Ask HN: Turning off the programming mind during non-work hours

The more I'm around other people who are social, the less I obsess over things. Church indirectly helped in that way when I had two SWE jobs.

I have always considered time like this billable hours. In a contracting role it may be something you can add to the invoice, it probably depends on the contract. In a salaried position it means coming in later to work, leaving earlier or otherwise finding extra time to properly recuperate. You may want to have conversations with appropriate peers and/or leaders on your team to establish the best approach.

I had a thing happen to me. I'm not telling this anecdote as a solution, just as a shareable thing.

An innate draw to perfectionism becomes the engineer's plauge. The notion that we can approach a quality in our craft compels us, stirs us and drives us, pulls us to an ideal we never quite seem to reach. This plauge promotes paranoia, large egos, self doubt, loathing, fear, complexities and difficulties in our relationships, in our selves.

One day, about 8 years ago, on a trip to The Island of Hawaiʻi, a day tour around the island brought with it a brief stop to see some giant ocean turtles, laying eggs upon the shore. Before we were released from the bus, the tour guide emphatically begged us, striving for a personal connection, to please, please leave the turtles alone. And then, as though I was watching the birth of conceptual inevitability, I watched happy couple after happy couple, smuggling turtle eggs for digital photos. Most were placed back, a few were broken, yolks dripping into the water and rocks and a quick shriek turned to laughter.

I felt free. I felt a freedom from responsibility, as the expanse of the loss of control I have finally came from its spectre and showed me the infinite boundary of what I cannot control. This freedom was not joy. It is not joy. It is the cold comfort of certainty, the icy maw that I cannot escape from with more than a few variables of integers at a time, and to simply allow myself to be the briefest of willful rejections amongst it.

And so that's how I turn off at night. I know that if I disappeared into the static between clouds, this would all go just about as well, or poorly, and that I am not going to save the world if I just push git commits fast enough.

Oh wow, maybe I should go into infosec, looks like I’m already there mentally

Another advocate of this approach here. Define some form of time-boxing: 90 minutes, 3 hours, 1 day, 1 week, whatever. When this is up force a capture of current state, knowledge, assumptions and ideas, then walk away and intentionally drop context. When you return it’s a great spot to be self critical and reorientate towards what you’re actually trying to achieve. Think of it like async rubber-ducking.

If you continue to think about the problem space during that ‘off time’ (which you likely will) add the thought to some notes for review when you return.