As a result: I can't relax. Even on days I take off I am thinking about work.
I have also developed borderline addictive symptoms like stress eating and smoking.
Doesn't help that I feel I'll be fired all the time. In fact, sometimes I feel it'll be better that way because I don't have the guts to walk away from the big tech salaries.
There's a book I recommend, Everything in its Place: https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Its-Place-Mise-En-Place-Or...
To quote the book, “By being organized, you will be more efficient. By being more efficient, you will have more time in your day. By having more time in your day, you will be more relaxed in your day; you will be able to accomplish the task at hand in a clear, concise, fluid motion.”
A lot of it is waste. When you're anxious, you try to do more, but it's usually lots of really small things instead of several things in a single big motion. There's redundancy when someone tells us to do something or ask for information and we don't callback. There's wasted mind space when we leave too many small bugs like typos and UI glitches and prioritize the important tough bugs. There's waste when you have 50 tabs open and take too long to find which one you want now.
A lot of that waste can be reduced with planning and preparation. This is nothing new - we expect to write reqs and draw layouts on paper before doing anything, but when you're anxious, this usually gets ditched. And it feels like friction to do all the time. The book covers putting it down on paper, so you can internalise it in your head later.
Ideally, your work environment should cater for you to ask for help, or be transparent that you are having challenges with keeping up with the prevailing pace of work (Agile and Scrum should aim for 'sustainable' performance, not exhaustive). If you do Scrum, then retrospectives are an opportunity to raise these kinds of things. If your work culture is unwilling to entertain these sorts of conversations, I would characterize is as unhealthy, and a signal to look elsewhere in the interests of your wellbeing.
You’ll focus on something different for a while, meet people with lives and interests away from work, and give you a sense of security not connected to your professional life. I used to have a good outdoors group where we would go stargazing homes during the week, camping over the weekend, and lots of other activities. I started to like aspects of my job more after I did this
Thank me later :)