Mastodawn

@Madgarden could it be burn out?

@charlesrandall Yes, and all of the other things listed in this article, heh: https://www.parkersoftware.com/blog/programmers-block-it-happens-to-the-best-of-us/

Programmer’s block: it happens to the best of us - Parker Software

Programmer’s block: an inability to solve a problem / write code. (Despite having the prerequisite knowledge and skill to do so usually.)

Parker Software

@Madgarden if you would like, I can share some habits I've learned that help me work through this kind of thing when it's *not* burnout related? Also I have plenty of suggestions on how to recover from burnout.

@charlesrandall I would absolutely love to hear your strategies and thoughts on this... thanks Charles!

@Madgarden sure thing!

so for recovering from burnout... the best thing to do is literally avoid all programming for as long as you can, via long vacation or working exclusively on other things. but avoiding programming is more than just programming -- I've found that you need to avoid general problem solving and/or anything that makes heavy use of your brain.

I spent a few months doing nothing but building plastic models, and found it pretty helpful.

@Madgarden for more general programmers block, I found myself running up against it very very hard in the past few years, mostly because I found myself in a novel position of not just implicitly knowing how to solve every programming problem, because i was working on very different things than I'd done for the 20 years previous.

What I ended up learning to do was long before ever touching code, breaking down the problem as much as I could, do the point of almost atomic individual steps

@Madgarden I would effectively say "what is my big goal?" and write that down, and then write down the big steps to get there, and then look at those big steps and say "what specifically do I have to do in order to finish this?"

And then when I was done I effectively had a checklist/roadmap I could follow very closely while programming without having to worry about big picture stuff. It also let me feel a good sense of accomplishment for tiny tasks, which were in service to the big ones.

@Madgarden this was extremely helpful at work, but it was also helpful for my side projects where I would often flame out as soon as I hit a big problem.

These days I can look at a big problem and rather than stalling because I am like "I don't know how to build a full need based AI system" I can just say "okay, I need this tiny piece first, then this, then this" and then suddenly it's working.

@Madgarden and I do all this using Obisidian.md which is a wonderful markdown program where you can hyperlink between files and easily take notes and add checklists and stuff. that way I have a one-stop-shop for everything I need, and it's very formal and repetitive, which I've found helpful for sticking to it.

@Madgarden this is kind of the highlights, feel free to ask me to drill down into any of it if you'd like to know more.

@charlesrandall Also just being basically self-employed at home by myself, with all of life's vicissitudes and everything.

@charlesrandall Thanks so much! That all makes a lot of sense, of course. I have heard of Obsidian, I should check that out again. I have ZimWiki too, which is kinda my plain-texty style. I guess I feel like the problem with me is affecting all of my creative output. Not so much that I don't know how to solve problems, but rather I can't begin to solve them. Even writing things down can be problematic. A lot of external disruptions have gotten me here, I think. :/

@Madgarden yeah I feel that. tbh I don't have a full set of solutions for side projects. I always end up wandering off from them.

But for solving problems in general, you say you can't even begin to solve them... but every tiny thing you do gets you closer.

There's a cognitive behavioral therapy habit I use in this situation which is to challenge my negative thought of "I can't do the thing", which is "if you do even the tiniest bit, eventually you will get there, so the can't is a lie"

@charlesrandall Yes, very true! I have used CBT/Stoic approaches in the past during hard times, that that really helped. Hmm I need to dig into that again. I definitely know that I CAN do the thing, it's just that initial momentum. But then, I do chores or something! It all seems very ADHD'y to me too. I used to be medicated for that, but I went off of everything. I don't want to have to return to it, but maybe I should just accept reality. And let the house get messier to boot. ;)

@Madgarden if you've done therapy for this before, there's no harm in seeing about a follow up. as my therapist told me, sometimes we just need refreshers. the CBT stuff has been wonderful for me. it even trained me to view doing chores as a thing which I can take joy out of. Which ANNOYS ME, because they are CHORES, but still. It has helped.

You've got the tools, you probably just need to remember how to use them!

@charlesrandall
Hmm, take joy in chores 🤔 ... it's so crazy, it JUST MIGHT WORK. ;)

Yes, true, remember what I did before that worked! If only my memory didn't suck, haha 😭

Thanks for all of this Charles :)