I&#8217;m addicted to coding. I say that not to take away from anyone that is suffering with with a diagnosed addiction. Rather I say it because at the surface, the symptoms feel similar, it leads to burnout, and is never good for my health.



Over the past few months I&#8217;ve been an unhealthy cycle, not taking the time to admit that I am done, pushing myself way beyond the point I should have.



I have a hard time drawing myself away, thinking I can &#8220;just quit&#8221;, when really my mind won&#8217;t quit, even for a few hours. 



<h2>Starting At the End</h2>



My tell tale sign of this destructive pattern is how I end my day. When I am at my best, I go to bed. 



When I am in an unhealthy cycle, I go to bed when &#8211; and there is no better way to put this &#8211; I am 100% from head to toe, exhausted. This isn&#8217;t good. 



<h3>Heightened Need Isn&#8217;t Needed</h3>



I&#8217;ve been trying to understand myself better, and noticed which days I will tend to force myself to stay up



Deadlines I&#8217;m not ready for



This is a common one, and I am okay if I only ever needed to break a healthy cycle for a short (1-2 days) to complete a deadline. I feel this is healthy in moderation, but it is never fun when coupled with other reasons.



I hit a wall on a code task



I end up in a endless loop of &#8220;this last thing will fix it!&#8221;, followed by &#8220;no it didn&#8217;t&#8221;. I have stayed up for hours too long because I thought I had that last piece of code to fix the error, or make the thing work.



I know that I can turn off my computer, and go do something else, it will help. But I can&#8217;t. I don&#8217;t. I sit there and bang against the wall, keyboard, etc. till my body refuses to help my dead weight up any longer.



I feel like I have not accomplished enough



This is the worst one. This one is 90% in my head. I set a goal for what to accomplish that day, and an unplanned bug, or something else comes up. I spend the majority of my day on that, to complete the original thing, but I don&#8217;t let myself account for that. 



Does anyone complain if a project or sprint deadline is met, but my daily self-invoked goal is not? No, just me. I can&#8217;t sleep knowing I could have done 1 more hour, or fix 1 more thing. 



<h2>Starting the Day</h2>



When I am in a healthy routine, I try to accomplish at least 1-3 items before sitting at my desk.



When I am in an unhealthy cycle I start my day late, with not nearly enough hours of sleep. I skip all other routines or chores, and head straight to my desk. On especially bad days I&#8217;ll skip the green tea or coffee, it doesn&#8217;t help.



My self-imposed heightened need doesn&#8217;t help. I jump back into where I left off, slightly rested, almost like I never left. It really does feel like it after day 2 or 3, just a cycle of code, life, sleep, code.



The start of the day is also when I make plans for what I need to accomplish that day.



<h2>Out of Scope Changes</h2>



The continued addiction to completing the code, daily, has other ramifications. There are parts of life and being that slowly start to crumble away, and if I&#8217;m lucky I&#8217;ll catch it before it gets very bad.



I&#8217;m not always lucky, and usually wait for the inevitable shock or that rock bottom. This comes in the form of comments from the spouse, and any support she can muster to help, if she has any left herself.



My happiness had taken a hit. It is very challenging being the primary source of income and depressed. Burnout to the point of not working is a privilege. All day every day my mind was focused on what I was working on and that took its toll on my wife, our kid, and everything else around me. I was so focused on how much I was failing myself and my code career that I stopped being able to find happiness and value in any thing else around me. 



My weight had been steadily going down, but it started to creep back up. In a few short weeks I had gained nearly 20 pounds of weight back. I think that was the nail in the coffin for this cycle. I put enough hard work into dropping the weight, that I couldn&#8217;t go back to where I was.



<h2>Chicken or Egg</h2>



This isn&#8217;t the first time I&#8217;ve been through this, I&#8217;ve learned how to get over these burnout / depression spells. This time was different, in the past I could use fun code to help. I&#8217;d solve my burnout issue by focusing a little time every day on something I enjoyed coding vs. something I had to code.



This time I knew this wouldn&#8217;t work. I needed a better, cleaner break.



I wanted to focus on my schedule, specifically focusing on how to go to sleep earlier, or wake up at a different time to be productive. I started with going to sleep. Sleeping earlier sounded good.



2 weeks I chose to remove late night working. I chose to limit myself to 1 hour at the computer every evening after walking my dog. If I could not fix / finish whatever it was I was working on, I would use that time to get myself prepped to solve it tomorrow. If I had nothing to work on, I&#8217;d try and write something (although this is difficult too). 



Either way, I was determined to be in bed by 10pm, and asleep by 11pm, with a 6:30 wake up.



<h2>Good Cycles</h2>



Once I was waking up &#8220;on time&#8221; I was able to start bringing morning chores back into the mix. Including taking a longer walk with my dog, and putting the clean dishes away or cleaning anything else that was leftover from the night before in the kitchen. 



After 1 week of just that, I lengthened, and added another walk in at lunch time. For once, I started letting myself take the 30-60 minutes of a lunch break to spend with my son before his nap, and a walk with my dog. I haven&#8217;t eaten lunch at my desk in a week.







<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-style-twentytwentyone-border"><img loading="lazy" width="768" height="1024" src="https://arcctrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/E9849455-00CE-4EE2-B710-934FB26DA71C-768x1024.jpg" alt="Chewie the walking pup" class="wp-image-2889" srcset="https://arcctrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/E9849455-00CE-4EE2-B710-934FB26DA71C-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://arcctrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/E9849455-00CE-4EE2-B710-934FB26DA71C-225x300.jpg 225w, https://arcctrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/E9849455-00CE-4EE2-B710-934FB26DA71C-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://arcctrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/E9849455-00CE-4EE2-B710-934FB26DA71C-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://arcctrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/E9849455-00CE-4EE2-B710-934FB26DA71C-1568x2091.jpg 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /><figcaption>Chewie, my walking buddy!</figcaption></figure>



<h2>It&#8217;ll Happen Again</h2>



The main takeaway isn&#8217;t to strive for &#8220;I will never do it again&#8221;. I know I will be back here. It won&#8217;t be healthy, but hopefully I&#8217;ll be able to solve it before I get too far down the rabbit hole.



Code to me is addicting. I love technology, I love what I can do with code, and I love learning new things. This is dangerous when technology itself helps me learn new technology, and when I learn 1 thing it usually opens up a can of worms to learn. 



If it isn&#8217;t a deadline for work, it is an arbitrary deadline for something I wanted to learn how to do. Or it is some new piece of code I&#8217;m putting together for an open source project. There is always something and when it comes to code, it is really hard to say &#8220;Ok, I&#8217;ll get to it later&#8221;, I always feel the passion to do it now.

Hi.

personal rants

Feeling Addicted to Coding