I have been working as a software engineer for a while now and have built confidence in my skills, but I’m recently struggling to motivate myself to apply these skills to do work that I am happy with at my job. I have a great job, great coworkers, a fantastic manager who gives me everything I need, work in my ideal environment, and I’m still struggling to find motivation to complete my tasks, let alone to the standard that I know I could. I have very strong feelings about making things good and doing my best, so while half assing things like this is rewarding in the short term, in the long term I just feel like I’m doing bad work and not living up to my potential. I should say (I think) my teammates love me and my managers are happy with my work and keep giving me raises and promotions. But (while my family and I certainly appreciate the money) it kind of makes me feel bad because I feel like they’re going to realize how badly I’m doing at some point. I don’t have some kind of feudal loyalty to the company, but I do feel a loyalty to my managers and coworkers who have helped me a lot and always treated me very well. I don’t want to leave this job because it’s great and I’m almost certain whatever other job I get would be objectively worse, but I really feel like I need to change something so I can feel good about my work again.
I think earlier in my career I had this drive to prove myself that was a big motivator for me to to my best, and now that I’m more confident in my skills I don’t have that motivation anymore.
Anyway, I know there’s nothing more annoying than someone complaining about how good their situation is, but I would really appreciate advice from anyone reading who’s been in a similar situation.
Thanks for reading.