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I too suffer from this, but as I learned, Nature built an elegant solution to this. Have a family and kids. Your choice when you have time off of work will be reduced to hacking or playing with your child that you have been neglecting due to a crunch at work. You’re welcome.
I, for example, would perhaps not be a bad parent, but very likely at least one who does not obey the social expectations of how to raise a child.
Hopefully the future me is able to relate to this, because I really feel like I'm in a rut when it comes to working on personal projects. I have many ideas that I want to build, but I'd have to learn new languages, yet I just can't sit and go through the documentation every day like I should. Still haven't finished the rust book. The other way is start building already, and if you come across a block, then learn abou…
As I'm getting older, I want things to be as standardized as possible, and just don't worry about the details. I have learned from my mistakes The script I made for deployment, because existing solutions didn't "feel" right, required a lot of work and maintenance when we later had to add features and bug fixes. Another script I made for building and deploying Java applications, because I didn't like Maven and Puppet.…
I hope many people read this and take it to heart. It is a rare and wise insight which only becomes crystal clear with age. Choose your battles very carefully. This is a golden nugget up there with "time flies". I never understood that as a kid but really hits hard with your mid-life crisis. Listen carefully little grasshoppers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you've described is called "yak shaving", which is a series of neverending tasks that must be completed in order to complete the original task. It's apty named since shaving a hairy yak is a neverending task.
Right. I know the name (though it took me longer than I want to admit to connect the term with situations outside programming!) - what I now seek to know is, how to minimize it in personal life. Letting go is probably most people's answer - nothing bad will happen if I do all the dependent tasks (cleanup, restocking things that just run out) later in the day - but I have difficulty getting them out of my head, they k…
Structure, order, habits.
There is the curse of knowing how, and maybe more importantly there is the curse of other people knowing you know how.
Family members asking you to fix their printers.
My honest, brutal answer is: "Your problem is very likely self-inflicted. Buy a decent Brother laser printer."
This attitude resolves you of nearly all such requests. :-)
Letting go means stopping to care. That's a slippery slope to coasting.
I think the Buddhists would disagree with you on the moral valence of this.
OP's fear of (being seen to be) "coasting" would be entirely foreign to them.
Letting go means stopping to care. That's a slippery slope to coasting.
This reasoning (which I can easily identify with) is a slippery slope towards OCD anxiety and depression when you refuse to acknowledge that you can't fix everything.
You need to be realistic, set your priorities within a limited, defined context, take decisions and actions based on those, and forget about the stuff that didn't make your priority list.
That's not not-caring. That's focusing on what really needs your care.
Wish I was better at it though.
> I have written entire applications just to avoid thinking about why I was unhappy.
I think this is true too. The prefrontal cortex is inhibitory to the amygdala/limbic system; always having a project you can think about or work on as an unconscious learned adaptation to self-calm in persistent emotionally-stressful situations is very plausible.
I wonder how many of us became very good at programming ~through this - difficult emotional circumstances driving an intense focus on endless logical reasoning problems in every spare moment for a very long time. I wonder if you can measure a degree of HPA-axis deregulation compared to the general population.
And whether it's net good or net harmful. To the extent that it distracts you from actually solving or changing a situation that is making you emotionally unhappy, probably not great. But being born into a time in which the side effects make you rich was pretty cool.
Hopefully the future me is able to relate to this, because I really feel like I'm in a rut when it comes to working on personal projects. I have many ideas that I want to build, but I'd have to learn new languages, yet I just can't sit and go through the documentation every day like I should. Still haven't finished the rust book. The other way is start building already, and if you come across a block, then learn abou…
I've written a lot of Rust. I've read less than half of the Rust book. Your competence in Rust is a function of how many lines of Rust you've written; getting to the point you can start working with it is more important than completing the book. Jon Gjengset's videos were really critical for me there, seeing how he worked in Rust made it possible for me to develop a workflow. (I broke down what I learned in more detail at one point [1].)
Rust is an example I've honed in on because you mentioned it and I related to it, but this is broadly applicable. Dare I say, more broadly than just programming, even.
(Also, note that I'm a giant hypocrite who shaves yaks and struggles with perfectionism constantly. I learned Rust 5 years ago to start a project, and I've written 0 lines of code for it. If I sound critical, that's my self criticism leaking through.)
I too suffer from this, but as I learned, Nature built an elegant solution to this. Have a family and kids. Your choice when you have time off of work will be reduced to hacking or playing with your child that you have been neglecting due to a crunch at work. You’re welcome.
Parent here, can confirm Nature solved this elegantly. However, like every other solution built by Nature, this one also works through pain, suffering and death. Nature doesn't care if you're happy, nor does it care if you're suffering. And it especially doesn't care if your suffering is a low-burn, long-term pain in the depth of your heart. So yeah, having kids will force you to make choices and abandon frivolities,…