Most programmers and developers enjoy the act of coding. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get stuck in a rut from time to time. Long work hours, frustrating or tedious tasks, encountering rampant bugs or errors, these things can all make the situation worse. It can also contribute to something called burnout, or more specifically developer burnout in this case.
How common is developer burnout? What causes it, what are some symptoms, and how can you get rid of it?
What Is Developer Burnout?
Burnout — also called work burnout — is a common issue in many industries, including IT, retail, manufacturing, and more. Developer burnout specifically refers to the burnout one might feel working on IT or programming-related projects, but in reality, it’s all the same.
Burnout can be defined as a mental and physical health problem often catalyzed by work-related stress. It can lower productivity, hinder your ability to create, reduce some of your skills, and enhance feelings of depression, anger, or other emotions. The important thing to understand is that it affects every person differently. What a colleague or friend experiences during a burnout, doesn’t necessarily reflect what you feel or how you might react.
What Are Some Developer Burnout Symptoms?
Here are some common symptoms of burnout:
- A waning or complete loss of motivation.
- Fatigue or extreme exhaustion, both mental and physical.
- Strong feelings of depression, loneliness, or isolation.
- A surge in self-destructive behavior.
- Extreme anxiety and a general feeling of ineffectiveness.
- Mood swings, irritability, or intense frustration.
- You’re unable to focus and complete even simple tasks.
- Insomnia, heavy drinking, or medicinal use.
- The work no longer feels meaningful or important.
Of course, there are many more things that happen when you’re feeling burnout, and some of the symptoms described may be more or less intense depending on your personality and additional factors — like how severe the burnout is.
What Causes Developer Burnout?
While one of the most obvious causes of burnout is long working hours over an extended period, that’s not the only thing it can come from.
An Inactive Lifestyle — Being sedentary for a long time is not good for your body or mind. Since developers spend long hours sitting down in front of a computer or laptop, it can hamper physical health. You don’t have to be a marathon runner — although that is always great — but you do need some manner of physical activity in your life.
Poor Time Planning — More hours doesn’t necessarily correlate with better work or success. Sometimes, it can also be a sign of poor planning. Find a productive schedule, stick to it, and then stop working when your shift is over, especially if you’re working from home. Don’t cross those boundaries.
Unfulfilling Personal Time — If you’re not spending your downtime properly, or you’re just using it to do more work, you’re eventually going to run into problems. Use your free time to do something you enjoy. Spend some quality time with friends and family. Curl up and read a book or watch a movie. Go outside for a walk. Play an instrument. The point is to do something that’s not coding for a while, or sitting in front of a computer working.
Monotonous Work — Doing the same tasks over and over, every day, for hours is enough to make anyone feel down. Even if you love the work, repetitive tasks can still be incredibly draining. There’s not a whole lot you can do about this, just understand it could be responsible for burnout.
Unhealthy Diet — Believe it or not, your diet can affect your physical and mental health, including your moods. Invest some time in cleaning up your diet.
Mental Health — Burnout can also be caused by other, underlying mental health issues that you may be experiencing.
There are always going to be cases where people don’t necessarily have control over what’s causing the burnout. That’s most true in corporate environments, such as when you’re a developer working with a huge team on a complex project. You have much less control over the type of work you’re doing.
How to Avoid Developer Burnout
Coding burnout, developer burnout, web developer burnout, they’re all quite similar. Even burnout in other industries is similar. It doesn’t really matter what you call it, preventing it or reducing its effects is all about you.
If you aren’t experiencing burnout symptoms now and you want to reduce the likelihood, consider your lifestyle first. No, that’s not always the reason why burnout occurs — and we’re not saying it’s your fault. However, there may be some things you can do, or change to dampen the symptoms.
1. Understand It’s Okay to Do Nothing
It is perfectly healthy, okay, and acceptable, to take some time off to do nothing. Use that downtime to do whatever you want. Travel. Take a staycation. Whatever.
