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Franc Morales wrote: I keep a list of fun, side projects for those times, say, a small app or helper library.
Catch-22: The "fun", small apps or helper libraries (the stuff I used to do on my own time, evenings and weekends) is what caused me to burn out. On workdays, as soon as I finished dinner, I worked on my little pet projects until late at night, and I'd dedicate my entire weekends to said projects. As much as I loved it, at one point I just hit a wall and it stopped being "fun"; to this day there are periods where I've literally gone for months without writing a single line of code for myself.
I go through my work stuff, sometimes begrudgingly, as it is the way I make a living, but how I use my free time is up to me, and these days I use a very tiny portion of my free time coding. It's not like I don't like coding anymore - right now I'm on holidays, and I've spent quite a bit of time going back to those little side-projects, and I'm loving it - I wished I could do this full-time. But I can't bring myself to code on a "regular" weekend, it seems, knowing I only have 2 days to wind down before going back to work on Monday...
I've come to the conclusion that I'll use my free time to code if I feel like it, and if I don't, well, those will be my retirement projects. Translation: What started as a hobby in my teenage years lead me to working in this field (and I wouldn't trade it for the world), but from my perspective work is, still after all these years, getting in the way of my hobby.
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When I lose motivation to code, I switch to something else that needs doing. At home this might be some chores, or a walk, or anything else that takes my mind off the code. At work, there are always administrivia that need attending to (replying to emails, filling out time sheets, editing documents, etc.)
As OriginalGriff said, if this carries on long term, perhaps coding isn't (or is no longer) for you. It is then time to find another way of avoiding "honest work". *
(*) for the non-anglophones, "honest work" here refers to the kind of work that makes one sweat, as opposed to office work.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: It is then time to find another way of avoiding "honest work". *
Yep. One of the reasons I decided on development as a career was "it's indoor work with no heavy lifting" 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Sounds to me like you are burned out.
I have been burned out many times over the years. If you can afford to take 2-3 weeks vacation, then do that. Collect your thoughts and revist the issue AFTER your vacation.
Ultimately, if your production is affected by your burn out, then you will either be fired or you will quit.
I usually jump back into a good rhythm after some PTO.
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All these wonderful ideas to take a break from coding - it is WORK, you probably do not have the luxury to up and take a break, you are probably dodging a deadline and have a manager in your ear to get the work done. And the wife is going "we can't afford for you not to work".
Grind it out till you can get away from the desk! Eventually you can retire, look forward to that.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Mycroft Holmes wrote: Grind it out till you can get away from the desk
If you're working somewhere that this is the expectation, it's time to work somewhere else.
Software Zen: delete this;
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My innate desire to NOT to look for work made the job search one of my most disliked activities. It also helped that they paid well above the odds so there was fairly strong incentive to stay with the pressure.
Retirement was the goal and it is wonderful, I haven't coded in 3 years now and don't regret it.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Too bad you can't retire from the wife. 
Jeremy Falcon
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After 45 years of marriage I have grown comfortable with the lifestyle!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Whenever I've felt this way, it's been the environment rather than coding.
The first time, I was sick of Sydney traffic and so I left and worked in Canberra. There were a number of factors (the type of work, some people, etc) for leaving Canberra after 17 years and ended with a sea change (or quite close to one) living on the northern Gold Coast (south of Brisbane).
I'm not suggesting upending and moving cities, but have a look around you. Does the project interest you? Do you get on with your work mates? If not, a change of job might be a start.
// TODO: Insert something here Top ten reasons why I'm lazy
1.
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Don't know, but I wish I did!
I started a side project (non-commercial, to support people with a particular pastime) about 15 months ago. It was initially stop-start due to (real) work getting in the way. It reached a point where I released it as beta, but with minimal advertising and virtually no-one has used it yet - partly because it's missing some central functionality. I just can't build up the enthusiasm to complete testing of the part I coded in October. There's a lot of use-cases for a particular screen, and it will involve setting up quite a lot of test accounts etc, and I just can't get enthused by it. Until it's done, though, I can't move on to the next feature - after which it will be in a state where I can begin promoting it properly.
Partly I think it's fear - it has the potential to have a LOT of users and that could mean a LOT of support issues, at a time when I'm trying to wind down my coding activities.
