Avoiding Coding Burnout with Slow Productivity
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- čas přidán 25. 04. 2024
- Hi guys, today I want to discuss burnout and share some ideas to combat burnout from a book called 'Slow Productivity' by Cal Newport.
Here's the book:
amzn.to/44fhVII
Here's the article about the 'burnout' survey:
blog.jetbrains.com/team/2023/...
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thanks. I was also obsessed with number of hours coding a few months back. Now, I focus on the quality of projects and solving harder problems
Good plan, I do the same now!
These are some really nice ideas that really apply not only to coding, but to almost everything in life. I think most of us who try to learn a new skill or topic are so obsessed by counting how many things we completed, (How many books on this topic did I read? How many coding projects did I finish this month?...) that we forget the actual focus should not be on how much we did, but rather on how much we learnt from it.
Very true! I totally agree. I feel that we can get a lot out of the 'work at a natural pace' idea, forcing ourselves to read countless books for the sake of it is not ideal :(
Thanks for the input :)
Kames-
Every once in a while, I bump into a video from a new channel that makes me subscribe on the spot. This was one such video. Cheers for sharing 🙌🏾
Much appreciated! I hope you enjoy the videos :)
I try to get a bit of coding in everyday. I did 20 minutes yesterday evening and that was enough for the day. Some days I do over 6 hours coding practice.
I’m quite surprised to hear from others that they max out at 30 mins. For me, a natural pace is to start about an hour after waking in the morning and going until noon/lunch time, about 4-5 hours. And I’ve actually been frustrated that I can’t do 8-10 hours, but this book helped with that. So I’m content with my morning sessions.
I will add that I’m very much still a beginner, so I’m doing very elementary code, probably much less efficient code, and I’m taking more time to do what would normally be little work for someone more experienced.
Hi, thanks for the comment! I definitely think the 'natural pace' is different for everyone, and it can fluctuate over time according to what you're doing.
Keep it up! It sounds like you're on the right track.
You mentioned the correlation with fitness which i could not stop associating in my head. There is so much coming out now about the importance of quality reps to NEAR failure with an emphasis on rest and recovery. Its remarkable and i feel the need to deprogram my mind from the quantity over quality mindset
I'm glad you found this useful! thanks for watching :)
hey man im coming here from the first course just wanna say great job im midway tru it and evrything is understandable and told in a memorable way good job!
Hi there, oh that's great, I'm super happy to hear that! Feel free to drop me a line you ever need any help with the course :)
Love the insights. That was very helpful
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for this!
No worries!
Thanks this really helped
Glad to hear!
I suspect there are two types of coders: one who was "bitten by the bug", most likely at an early age - where they love coding and everything it entails; and those who feel they need to learn it to do a job. There is nothing wrong with the latter, though I suspect they will be more susceptible to burn out. I am lucky that I am in the former. I don't always have a need to code as it's not directly part of my job - but what I do, I more often have the problem of not wanting to stop than I do with feeling I should keep slogging through a session.
I completely agree with you, I definitely saw the 'bitten by the bug' type programmers when I used to lecture first year students in university (many of whom have gone to land good jobs!). I find it quite impressive that you can code and not want to stop! Would you mind sharing what sort of things you code at all?
Thanks
James-
@@pythonwithjames these days the only work related coding is mostly spreadsheet sanitizing via pandas (or polars if it's large) and pandera. But I've also had a lot of fun with the Advent of Coding website
I started coding from scratch a year ago (Python) for work with no help. I did it for like 4 hours and I noticed I was so dead tired after like 3 that I stopped doing it for multiple days. I now code until I feel like my brain cannot take more and stop. 30 minutes, 1 hour, whatever it is but not 4 hours again. Even watching videos that are 8 hours I now space out. So much free info out there now but it isn't always useful so you kind of burn out on so-so tutorials. You learn sure but it doesn't teach you everything and just copy pasting isn't learning. I learnt this the hard way and with this was said more for the casual/not hardcore students out there. Just what you can with breaks and have fun. Don't turn it into a chore.
Hi Jason, thanks for sharing. This sounds like a fairly familiar story that I've heard a couple of times from my former students and it's quite an easy trap to fall into! I would say I've also fallen into this trap myself in my earlier days, and was just chugging out lines of code with no real thought or care, and I certainly feel that I actually spend 'less' physical time coding nowadays, but what I do is more meaningful. I completely agree with the idea of having fun by the way!
Thanks for sharing again
James-
Excellent video. I wish most businesses and organizations embraced this approach, but alas they do not.
Thank you! :)
The how much time is the wrong question
The why are you wanting to learn this stuff is the right question
Hi Chris, the ‘why’ is definitely important! I tend to think of the ‘why’ as my motivation, but I see time (and the other methods in the video) as methods I can use to try and help me better achieve the goal.
People pretend like burnout is somehow unique to programming. Nah, not at all. I feel the same now as i did working retail. The difference with other jobs is that you can often get distracted
Hi Matty, I totally agree :)
Try doing fewer things in a sprint at natural pace 😂. The corporation will put you on a PIP!
I actually think it can work well in an agile setting, if you were on a sprint the 'fewer things' could simply be the tickets you're working on, whilst trying to delegate or move away any other tasks?
@@pythonwithjames In the real world, people often (mistakenly!) take a lot of pride in juggling many tasks at once. There's definitely often pressure from management to do so as well.
@@pythonwithjames the problem is managers want to maximize the work delivered while developers hate unnecessary stress. Typically management wins, in my personal experience. I wish people understood that consistency long term is more valuable than constant over delivery for a short term.
I strongly disagree with sticking to one project as opposed to multiples ones at the beggining.
We all suck when we start. You grow with experience and feedbacks (theory, lectures and tutorials get you only 10% there). You need to do many small projects at the beggining to gain that feedback. Sticking to one project that'll most likely be bad (because as I said you suck when your start) will make you slow, stuck with bad code and frustrated. Do not stick to one project until you eventually get some experiences (multiple small/medium project). Do not think you're special some might learn faster but we all suck when we start
But yes definitely focus on one area (like video games, web dev etc.) and one language when you start because as I said you really suck when you start (and don't realize it, you think you're awesome) and it's not about how many hours you put you defo should spread your hours instead of going 14 hours of the same thing.
The best way to be forced to do regularly a lot of hard programming projects, get a ton of feedback on them, learn to code with other people, express yourself, learn theory, learn hard language (such as C which I'd say is 10-50 times harder to master than say JS/Python) etc. Is a good software engineering school. A lot of people (mostly people who haven't done them) criticise them as a scam but I do not know any good developer in really technical fields (such as kernel dev, C, big data, ai dev, embedded etc.) which are not engineers. They probably exists but it's rare. In easy fields (python, JS) you don't need such education but then it's not real programming as you just write very abstract code that's then executed by C/C++/Rust softwares and you miss on what's really interesting with computers.
Hi!
Thanks for taking the time to write this, I've read it over a few times and I think you have a really valid point. I know my first projects certainly sucked haha, I occasionally revisit them and it's always quite nice to see the development since then.
I think the idea of 'focusing on one area' or 'doing fewer things' is probably open to interpretation, and also depends on the learner. I often struggle with distractions so for me it helps to nail down as few things as possible and do as well as I possibly can at these, but there are people who can quite happily juggle a ton of different things at once, all to a high standard.
One thing I didn't mention in the video, which you've brought up is programming with other people, you've hit a really good point there, it is really useful, especially for newer programmers.
Thanks again for sharing, it's much appreciated!