I'm in the worst creative and motivational rut I've ever been in.
I can't get excited about code anymore, and creative solutions simply will not come to me. Every single coding task feels 100x the effort that it actually is.
I desperately need to get out of this rut, as it's killing my mood and causing me to spiral downward. I've always been a great engineer but something changed in the last few months.
How have you gotten out of ruts in your life?
Change your job. Change your relationship. Change the city where you live. Change your primary hobby. Change your friends. Go back to school or start a business. Go somewhere you've never been before, the further away the better.
You don't have to (and probably shouldn't) do all of these, but you should probably do at least one of them. And changing your job seems to be one of the more effective and easiest ones, in my experience, and may naturally facilitate a few other changes as well.
Also take a break before the change happens, if you can. Like tell a new job you'll be available to start two weeks after you quit the other job (don't word it like that, just say you'll be available to start like 4 weeks after accepting a job offer). You probably could use at least a couple of weeks, if not more, to not have to think about code.
* LSD
* Do another job for a while
I think to get out of the rut, you actually need to do significant changes that feel scary but those are the only ones that will shake you and get you out of the rut. It’s actually really simple but also not easy. In a sense, we crave for that rut and familiarity of what the next day brings but that’s also what kills us. Need to shake up things periodically, try to discover other parts of yourself you didn’t know or forgot about. That will do the job.
I think the way we get into this industry is a doubled edged sword. A lot of us do this because we love computers and software. The upside of this is that it's easy to stay motivated and move up. A lot of us probably grew up as black sheep in our communities, and are now being handsomely rewarded for our efforts. It's very validating.
However, I think there is a dark side to this validation. Eventually, some of us begin to see our self worth in our output. On top of that, there's always pressure to learn new things, because if you're not keeping up then you may get left behind. This is easy enough in your early 20's when you're full of drive, but real life responsibilities pile up with age, and it gets harder and harder.
I can't say for sure if you fall into this category, but I know I did, and I realized two problems.
1. I saw my self worth in my career. In general, I needed external validation to feel happy. This is not sustainable because sometimes you're working on projects that you know are bullshit, and sometimes you screw up. If you ever bite off more than you can chew or get stuck on a project you know is stupid, it will burn you out.
2. I needed to turn off the computer. You say that you desperately need to get out of this rut, but the rut isn't the problem. The fact that you think you need to get out of it is the problem.
Turn off the computer. Stop coding for a few days outside of work. Go outside and don't bring your phone. If you are on public transport or something and you have the urge to check your phone, pull out a book instead and begin reading.
It may sound counterintuitive, but all of this is way more productive and inspiring than desperately trying to escape a rut that was created by your own mind prison. You need to unplug for a while. You are most likely burned out.
Otherwise, post pandemic I was in a similar situation. Some combination of time off, reduced load (stress), more sleep, more exercise, better nutrition all finally added up to getting me out. Good luck.
1. How is my sleep?
2. Am I limiting caffeine intake?
3. Anything else affecting my sleep? Room temperature? Lights? White noise? Eating too late? Alcohol?
Sleep is how the brain repairs damage caused by daily life. Not enough or poor quality means you will drag, not just over days, but weeks and months is exactly a downward spiral.
4. Checked my Vitamin D levels recently and supplementing with D3/K?
Circadian rhythms and cognition are poorly studied, but there’s good evidence on Vitamin D and mood and seasonal affective disorder.
5. Managing stress?
Too much stress affects key brain functions like learning, memory, and attention. Too little sleep leads to more stress.
6. Exercising enough?
Am I getting outside daily, going for walks or runs, etc.
7. Nutrition
Am I making good food choices that give me sustained energy or am I eating mindlessly?
The pandemic was the last piece on nutrition for me. I saw how one bad meal (e.g. burger and fries) affected me for 2 days.
Overall, I'd suggest talking with a psychiatrist and psychologist. Get screened for depression and other possible mental issues that may cause this.
