Im my limited experience of 20+ years in the industry: This is a sign for incoming burnout. You need a long vacation away from tech work.
As you mentioned, you are successful, invest in your mental and physical health.
When you recover your inner strength, you will be able to easily update the tech skills needed for any position. Wish you luck and stay safe.
Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
21–30 of 326 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#22Good comments here about the work itself, but I note you haven't mentioned anything about your personal life. Has anything changed? Just a thing to think about, it may well be that it's purely a work issue.
Last year was a pretty crazy year for my wife and me - said goodbye our two dogs of 16 years, I switched companies and got a huge pay raise, and we sold our first house.
Both of us got CoVID at the beginning of the year but recovered fine. My wife suffered from depression as a teenager and suggests that I should consider seeing a therapist as it helped her but I don’t even know if what I’m feeling is depression.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#23I'm also in my mid 30s and I recently had a spell where I just couldn't work on a specific project. I'd take any task to distract me from what I was supposed to be doing.
It was a total mental block. I had designed and built the entire thing myself and just had one more detail to put in place and just couldn't do it.
I think you should listen to the user fleb, it might be burn out.
It's very important to break the monotony of work.
But also it's very important to stay healthy and exercise.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#24I have no advice but just can say that I'm there right now. I have no motivation to code and no motivation to learn new languages. Maybe you're just tired of it and tired of starting at a screen.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#25Do you think this is about being unable to learn, or just that you lack incentive? 15 years ago, I presume you weren't getting "multiple 6 figures".
Correct re the pay. But it’s true when I was 25 I was far more motivated by a challenge. Everything about web development seemed more fun too.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#26Slow down. Dedicate less time to work and more time to leisure and relaxing. Go on holiday. Don't think about work for some time. You have to do this until you feel recharged.
The first time it will take longer because you amassed lots of stress. Once you learn how to do it, you'll incorporate slowdown days in your routine and feel energized
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#27This must be very common right now? I'm at the exact same point with Vue3. 10+ years of experience, created two fulls stacks sass'es as a Tech Lead but i feel so slow learning this new stuff. Just installed a starter kit and been endlessly fiddling with a simple test frontend and couldn't get basic reactivity to work. I feel the documentation is riddled with advanced concepts and everything is way, WAY more complex t…
When I started learning React I felt the same frustration but then it just clicked one day after maybe 2 months of struggling. I’m still waiting for the Vue click but it doesn’t seem to be happening.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#28A few years ago I just felt tired at the thought of learning another fad language. I ended up getting an MBA and switching into procurement. Now I just code on personal projects and it's fun again.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#29This must be very common right now? I'm at the exact same point with Vue3. 10+ years of experience, created two fulls stacks sass'es as a Tech Lead but i feel so slow learning this new stuff. Just installed a starter kit and been endlessly fiddling with a simple test frontend and couldn't get basic reactivity to work. I feel the documentation is riddled with advanced concepts and everything is way, WAY more complex t…
>> I feel the documentation is riddled with advanced concepts everything is way, WAY more complex than it has to be.
Because it is. Mostly because it is relatively easy to create a complex system/framework. But incredibly harder to make a one that does the same but is simple to understand and use. And even among those, even less have all that well documented.
Oh, and writing good docs requires a separate set of skills. If the person that writes docs doesn't have years of experience in technical writing - there is a good chance you will have hard time understanding docs written even for a simple thing.
Also, I believe with age our bar for the quality of products and its docs raises as we don't have a ton of time to waste on digging into it.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#30For what it's worth, as a 34yo who has also been doing this for ~15 years professionally, are you me? Because I probably could've written this post. Don't feel alone. Just remember to take advantage of your strengths. You may not be able to keep up with the 24yo's, but the 24yo's really suck at "choosing the right problems to work on." You know, the most important thing. It's very natural to feel overwhelmed, even 5…
Thank you. Your comment (among many here) is incredibly kind and I will take it to heart.