Member-only story
7 Tips You Can Use To Avoid Developer Burnout Like a Pro
Are you properly handling the stress in your dev life right now?
Being stressed out because you have pending code to write or not being able to stare at your IDE for longer than 10 minutes without tabbing out and browsing the Web — are both symptoms of developer burnout. In other words, you’ve spent so much of your energy coding that you no longer can stand it.
This happens to all of us senior and junior devs alike. It’s the problem of having a job that sometimes is also a hobby. When that happens, you love coding so much that you spend nine hours working on it and then a few extra working on your personal projects.
Don’t worry though — at least not too much — because there are ways to avoid burnout. You just have to understand what you’re going through first.
What Causes Developer Burnout?
For you to understand how to avoid it, you first need to understand where it comes from. Burnout comes from spending too much energy on a single activity, which in turn affects every other aspect of your life. It’s that simple.
That can be seen in many ways, for instance, making coding the only activity you do your entire day. When you spend 12 to 18 hours a day coding, what else do you have time for? Other than eating and sleeping, I mean?
Or, perhaps only focusing on coding, even when you’re not writing code. Reading about coding, coding techniques, new frameworks, other languages. While you’re not actively writing code when doing any of these things, you’re still only focusing on a single task. Your mind is unable to break from the coding state of mind. Even if you’re not consciously thinking about them, your coding blockers (pending tasks on your daily job, future features you’re trying to implement on your pet project, new frameworks you’ve been dying to learn but haven’t had the time for) are adding to your stress and anxiety.
You can tell yourself you’re doing it for a reason but no matter how noble that reason might be, you’ll end up burning out. Even if your mind resists it, your body will yield. You’ll start seeing physical problems such as losing (or graying) hair, stomach issues, upper back…
