
Ask HN: Ever had a near total inability to focus on code? - throwawy6112018
I&#x27;ve recently been struggling with an almost complete inability to code. I can see what needs to be done but cannot focus more than a few minutes on getting there. My current task is to rip up big chunks of a SPA I just built and rebuild per new business requirements and I just cannot move forward. What&#x27;s odd is that I have been capable of nearly inhuman levels of focus in the past.<p>It&#x27;s like a mental block and it&#x27;s been going on for weeks now. I struggled with this before but powered through it. Now I am making virtually no progress and am actually growing stressed and, oddly, somewhat angry about the whole thing. Just the thought of tediously assembling all of the glue required in the app nearly depresses me.<p>Has anyone experienced this and what did you do? I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s just burnout or what.
======
jhanschoo
Do you suppose you may be suffering from burnout? What you have just described
sounds a lot like that.

> What's odd is that I have been capable of nearly inhuman levels of focus in
> the past. > It's like a mental block and it's been going on for weeks now. I
> struggled with this before but powered through it.

These lines signal to me that you may have an unsustainable relationship with
your duties.

Some questions will help you reflect ans self-assess how severely you are
suffering, or if it is something that can be isolated to your current tasks.
Have you recently sacrificed time with family and friends, or scheduled
personal leisure time for your duties? Have you sacrificed your hygiene and
personal management for your office duties? If you have been unproductive
lately, have you seen an increase of unscheduled and unenjoyable leisure and
free time? Have you been waking early but still feeling vegetative and
sluggish lately, if you are not a consistent early riser?

Back to the task, it depends on how well you understand the problem and how
well and accurately time-costed it is. I'll let someone with better experience
managing uncertainty in projects reply on that.

~~~
greenyoda
It sounds like it could be burnout. There have been many discussions of
burnout on HN - some of them might be useful:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=burnout&sort=byPopularity&date...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=burnout&sort=byPopularity&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

------
dominotw
Why is the comment from ardent_uno dead.

