Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand?

Those conversations have taken my team and I to interesting places. I've discussed brand positioning with developers, and shared spreadsheets of time-to-value models with designers, at times going far outside of people's skill sets and comfort zones. If someone insists a piece of work is a bad idea, I invite them to argue against it but insist that I need them to make their case rigorously. Sometime they'll convince me, sometimes they don't want to work through the reasoning, sometimes I'll try and develop their case and argue against myself. I want to reach a position where we either change the task, or we're both satisfied that the task should be done. If that's too hard, then I'm after a position where they at least have rational faith in my request and my reasoning, and are ok to do the work on trust.

I spend a lot of time on this, for a few reasons.

First, I don't want to ask anyone to do something meaningless. Burnout isn't caused by workload. Workload causes exhaustion. Burnout is caused by resentment. If my team resent their work, that's a deep and important problem. I'll tolerate a only very small amount of that, but I'll let everyone know I'm conscious of it, don't like it, and am working to get away from it. Burnout is toxic and damaging to people and the group as a whole.

And secondly, this kind of explanatory work strengthens everyone's investment in the team and the work. It strengthens the team's ability to think together. As people become better informed, all of our discussions become richer and more valuable. People enjoy the work more, and can relax and trust each other more, knowing that decisions are made in ways they can understand and agree with.

Finally this is also a litmus test for me. If a company won't let me in on it's decision making, dismisses my concerns as unimportant and tells me to just get on with something, they're indicating they don't value the team in the same way I do.

But it's in your head. Using simple tricks you can change how your mind interprets the thing, and put yourself ina more receptive state to be able to accomplish the task without it seeming like a battle of wills.

First, put yourself in a good mood. Listen to your favorite music, eat or drink something pleasant, think about the fun things you'll be doing soon. But whatever you do, don't villify the work or think "I can't wait for this to be over!"; that's just more avoidance.

Once you're in a better mood, walk through the work in your head so you understand everything you need to do, and estimate the time it will take, but shorter. Try to find something positive about it to work towards, or something good or interesting you want to see come out of it. It could be something as simple as timing how long it takes for you to write five methods. To prevent further avoidance behavior, remove your watch and hide your clock. If you can, move to a quiet place where you can focus with the least distractions possible.

At the end of the day, if you really don't enjoy your job, you probably need a different one. But it's a mistake to confuse a bad job with an unwillingness to do work you don't agree with. Consider yourself their savior, and do it in the best way possible so that it minimizes their crappy decisions and emphasizes your skills. Imagine you are a woodworker; maybe you didn't want to build a cabinet today, but you're going to build the best god damn cabinet those jerks have ever seen.

(Also: consider if you will be with this BF in five years and whether wasting this part of your life will have been worth it. Kind of a crappy thing to imagine, but you can't spend your life doing things you don't like just because it makes someone else happy)

That is, if I see a project as someone else's, and my job is to help them do their best, I am happier than if I see a project as "mine" and other people are just screwing it up.

Like many important life lessons, I learned this one a day too late.

Since then I've met some amazing developers who (unbeknown to them) helped me get past the mental block that the OP has described; people who could actually challenge me on a technical level, and who weren't jerks.

Take JBlow's advice, and I strongly advise you to take a month off of work if you can. You need that time to recover, recharge, and take a break.