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Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do?

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Re: Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do?

#61

Post by mirimir »

mindcrime wrote: post #36

I can relate. I get bored really quickly as well, and I am one of those people who usually kicks ass at a new job for about the first year, and then starts to tail off after that because I'm bored out of my mind. I've found two things that seem to help: 1. Start a startup. I started Fogbeam at least in part because it gives me an outlet to pursue things that are interesting to me, and a place to work on really cool n…

I'm a lot like OP, and consulting has worked out well for me. I get to play during downtime. Also, some play areas have become work areas, and vice versa.

Re: Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do?

#63

Post by rachelandrew »

My own experience is that I look for novelty outside of the main job I'm doing.

Our product (https://grabaperch.com) is a PHP and MySQL CMS. A self-hosted PHP and MySQL CMS. That means that we are not only PHP, but we have to support really old PHP, we support right back to PHP5.3 as that is the reality of the terrible shared hosting people use. Then in the UI we have to support the browsers that our customer's clients use. So we can't use all the latest front-end techniques.

So it's very easy to get bored and not learn anything new.

To counteract that my personal projects tend to be about really new stuff, for example I've spent a lot of time writing and talking about an emerging CSS spec that interests me. I tend to implement new and interesting things in our own stack too where we don't have the constraints that the product does.

So my best advice would be to see if you can channel your novelty seeking into places outside of work, and accept that work sometimes involves having to stick at something that is boring. Sad but true!

Re: Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do?

#64

Post by atemerev »

y0y wrote: post #54

Do you often show up to work late? Are you seen as generally unreliable? (Be honest with yourself.) Do you procrastinate a lot? Do you have a hard time transitioning? Are you late for things because you a) can't accurately estimate time and b) can't pull yourself away from the thing you're doing at that moment even though you know you're going to be late if you don't? Do you have a very unstructured sleep schedule? D…

Diagnosed with ADD already. Writing here after 1.5 year of treatment attempts.

Re: Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do?

#65

Post by atemerev »

mutagen wrote: post #45
ideaoverload wrote: post #43

Seek professional help,good therapist who you trust. People get treated for all kinds of addictions, your case likely will not be that special nor hard. I am not an expert but I would guess addiction may not be the only psychological problem to address. It might be expensive but should be worth it. Good luck.

Seconding this. There are many other great suggestions in here to try but I would augment them with therapy. Find one you relate to, one that is accepting of the other things you're trying, and work with them. Colleges often offer low cost services if you're concerned about cost right now (with the ACA this should be less of an issue). There's often a waiting list, get on it now.

I live outside the US (In Switzerland. Before that, I used to lived in Spain, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland again, and Russia, where I was born). Part of the problem, it seems.

Re: Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do?

#66

Post by colordrops »

y0y wrote: post #54

Do you often show up to work late? Are you seen as generally unreliable? (Be honest with yourself.) Do you procrastinate a lot? Do you have a hard time transitioning? Are you late for things because you a) can't accurately estimate time and b) can't pull yourself away from the thing you're doing at that moment even though you know you're going to be late if you don't? Do you have a very unstructured sleep schedule? D…

Interesting. My answer is an emphatic yes to all of those questions. In the back of my mind I've always suspected that I would be diagnosed with ADHD, but never talked to anyone about it. In the end I just chalked it up to being a different kind of person and catered my life around my behaviors instead of trying to force my behaviors into some ideal notion.

Looking back at the age of 40, my life has been much richer for it, having met interesting people, traveled to strange places, and worked on amazing projects. Most of the behaviors you listed have naturally attenuated through experience and age.

But to be honest I still struggle (albeit somewhat successfully) daily with a lot of it, so I'm wondering what treatment you got that worked so well. I'm definitely not interested in drugs for myself, but would still like to hear your thoughts on that if your treatment included them.

Re: Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do?

#67

Post by atemerev »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #44
atemerev wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can write good code in Java, Scala, Python, Perl, MATLAB, Javascript, and now learning Go. I can configure Apache, nginx, Ansible, Docker... I worked with nearly every favor of Linux, OpenSolaris/OmniOS, CoreOS, etc. I learned how to do things in big data, business intelligence, algorithmic trading. Learning new things is not a problem, this is what I enjoy. Most of them are marketable. What's killing me is inabili…

You say you write good code in a number of languages but honestly I highly doubt it. If you really haven't stuck it out on any project for the long haul how could you possibly know that your code is any good? In my opinion one of the most important features of good code is long term maintainability.

My Scala code: https://github.com/atemerev/FXCore/blob/master/src/main/scal...

My Java code: https://github.com/atemerev/pms/blob/master/src/main/java/co... (saved me probably man-years in my consulting projects).

Code samples for Javascript, Matlab, Haskell and Go available on demand. :)

Re: Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do?

#68

Post by atemerev »

illumen wrote: post #53

Craftsmanship. Quality. There's always a new technique to master which can be brought upon in your work. It is novel once you get there, but may take a while. Quality construction, impeccable tailoring, expert craftsmanship – these are the marks of quality. There's novelty in the next feature around the corner, but there is beauty in something crafted. Ecstatic pleasure can be obtained from crafting. Perhaps give it…

My problem is precisely that I don't get any pleasure from crafting (unless it is a really novel way of doing something). This is something I just can't feel, like color-blind people can't see some colors.

Re: Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do?

#69

Post by atemerev »

roneesh wrote: post #17

You might be a good candidate to teach at a coding bootcamp. PROS: 1. Your energy level would match the students 2. You could make sure the curriculum stays up to date, and every few years transition some large parts of the curriculum to a new language/framework. 3. You have tons of experience to draw for the many left-field questions you would get 4. The consistent new influx of students might feed that need you hav…

There are not any bootcamps like that in Switzerland. Probably a good idea to organize one and hope I don't fail in organization minutiae again. :)

Re: Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do?

#70

Post by atemerev »

colordrops wrote: post #66
y0y wrote: post #54

Do you often show up to work late? Are you seen as generally unreliable? (Be honest with yourself.) Do you procrastinate a lot? Do you have a hard time transitioning? Are you late for things because you a) can't accurately estimate time and b) can't pull yourself away from the thing you're doing at that moment even though you know you're going to be late if you don't? Do you have a very unstructured sleep schedule? D…

Interesting. My answer is an emphatic yes to all of those questions. In the back of my mind I've always suspected that I would be diagnosed with ADHD, but never talked to anyone about it. In the end I just chalked it up to being a different kind of person and catered my life around my behaviors instead of trying to force my behaviors into some ideal notion. Looking back at the age of 40, my life has been much richer…

OP here — I am on treatment now, including medication. Didn't help me strategically, but it was worth it being diagnosed nevertheless. At least, medications helped me stopping losing things.
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