I can relate. Often times I find myself staring at my screen looking at the code that has to be written, at refactorings that have to be done, at data that has to be collected, at bugs that have to be squashed, at presentations to be made, at understanding my brain has to develop, and I just glaze over.
Inevitably I spin around, open my phone, and browse hacker news articles, reddit, the news, or YouTube.
Honestly, I wasnt always like this. Homework in university was never really a big deal. But as of late sitting on my office chair just feels like it withers me into dust.
This withering effect has a huge negative feedback loop in that putting things off causes stress induced insomnia. I think about the work that needed to be finished and cannot sleep because of it. Sleeping poorly causes horrendus energy drain the following day.
I have to shake things up. God help me I'm going to sleep properly tonight. If you have this problem you should too.
xyzzy123 · 19m ago
I found for me that when I unpacked it, a surprising amount of it was actually fear / anxiety. I know this isn't a post seeking answers but it's a thing I've battled a lot of my life.
It's trite but I've gotten a lot of value out of LLMs for getting past the "blank page effect". It doesn't matter if it generates complete garbage, something in my brain goes "this is garbage!" and before I know it I'm working on the thing. The general technique is "just do the smallest possible thing".
Another one is narrowing focus to just 1 thing to reduce overwhelm. Ideally on the most important thing! Otherwise your background fear will actually go up while you are working on the "filler task".
Finally, trying my best to communicate well and greatly reduce expectations. For me an important piece of the puzzle was that I expected more from myself than anyone else actually did (or even needed). So I have been consistently trying to scope down every commitment and promise WAY less. I actually feel like my execution has improved a lot as a result.
Am I great? Not really. Am I able to keep functioning day to day and slog through a soul crushing corpo job? Yeah, for now at least.
Also certain teams / situations will trigger this more than others. Teams with great task tracking, clear expectations and a culture of discussion tend to reduce anxiety for me. While it's risky to recommend changing jobs or teams to "fix things", sometimes that's really all that's needed.
Inevitably I spin around, open my phone, and browse hacker news articles, reddit, the news, or YouTube.
Honestly, I wasnt always like this. Homework in university was never really a big deal. But as of late sitting on my office chair just feels like it withers me into dust.
This withering effect has a huge negative feedback loop in that putting things off causes stress induced insomnia. I think about the work that needed to be finished and cannot sleep because of it. Sleeping poorly causes horrendus energy drain the following day.
I have to shake things up. God help me I'm going to sleep properly tonight. If you have this problem you should too.
It's trite but I've gotten a lot of value out of LLMs for getting past the "blank page effect". It doesn't matter if it generates complete garbage, something in my brain goes "this is garbage!" and before I know it I'm working on the thing. The general technique is "just do the smallest possible thing".
Another one is narrowing focus to just 1 thing to reduce overwhelm. Ideally on the most important thing! Otherwise your background fear will actually go up while you are working on the "filler task".
Finally, trying my best to communicate well and greatly reduce expectations. For me an important piece of the puzzle was that I expected more from myself than anyone else actually did (or even needed). So I have been consistently trying to scope down every commitment and promise WAY less. I actually feel like my execution has improved a lot as a result.
Am I great? Not really. Am I able to keep functioning day to day and slog through a soul crushing corpo job? Yeah, for now at least.
Also certain teams / situations will trigger this more than others. Teams with great task tracking, clear expectations and a culture of discussion tend to reduce anxiety for me. While it's risky to recommend changing jobs or teams to "fix things", sometimes that's really all that's needed.