HACKER Q&A
📣 burntoutfire

Is This Normal?


I find myself truly interested in a lot of programming concepts, but invariably when I start investing serious effort into them (whether at work or in side projects), I'm quickly (over a couple of weeks max) becoming less energetic and can barely keep up with the effort, while vegging out in misery for the remainder of the day. In other words, the 4-5 hours of logical thinking per day is enough to completely drain me. I'm 39, in ok-ish shape, been in tech since college (took a lot of breaks between jobs because of exhaustion), don't have kids. I wonder if this is how grownup life feels to a lot of people or I am just unlucky to have a low energy constitution?


  👤 yesenadam Accepted Answer ✓
> In other words, the 4-5 hours of logical thinking per day is enough to completely drain me.

Sounds normal to me! I spent years composing classical music hours every day, which was great fun, but after about 3 hours writing in the morning I'd be utterly, totally exhausted. Sometimes much later in the day I'd do more, but not usually. I've heard from various places that that's not uncommon, being worn out after a few hours of totally focused work.

I read somewhere recently that Michael Phelps (I think it was) swam for a few hours each morning then had a sleep, doing more later in the day. I never thought of doing that, not being a napper, although I like the idea of napping, but maybe I should've. I imagine relaxing by reading online or chatting or something doesn't have the same restorative effect napping does.

I get a lot of ideas when I go out the back and stare at the trees while having a smoke. Most of my good ideas. I think it's the sitting there, letting your mind do what it wants, absorbing whatever you were just working on. If that was a problem, often the solution just comes to mind. But that doesn't happen unless you have breaks like that.


👤 pfkurtz
The question that first springs to mind is, do you have a goal to learning new programming stuff (either a real intellectual goal, or something professional)? Is it helping you?

Maybe you really like learning but need to pick up something else, to give your brain a break. Maybe you need to do something with your body instead of your mind. Burnout is real, and people need to change in order to grow. (We're close in age.)


👤 Aachen
I don't have too much advice to offer unfortunately, but concentrating for 4-5 hours should be enough to wear many if not most people out. If that doesn't include breaks and maybe some less intense tasks, I wouldn't be too concerned about being tired after that. If it does, I guess it depends a bit on how much of those 4-5h are in concentration, but it sounds like you can still get serious work done.

👤 qqj
4-5 hours of quality thinking time sounds about the right limit to me. if anything, it's impressive. I can churn out 10 hour days but about 7 hours will be mostly "operational" stuff i don't need to think deeply about.