I think quite a lot of people are going through a similar funk right now, and it could be the case that your lack of interest in programming is a symptom of all of this social distancing business. Even people who were not very social before the pandemic are starting to crack a bit, and unfortunately the usual remedies are not an option at the moment. The best thing to do is to speak to a professional if it’s really bothering you... i’m sure we all mean well here, but don’t listen to a bunch of idiots on a message board.
Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?
81–90 of 178 posts
Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?
#82This has happened to me after a 20 year career and successful side business. Instead of fight it, I accept it and look at it as a natural part of growth, not stagnation. It opens up the possibility for you to take your job for what it is—a job—and explore new hobbies and interests. If nothing is interesting, take a break from trying and play video games or watch tv for a year. Youre going to bump up against a lot of…
>...open your mind and follow your heart...
I can't emphasize this enough. Your career shouldn't define you. It should be a byproduct of who you are. Not the defining trait. It's hard to realize this at the beginning when you are trying to climb the ladder but after 20 years you begin to realize:
In the end you die, if you didn't live a life you want, it's your fault. Open your heart, get in touch with that inner kid, do hobbies and things that excite you. It's ok to change.
Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I turned to helping other people solve their problems because at least I was helping others to get through what I couldn't figure out how to get through myself. Do you consider this to be a good thing? Doing the same now, and wondering if it’s okay.
Ultimately you won't really know if it's a good thing until after the fact. I think just following my nose and doing what felt good in the moment was a big help. I guess it helped that I'd been trained as a youth counsellor early in my career, and I've been helping people my whole life as a by-product of who I am. A lot of people over the years have told me I should be a counsellor because apparently I'm really good…
Man, I really hope things turn up for you. Just on the basis of your attitude, it sounds like you deserve it. Depression's a bitch and I know burnout all too well, but it sounds like you have a good idea about the work it needs to overcome it
Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?
#84> "I sat down the other night to get started in a grand project I’ve been getting so excited about and I just couldn’t and this seems to be pretty common lately. The projects I dream up are super cool feats of hacker ability"
"I keep dreaming up these high status projects and imagining all the people who will respect me and all the money I'll make, nothing to do with code or fun or problem solving. They need skills I don't have and work I don't want to do. Then I beat myself up about my inability to reach these goals, then quit, what do?"
Realise that what you're dreaming of isn't /programming/ it's /being a superhero/. "I keep imagining distressed women screaming for my attention and then I fly in and lift the falling skyscraper off their cat, and they marry me, but then I go to the gym and can't even lift 1Kg because the distance between my expectations and reality is making it very clear that my expectations are a fantasy, and I just don't want to face that".
Happened to Physicist Richard Feynman, incidentally, all the high expectations of him to produce great things. He ended up saying screw everyone and their expectations, he was only going to work on fun things, and started thinking about wobbling plates of custard in the cafeteria instead.
Answer: Same answer every spiritual mystic has said for generations - kill your ego, lose your self esteem, die into being nobody, let the world go hang itself on its high status, and please yourself with some work and problems you enjoy working on[1], not work and problems you think you should enjoy working on. Let the boilerplate come from your fingers at work, because it earns you food, and don't stress over it.
[1] that is specifically and worth calling out, things that when you do it, you feel good. And NOT things that you habitually do to try and feel good, but which don't feel good, and NOT things in the category called feel-good things. Specifically, things that when you are doing them, raise good feelings within you. e.g. don't watch a sci-fi film because you always used to enjoy watching sci-fi and feel that you ought to enjoy it again, if you aren't enjoying it. Don't watch a feel-good romantic comedy that you hate because society calls it "feel good". Do ... thing that catches your attention a little but feels stupid or embarassing or a waste of time so you'd normally dismiss it, but actually feels mildly nice.
Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?
#85If you are being demoralized by the initial hump of building things that you're enthusiastic about, you just need to change your mindset and the way you approach building them.
Don't be passionate about building something for other people, be passionate about something for yourself. Let your projects be extensions of that passion, with you as the intended customer. Not everything needs a fancy interface or a dozen use cases out of the box. Don't worry about scalability. Just try to find the joy in building things to help pursue your passion.
Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?
#86I'm going to keep it very simple; tell yourself you're not going to program for two whole weeks. You may feel uncomfortable letting yourself go, but it will give you a much needed break and you will come back more energized. Speaking a bit more anecdotally, what worked for me when I facing a similar problem was shutting off the computer immediately after work and allowing myself to relax and prioritize other hobbies.…
> tell yourself you're not going to program for two whole weeks. Two weeks. Ten working days. You can't be serious. Three months minimum . OP needs to zoom out for perspective and that takes time.
That’s a great point. And upon reflection, I realized the timeframe is unique to the person. Maybe it’s two weeks for some people, and maybe it’s a year for others. I think the common denominator, though, is that you’ll know when you’re getting that passion back, whenever it may be.
Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?
#87I was in a very similar spot about a year ago. I decided to take a sabbatical. Just recently I have found my interest in programming returning. I was just really burnt out. Early on in the burnout I seriously questioned if I could ever program again, and now I've been coding full time and really enjoying it again.
Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?
#88> I sat down the other night to get started in a grand project I’ve been getting so excited about ... The projects I dream up are super cool feats of hacker ability ... I’m going to be stuck screwing around with the most trivial boilerplate crap.
But obviously you are creative and come up with ideas. Probably you should be more picky in which ideas to pursue and which not. Personally I like grand, rabbit hole like projects. I think they are most fun when the time-result curve has early plateaus but also continues to go up later, i.e. already after working a day you have a proof-of-concept and after week or so, you already have something you like. I found such projects quite enjoyable in the past. It's no fun when even after a year you're still at 30% and the whole thing is only usable at >= 80%.
That said, I think there are also fun mini projects and it doesn't even have to be a running software. It could be Infrastructure as code or just a sketch of a library.
Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?
#89Programming/software engineering is just work. In the grand scheme of things, I feel that it is some kind of privilege that few occupations give you, to ask such a question. “I have been a construction worker for twenty-five years, and I am bored. What now?” “I work as a nurse in a hospital, but I lost interest in this line of work. What now?”
Definitely. I think though that programming is at least partly creative endeavour, and thus it can be harder to do it without any motivation whatsoever.
Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?
#90This sounds like the beginnings of burnout or depression... do you find joy in anything else? Does anything motivate you? I went through this for about 3 years after my divorce. I couldn't find motivation or joy in anything. I turned to helping other people solve their problems because at least I was helping others to get through what I couldn't figure out how to get through myself. There was a lot of time spent in r…
100% agree about this sounding a LOT like burnout. I'd strongly recommend the OP go though the list of symptoms listed here. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/high-octane-women/20...
most people who are suffering have no clue how badly they have it.
I felt very similarly. My wife and I were both VERY burnt out. Quit work and just lived on savings for far too long. We just couldn't find _any_ desire to do the hobbies we loved for like 7 months. Even then it was just _barely_ beginning to get the spark again.
Burnout sucks.