source: https://medium.com/@karolisram/preventing-burnout-for-programmers-12b4968adbaa type: archive-web
It’s not rare in the field of programming to burn out and lose passion for your work
Burnout seems to occur amongst the programmers more often than professionals in other fields.
The second reason involves the fact that programming is highly cognitively intensive and stressful job, and the mental fatigue can take its toll.
burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It’s the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your brain to associate work with failure.
Not a day goes by without failures when creating software.
It has been shown time and time again that productivity, which, in this case, refers to output, decreases sharply after 4 hours of focused work.
It’s impossible to stay productive at a highly cognitively intensive job such as programming long-term, with a long number of working hours every day.
Programming is partly engineering and using well-proven techniques for producing software. But it’s also about having fun, experimenting, and trying out new ideas.
Deliberately dedicating 20% of your time for goofing around with technology is one of the most effective strategies for avoiding burnout.
Besides, doing something seemingly unrelated to your “actual” work might reignite your passion and spark new ideas