This is an anonymous post sent in by a member who does not want their name disclosed. Please be thoughtful with your responses, as these are usually tough posts to write. Email sloan@dev.to if you'd like to leave an anonymous comment.
I am leading a team to make another product. There is plenty of work, a large business impact, and enough time for me to knock out a bunch of it. But I feel no motivation to write code. Instead I distract myself with searching for more knowledge. I keep hoping that inspiration will strike.
I love to rise to technical challenges, and doing so will usually trigger a flurry of coding. But once completed it seems I never want to do a similar thing again. Despite this I have managed to release multiple successful products. But after a long career, it seems hard to find challenges that motivate me in the work that my employer actually needs done.
I feel guilty for even coming to work, knowing that I will not bring that much value today. So I am nearly out of vacation days. But when I take off, I also feel guilty for not being there to help the team.
I am always up for helping the team, and I spend a chunk of most days doing that. I give them ideas and help them get past technical obstacles and keep the vision for what we are doing fresh in their minds. But that does not fill my day. I still have a lot of time to stare at the screen and try to convince myself to write code that I know needs to be written. That people are expecting me to write. But I do not want to, and I hate myself for that. "Just write something already!"
I go home with the frustration of not achieving "a job well done". When I wake up the next day, I know the same fate awaits me. It is difficult to get out of bed. On the way to work, I try to prep myself to just get in and start writing code. But things always come up right away. When I finally sit down to code, momentum is gone.
It is not always this way. I have productive seasons, and seasons like this.
Am I just burned out? Has anyone been in or seen this pattern before? Please share your experiences with this.
Top comments (20)
This is the poster child for burnout. But tbh, it also sounds a lot like depression. As someone who knows that path far too well, it does get better. But it only gets better if you push for that.
Unfortunately, burn out is a deeply personal thing - this definitely sounds like burnout, but it could just be a natural thing too. I've seen people in similar patterns for sure and you are definitely not alone. I wanna answer a few parts here though and then maybe try to give you some advice.
To be honest, it seems like you are burnt out on being an individual contributor if anything. You might consider working towards the next step in your career - whether you are interested in architecting, management, or product strategy, there are lots of options out there!
This might be a sign that it is time to move on from that employer - there are interesting problems out there, but sometimes business just doesn't have them. The other option is to try to find something else that engages you about the business and start working towards that. Maybe they need help with hiring or D&I efforts. You can still write code but find your fulfillment from those other topics.
I go through this a lot too - except mine manifests every fall as a need to move on from whatever I am doing. Without fail, every year I was in college I felt like I wanted to drop out about 3 months into the semester. It's very possible that you have Seasonal Affective Disorder - you might consider seeking therapy and talking through your problems. I did group therapy in college and really, really enjoyed it. I honestly probably should get back into it and take my own advice here.
Regardless of what you learn here, there is no reason to hate yourself - this is a natural thing that lots of people go through. You just have to find your personal journey to work through it. You got this and you deserve to feel good about yourself. 😊
I hope this helps, Anonymous writer. If you ever want to talk more about this, you can feel free to reach out to me on Twitter DMs. I'd be more than happy to have a private conversation!
First off, this is super brave of you to share. Secondly, the pressure to perform is probably mostly coming from yourself. Yes, there are people who have expectations on you; but I’d be willing to bet that you are your harshest critic. That’s at least how I am. And the only thing that has helped that is self-care. There are some descriptions of self-care techniques here that seem relevant:
Doing nothing: The cure for procrastination
Cubicle Buddha ・ Jun 26 '19 ・ 6 min read
It certainly sounds like a moderate level of burnout. It's almost like writer's block! You're almost certainly bringing more value than you think you are.
Here's my experience.
Developer burnout is real
Daragh Byrne ・ Oct 17 '18 ・ 2 min read
And I also compiled a checklist to see if you're on the edge of burnout (I can send you direct if you DM me and don't want to sign up).
codingmindfully.com/burnout-checkl...
This sounds very similar to where I was a few years ago in a different job. At that point, I was 5 years into a company where I loved my team members and the people that worked at the place generally. But at the end of every day, I would come home feeling like I let everyone and myself down for not being engaged enough or getting enough work done.
If I'm understanding the things you're feeling in your post correctly and if you have access to one, I would highly recommend a therapist to help navigate the things you're feeling. They can help identify why you might be experiencing these things and to help come up with a plan to help move yourself into a better head space.
For me, what helped was to move my career towards my goals. I was doing sysadmin work and I wanted to get into web development. Now that I'm doing it, I'm incredibly happy but still worried that I'll experience that again.
I think I know what you feel.
And I have good news for you - you are on you first step to change your life!
You have recognized - something is going wrong, now it's time to find what you need to change.
You feel unmotivated and it's not the reason of the problem - but the effect.
Try to talk to yourself or an experienced psychologist - what you like and don't like in your life.
I have experienced something similar few times in my life.
Once I recognized I felt being in a cage in my life. After a long self-reflection I just quited my job and decided that from now I will work remotely and live the life I want, the life on my rules.
Another time I understood I am not motivated to continue as a developer.
I just took half a year to quit all I did and listened to myself. That period helped me to reburn and to understand how I want to continue my life.
Maybe you need to change your profession, company, or start own business.
You have already taken the vacation - it's a right step! Take your time as much as you need to find the answer.
I have shared some of my experience here as well: dev.to/aspose/working-remotely-mad...
I know what you're going through, I am experiencing the same issue right now. I have been for a few days now, and I did last year when I was working on a project. There are times when you know you should be getting work done, maybe because you have people looking up to you or because of a deadline closing in on you. But you can't bring yourself to it. I spent hours scrolling through newsletters, tutorials, dev blogs and documentations, when I should have actually been writing code and putting work in. And when I do start, all it takes is a small bug in my code to make my shut down my laptop and browse reddit.
But I did eventually come out of it. Like you said, you have productive seasons. I also had one or two days in a week where I could sit for 8 straight hours and code. And the happiness and satisfaction I get after those 8 hours is just something else.
All I can say to you is that hold on to those productive days, and don't beat yourself up because of the unproductive ones. Take rest and chill.
Definitely burnout, it's even officially recognised as QD85. I'm currently experiencing the same issue, can't offer any tips since coping techniques vary from person to person. The fact that you commute to work is a plus, if you worked from home in that state of mind, well, it would be much worse. Writing about it helped me a little bit, which was something I never would have expected. I was first scared and ashamed but then finally decided to go with it, post it, make it public and see ig there are other people out there with similar problems willing to share their experiences. To my surprise, there is abundance of stories like yours and it's a struggle, but it's not a death sentence.
I hope you recover quickly or at least find something to mitigate the symptoms.
This is what I wrote to vent out:
The evolution of a programmer
Damir Franusic ・ Jul 24 ・ 6 min read
Yes, you are definitely experiencing burnout. Burnout is often compounded by symptoms of depression that already exist. Sometimes burnout makes depression that you already have feel worse. Take care of yourself. Try to be less hard on yourself for how you feel, guilt is a nasty feeling that always ends up making things much worse. I hope your team and manager are people you can trust to talk to and tell them how you're feeling. I've been lucky enough to have understanding managers when I've experienced my bouts of burnout. Hang in there!
Someone in a burnout situation doesn't have this kind of motivation. I could advise to just take a break or try to change the mission (yeah, easy to say )
Be brave !