If everything else in life is amazing, maybe you're starting to burnout. Can you take a few weeks off?
For example if you don't like running or cycling, but you have to do it daily, then you'll end up liking it (be "motivated")
Could it be that you're not able to relate to how whatever you're doing actually matters? If so, I'd say speaking to a few would-be users might help.
Has worked for me multiple times.
But here's another one. Lower the stakes. Take some easier tasks. Try and reduce the stress of the job.
Do a good but not great job at work, and instead focus on doing things like travel or finding a girlfriend/boyfriend if you don't have one. Work out once a day, visit friends in other cities, go on a road trip, etc.
For me? the solution was getting GPT-4 to start all my code, it's solved my "slow/cold start" problem.
Once I have the initial code generated for my problem, editing it has proven to be far more effective for me to continue being productive.
Friends of mine have said they found their new business on the other side of TAW.
TAW gave me means to foster and maintaining a mental environment for creativity and delight to emerge. And just for that I highly recommend it.
TAW is great for identifying underlying creative blockers and helping you discover if the current rut is the same rut repeated or something new.
A caveat: some people interpret the words 'artist' and 'god' in the book pretty narrowly and get stuck. I've personally pretty wide interpretation of those words and hold them loosely.
Some things that help / helped me:
1. Some serious self-reflection about what the problem is: What are the things you do vs don't enjoy about your job? Do you really like what you're doing or are you doing it because of money, goals you set for yourself / you think this is the most prestigious type of company / problem / etc? Is the problem with yourself or the people you work with? Have you ever been happy at work before (at any job you had) and what was different about that? Or perhaps are you not sure about what you actually enjoy? Or are you just tired?
2. More self-reflection about what work means to you as a person and why: Is your job also your passion? Are you proud of your technical achievements? Do you have daily work hours or do the boundaries blur? Do you put in more work / care more about things than others (e.g. code quality, arguing for the right technical decision)? Do you feel especially good when people tell you you did a great job or somehow acknowledge that you're smart? Do you feel disappointed, unappreciated or like there's something wrong with you if you fail to get this kind of feedback? Not saying this is always the case, but for me they're warning signs for a type of relationship with work that's prone to burnout sooner or later. Maybe talk to a therapist about this kind of thing to help you sort out your stance on this, or just generally about a downward spiral in mood.
3. A big break - unfortunately not everyone can afford this but I'm assuming an engineer with a decade of work experience like you probably can. Go do something else for a while. Definitely a month. Maybe a year: e.g. take a job that's not the most technically or personally challenging but will give you other things: more work-life balance, meet interesting people you wouldn't, will expose you to different subjects you like, give you more freedom with your approach, let you play more. For example, I worked at an academic research center for a few years and it was not without its own challenges but overall broadened my horizons a lot. This isn't going to fix your problems in the long term but maybe you'll realize truly how things can be different - the benefit of perspective.
4. Some small "daily life" changes (obviously huge caveats here about lots of people not being able to afford / allowed to do this stuff but again software engineers usually have this kind of nice privilege, so why not take advantage): Some example ideas: Try to do less things at once, maybe work on one thing at a time even. Work on something with someone you like. Take 5-6 Fridays or Wednesday afternoons off in a row: just see how lessening the load a bit or breaking up the work helps. Enforce a hard-cutoff deadline in the evening. etc.
Now, to actually follow my own advice ...
I often get exhausted when I know it takes 20 minutes of busy work (manual testing, spinning up environment, opening IDE, updating tickets, etc) to commit a single line of code. Don't try to power through this or you'll burn out eventually. Try to optimize time for tasks you enjoy.
see how it goes... then decide further.
(watch Sacrifice by Tarkovsky)
and... have.fun.
recall the excitement you had as a child, as a teenager, a young adult - this will yield clues as to what might spark your energy again
as others have mentioned, movement and exercise are simple hacks to improve mood quickly