I've found an amazing ability to procrastinate over the past few weeks; now I'm thinking I need to wait till after Christmas, then after New Year is "out of the way". Just to test a single web page. And it's just the two of us at home for Christmas, not like we're busy!
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Would this be the telgraph marker posts project Derek ?
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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No - that's all complete. (Always tweaks and stuff to add, but it's live and well!)
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DerekT-P wrote: it has the potential to have a LOT of users and that could mean a LOT of support issues, at a time when I'm trying to wind down my coding activities.
If you don't want to support it, you can always open source it and offer it for free. Let the community support it.
Jeremy Falcon
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For sure, once it has some momentum I'm hoping we will have volunteers come forward to support (initially as admins but later as developers too), with the long term plan that it's supported from within the community.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: If you don't want to support it, you can always open source it and offer it for free. Let the community support it.
I find it interesting you'd suggest this and word it this way. This is no criticism...but hear me out.
When "open source" started making waves, I viewed is as kind of a "bad" thing - someone writes something, releases it to the world, and if there's problems, the wonderful thing is that you can go fix it yourself. At least that's how it had been (poorly) presented to me, and my stance against open source had often been, there's no accountability. Who in his right mind would want to commit himself to using a library when there's no-one to shout at when it's broken? Fix it myself? As a developer, I need to spend my own time writing my own software, not fixing other people's bugs.
I've come a long way, but (for example) when I look at the amount of NuGet packages out there, and how often things need to be updated...it sometimes makes me wonder if this approach is really the best.
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Yeah, that's a fair point. For the enterprise, I'll never use a package/software without a larger community support for that very reason. In this instance though, the alternative would be for the project to be abandoned it would seem. At least if it's open sources, perhaps someone else can take it and run with it. Never a one perfect solution to anything in tech though.
Jeremy Falcon
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first: get myself "off the hook" of feeling regret, remorse, etc.
second: meditate, and try to gain insight into the context in which i experience "loss of motivation" ...
third: try to accept that stress, (true for me, right now) health and age problems, may be limits it is a waste of time to try and push against.
and ... do other things i enjoy, see people who nourish me, design rings, write poetry and stories.
finally, i go on a diet of not reading the astute qa posts of MacCutchan, Deeming, Griff, and others ... so i stop comparing my current woeful (technical) state to their brilliance 
«The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled» Plutarch
modified 19-Dec-22 8:45am.
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Do you mean MacCutchan ?
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Take a break - whether it be an hour or a couple weeks of vacation. If the lack of motivation continues, talk to someone (preferably a friend that has some understanding tech but isn't a coworker) and try to figure out what the underlying issues are, and then what might be done to help with the problem. Sometimes the lack of coding motivation is actually a bigger "what is the meaning of my life?" question!
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You have to be able to reward yourself. I rarely tackle anything that's "bigger" than a day. At the end of the day, I've created: a form; or a report; a file load; an extract ... something. So, each day I hit some sort of (in my mind) a (mini) "milestone" that tells me I accomplished something; something I can "point" to.
So, on a "bad" day, pick a more interesting "mini" thing to work on, and save the more gruntier things for the good days.
Even documentation can be fun if you make it a video project.
Music helps sometimes; other times it's noise: Buddha Bar.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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I wish I had a good answer. After decades, it just comes and goes. If I get excited about the project I find myself motivated. But, if I get a hint of silliness, BS, etc. about the project, all that motivation goes out the window.
They say the only way to get over writers block is to just start writing. Even if it's crap because you don't feel like doing it. Just start doing it. Eventually you'll get back into it. Probably works the same with code.
But, all I know for me, is that with code... the industry is the same old thing. Nothing changes. So, bye bye novelty. Which is like the death of creativity.
Not sure if that was a useful reply or not...
Jeremy Falcon
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Stop thinking of it as a creative process. Much of the time, thank goodness, it's turning a series of logical process into usable code for a job/task/etc. It's that motivation to create the code not creativeness. The creativeness comes when it needs to come. It's not on a demand basis. Most times, necessity makes it needed, other times, efficiency and/or clarity makes it happen. Does this help? Been creating/writing/fixing code for almost 50 years.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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It's called burnout, and it's very damaging. The only remedy is to take some time off.
Paul Sanders.
If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal.
Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
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