61–68 of 68 posts
(I blogged about it here: http://tojans.me/blog/2013/03/30/freedom-learning-stuff-doin...)
a. Get a new hobby. I have realized that having an out-of-work hobby helps your work life immensely. I don't mean a hobby that you'd go to only when bored or on the weekends, nor something 'easy' -- so listening to music, or watching movies or reading a book don't qualify for what I am recommending. It has to have a steep learning curve if you want to get a high enough level of satisfaction from the process that it improves your overall sense of well being. Learning to draw/sketch, learning to play a musical instrument or juggle or scuba dive would qualify.
b. Teach. The easiest way to get into this is get involved in your local User groups and share what you already know. Do it for free. I assure you this too will indirectly have a phenomenal affect on your work life. Also checkout http://software-carpentry.org/contrib/training.html ...which leads me neatly to my next point...
c. Challenge yourself and get involved in a writing software for a completely different domain. I see way too many software engineers limiting themselves to writing code and creating products that are consumed by other software engineers. That gets boring after a while. Write code (or quite your job and join a firm that writes code) for scientific research (think physics, phrama, genetics ...etc) or for automotive companies or for hospitals ...basically move out of the domain where software is the central/critical component (eg: web or software solution providers ...you know what I mean ?)
d. Just take a break. I don't mean a long sabbatical. Just a break. You don't even need to do something special with your break, ie: you don't need to travel to exotic locations -- you can just take a break to seriously pursue (a) above.
Hope this helps, cheers,
[1] translation: I've held positions in pretty much every aspect of delivering software - userspace programming, systems-level programming, web dev, Level 2 & 3 support, system administration and ^devops^ (whatever that is)
See a sleep doctor and get a sleep study if they agree to it to see if you're getting enough good sleep (depression is often confused for "burn out", and is pretty reliably caused by sleep deprivation, which is pretty reliably caused by small children).
How can one be bored with programming? Am I the only one never bored when left alone somewhere? There's always more to learn, more to do, to experiment with, etc. It's really a shame to read such a question. I don't even want to work with you.
You may be considering you will be a "manager" in the future but I do think that only a bunch of today programmers will be managers or CTO in the future (a lot of politics in Spain). Somehow there are some people that are meant to be CTO no matter they age or experience, so don't trust you will be one.
So I started to think what do I wanted to do with my life. I considered two options: - Helping make the world nicer by learning the secrets of design: my mother and brothers are artists and I consider I have some potential, I have done some freelancing regarding this topic. - Helping the IT world to be more secure in an useful way: I was kind of a hacker in my teen years and I loved it but I started to work as a developer and I lost this track.
Long story short, I studied a MSc in Information Security and now I am helping the enterprise where I was a programmer to build useful security. The good things about the security world is that: is an art, is quite challenging, it involves working with people, is a growing industry, you can program from time to time and... It is cool! =D
I continue programming but as a hobby and I find it much more rewarding.
(Any grammar corrections are appreciated since English it's not my mother tongue).