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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?

#71

Post by atemerev »

9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #15
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…

Honestly, with the skills you list, you can definitely find something that is rewarding, both intellectually and financially. You view your attraction to novel technologies as a downside, but it's kept you remarkably up to date and you probably have a much wider (though may be a little more shallow) knowledge base. Have you considered pursuing things like project management, marketing, developer support, QA, etc? Or…

Finding jobs is not really difficult (even in Switzerland without knowing any local languages, I can usually land something in 1-3 months). Staying there is another story.

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

#72

Post by vic_nyc »

Start a daily meditation practice. Just 15 minutes a day can work wonders - I speak from personal experience, having experienced some of those symptoms myself, and pretty much all of them gone. Here is a very effective one:

http://www.ishafoundation.org/Ishakriya/Learn-online

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

#73

Post by hanniabu »

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…

> 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.

Same here, I always suspected it, but as I'm 25 and don't want to take medication, I never thought there's much that could be done.

I would love here what y0y did to work with his condition as well.

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

#74

Post by atemerev »

brandonmenc wrote: post #34

> Is there a cure from novelty-seeking behavior? Start a project, commit to the technologies beforehand, and deviate under no circumstances. Facebook was built with PHP. AdWords was built with MySQL. Instagram was built with Django. GitHub was built with Rails. Stack Overflow was built with Microsoft technologies. It seems there are few instances where a "boring" tech stack prevents the product from being built. If t…

I have a huge working memory and ability to hyperfocus (occasionally), which helped me to deliver some quite successful short-term projects. It is persistency I have problems with.

Commitment to stack is some problem for me, but it's OK for 6 months, maybe even a year. Anything longer-term, and I inevitably think something in the lines of: "this Java code now looks like shit, I learned so much new things, why not rewrite anything in Scala/Akka/Go/another interesting stack du jour?"

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

#75

Post by atemerev »

vic_nyc wrote: post #72

Start a daily meditation practice. Just 15 minutes a day can work wonders - I speak from personal experience, having experienced some of those symptoms myself, and pretty much all of them gone. Here is a very effective one: http://www.ishafoundation.org/Ishakriya/Learn-online

Tried Headspace meditation app, worked quite well indeed. Then stopped it after 4 months of effort, can't get back on track. Same problem here. :)

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

#76

Post by hanniabu »

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…

As in my comment below, I've suspected I've had ADHD for some time but didn't think there was much that could be done for it since I don't want to use medication.

If you don't mind sharing, could you please explain how you've managed to work with it and some of the steps you took. What were some of the difficulties you experienced along the way?

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

#77

Post by atemerev »

ldd wrote: post #41

I will try another approach that has not been mentioned so far. I know this is HN, but you haven't really mentioned anything about novelty outside software. Now, I will try to not make assumptions, but is it perhaps that you are only seeking novelty in a very constrained way, which makes you feel uneasy about your choices? What type of food do you eat? What hobbies do you pursue? Maybe you have a very monotonous life…

Oh no, my life is anything but monotonous.

I lived in 6 different countries (going through bureaucracy hell while getting paperwork done each time), visited another 20 or so, tried getting a PhD, founded two startups (failed both), etc etc.

Part of the problem. :)

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

#78

Post by atemerev »

pbreit wrote: post #47

I know I'm a monster but my answer would be something along the lines of "suck it up". We're on this planet for 80 years or so. There's going to be some repetition. Not everything is going to be "novel". Best to train yourself to lose this odd hang up.

Quite agree. My question is "how"?

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

#79

Post by atemerev »

peterkelly wrote: post #56

Here's how to turn your "problem" into an advantage: Write. You love learning new stuff, but get bored quickly. Seize the enthusiasm you have for a new technology while you've got it, and make the most of it. Create books, online courses (e.g. Udemy), and blog about what you're learning. Build up experience and a reputation as someone who can turn lots of new and confusing technologies into stuff that helps other peo…

A good idea. English is not my native language, but everything can be improved, and I have some editorial skills (worked as a journalist some 10 years ago). I like writing.

It's much more difficult to make it lucrative, though.

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