New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: I feel like I should be working all the time and its killing me

Ask HN: I feel like I should be working all the time and its killing me
3 by ubertoop | 2 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN, I'm a software dev with almost 10 years experience, and not a single day in the last 10 years has gone by without me feeling the pressure to work, learn something new, or build something. I feel like I should be programming all the time, and if I'm not, I'm wasting my time / missing out / not progressing. It's driving me insane. It is sucking the joy out of life. I need to learn how to truly disconnect from work, so that I can recharge. I need to learn how to drop this feeling, this heavy weight on my shoulders, that I'm not a good developer, and that I need to work more to get better. The problem is that the reality of our field is such that: a) There is a lot of opportunity b) There are a lot of really smart people, doing very cool things, capturing that opportunity. c) If you aren't learning, or getting better at the craft, then you're falling behind, becoming irrelevant, and certainly you aren't going to make anything of significance. How do you return to the joy of the craft? How do you forget about the outcome, and learn to love programming again?

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