed to program. I had the feeling I was running away from my problems. I was finding I had problems I didn't realize I had, and needed to figure out how to use my time now that I had more of it. That however was the easier of the issues to fix. I soon realized I was now able to pick back up hobbies that I had long dropped that I wish I had more time for. I was able to play games and absorb media again like comics and TV shows without the worry of productivity loss. I quickly realized that I've been living my life by these labels that I've placed on myself, and chose to start breaking away from those labels. After that I started really feeling pressure start to release. Once that happened I started thinking mindfully on my experience programming, and tried to really nail down the bad habits I had, some of which were listed earlier. Eventually all the content on YT that I was too burned out to watch and all the tasks at home involving my home servers that I was too burned out to complete all became fun again. I was sticking with my rule, but gave myself the exception of scripting at work if I felt like I wanted to, since for my job scripting is an optional task.

Its only been really getting better since. I am happy with myself again, tech is fun again, and I still love every bit of it, but I am still not ending the break. I feel like it would defeat the purpose if I just ran back when I started missing it. I really want to give other hobbies and skills room to grow before I dive back in. That doesn't mean I've given up on any of my previous goals, I'm also giving myself that time to plan how I want to tackle the problems and goals I have when I do come back. I want to handle it better than I did before to ensure a healthy relationship with not just programming but anything involving tech.

Conclusion

Honestly I know a sabbatical like break is not really an option for a lot of people since normally programming is a career, but this is just what has worked for me. I've tried other things in the past like learning another language, changing my environment around in other ways like what editor I'm using, or what type of projects I was working on. None of that stuff worked for me long term though. I needed a clean break. I real step back from the problem to see what I was really dealing with. Some might do that and realize they don't even want to be programmers or whatever it is they're burned out on. I stepped back and worked on the issues causing my burnout. Will the burnout return one day? Maybe, but Ill just take another break. Taking a break doesn't make me a poor programmer. Nor does it mean I lose my skill set. It just makes it all exciting to get back into.

I hope this was insightful or enjoyable to read. I will be making some posts soon about tech and potentially non tech related content that I find cool.

~ Thanks for reading!