Take note that time by yourself is good, but you want to include at least some fun social interactions in there too. One of the symptoms of burnout is that you can feel isolated, depressed, and lonely. It won’t help to stay locked up tight at home, in sweatpants, and isolated away from everyone for days or weeks at a time.
2. Reprogram Your Schedule
Don’t overwork. Set boundaries by picking a schedule and then sticking to it. If you work from home that must be an absolute rule. Don’t field calls or texts after hours, don’t sit down and plug in some code, try to stay away from your work area entirely. You deserve time off, but more importantly, overwork can and does ruin your productivity when you are working. You become a lot less efficient. Just don’t do it.
3. Learn to Organize Your Tasks
Whether you have a list of different tasks to work on throughout the day, or you plug away at a much larger one over time, learn to organize the work you’re doing on a scale. Also, instead of pushing the more challenging work for later, try to work on it first instead. Prioritize your scale so in the morning, or afternoon, or whenever it is you first start your shift, you are working on the tough stuff. You’re usually at your most productive when you first start so it’s the perfect time to knock some of that out.
4. Create an Exclusive Workspace
If you’re working in a traditional office, or you’re already back at work, this probably won’t apply. But if you’re working from home, it’s a big deal. Choose or set up a workspace that will be just the workspace and that’s it. This is difficult for many developers because our computers or workstation also tends to be the place we play games, browse the web, chat with friends, etc. However, as much as possible, you should stick to this rule. It makes it easier to switch your mind into work mode when you sit down and keeps a recognizable space where you’re trained to be productive and focused.
5. Establish Limitations
Who doesn’t love coffee? Okay, some people don’t, but if you’re drinking tons of coffee and caffeine that can affect your mind and body. Try to reduce or limit things like that. Don’t drink coffee after 1 pm, for example. Find a blue light filter you can use on your computer or laptop and turn it on. Take frequent breaks to reduce total screen time. Stretch your body, massage your fingers and hands, or get some exercise.
6. Sleep
Coding is a very creative process, even when the work is repetitive you’re constantly writing, thinking, and calculating. It means when you’re done for the day you need your rest and lots of it. Make sure you’re getting the standard 7 to 8 hours of healthy sleep every night, more is better. If you have to and you’re feeling fatigued, take naps.
7. Keep Your Passion
You’re a developer because you love the work, or you did at one time anyway. Find a way to keep your interest high. Dedicate some time to learn a new language or skill, read some interesting guides or content, put together your own content like an HTML tutorial — do whatever you have to do to keep that passion alive. Just because you’re doing repetitive coding at work, doesn’t mean that’s how you have to spend all of your time coding.
8. Seek Professional Help
Therapy is not for everyone, but it is a viable outlet for some. You might consider seeking out a therapist or professional you can talk to. Sometimes, just venting our fears, stresses, and problems can go a long way towards maintaining positive mental health. They can often help us find insights we wouldn’t have otherwise. For instance, maybe getting out of programming for a while is what will work best?
Developer Burnout Recovery
What if you’re already experiencing developer burnout? What if it’s too late to prevent it?
The first thing you need to do is significantly reduce your working hours, or try to limit the time you’re working as much as possible. If you have to take time off, do it.
Next, you need to prioritize self-care and self-love. Start taking better care of your body and mind. Yes, exercise and a healthy diet are obvious answers, but there’s so much more to it than that. Are you getting plenty of rest? Are you getting enough free time or downtime? How long has it been since you’ve seen friends or family? Are you drinking a lot more, smoking a lot more, indulging a lot more? Really focus on what’s going on and try to limit and walk back some of those bad habits you may have.
Don’t isolate yourself, seek out help and support. You don’t necessarily need a therapist to vent, and sometimes just a little quality time with a loved one can rejuvenate the soul.
Consider finding new work. If you’re freelance or working from home that makes things a little easier, but you’ll still want to focus on entirely new opportunities — don’t walk right back into the same kind of repetitive work.
The best way to recover from developer burnout is to focus on your health, both physical and mental.
Have you ever felt developer burnout? Do you have any tips on dealing with it?
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