Ask HN: How do you manage downtime as a developer?
however i’m finding myself in a pattern that’s mentally exhausting: some weeks (or months), there’s no urgent focus, no clear priority, and no pressure. there’s work i could do — bugs, refactoring, docs—but nobody will notice if i do it or don’t. these aren’t vacation days, but they feel like slow-drain burnout zones.
weirdly,i’m not like this elsewhere. i have a side project where i can easily focus 8+ hours without much friction. but at my main job, staying focused feels like a mental grind. i’ve tried time-blocking, daily planning etc. - but i don’t stick with them in this foggy state. i tried working on expanding my knowledge, read a book on tcp/ip, build a webserver in a new language, but i cant seem to stick with it.
my current workaround: i commit to either doing work or literally doing nothing (staring at a wall if that what it takes). that has reduced the old youtube/scrolling guilt, but it’s draining and unsatisfying.
what mental frameworks or systems have helped you stay focused during long, low-pressure stretches?
Fast forward to now, and I don't understand the vision of where we're going (I don't think management does either), any time I try to do something without the blessing of management I seemingly guess wrong (sometimes I think they make it different just so they can say it was their idea), and every project feels like it exists to check an arbitrary box. This all leaves me feeling much like you. I've come to the realization that no amount of effort on my end is going to change these issues, short of leading a coup (which I'm not going to do). This leaves me with the option of dealing with it or finding a new job.
If you have clarity on the vision and some autonomy, I always found it useful to focus on the customer. Who is going to be using this stuff you make and how can I can make their life better/easier. Sometimes that is documentation, sometimes that is fixing annoying bugs, or refactoring to make things faster. The refactoring can also be to make my own life better. I also found it helpful to have a little side project at work. When the main job started to feel like a grind or something I just didn't want to do, I could hop over to my pet project for some quick wins I enjoyed, and carry that momentum forward.