

Ask HN: I've done absolutely no work since December 15th - submarine

The last day I wrote any code for my app was December 15th. I fell into one of my usual anxious and depressed modes , and I was surprised to not resurface after a couple of weeks.<p>It&#x27;s now been 4 weeks and 1 day that I have done absolutely no work on my app. I graduated from school in May, and since the 15th of last month, I&#x27;ve spent almost every day in my office rental doing nothing but walking around, eating, going to work out, surfing the web, and going back home. I&#x27;ve tried working from home, but no luck. The distractions kill me, and it&#x27;s lose-lose either way.<p>I never wanted to succeed so hard, but I can&#x27;t get myself back up. This has never happened to me before and it&#x27;s really bad.<p>Everyone is asking me how I&#x27;m doing, and I&#x27;ve been lying through my teeth. There are a few clients waiting on me to finish up, and apparently that&#x27;s not enough for me to get cracking.<p>Is something wrong with me?
======
rosenjon
This is going to sound a little crazy, but you need to take a break. Give
yourself a one week vacation, and go do something fulfilling that doesn't
involve working on this app.

What do you like to do? It doesn't have to cost money, per se. Go visit some
friends for a week, or go on a hike, or just go do something around town
you've been wanting to do but haven't. However, try to have it involve other
people, and not just be by yourself.

Right now, you're working" every day, but getting nothing done. There is
probably a lot of fear that your app won't work, that no one will use it, that
you are wasting your time and will have nothing to show for it at the end. Of
course, there is the possibility that I am just projecting on you, as I have
had all of these feelings and displayed some of the same behaviors, but I
guess that is for you to decide.

The purpose of the break is to get some perspective. Life is not all about
this app. Even if it goes down in flames, it's really not a big deal. You're
smart and you'll find something else you want to do and do that. The self
doubt and fear of failure is what keeps you going to the office every day, but
getting nothing done.

By taking a break and clearing your mind, you can reassess where you're at
with fresh eyes, tackle the big problems keeping you from moving forward, and
create a solid plan of action to move forward.

That's just my two cents, having had similar issues...

------
wturner
I have a pretty sure fire way to solve this problem.

Step 1. Call your local Manpower or Kelly temp work office.

Step 2. Ask to do the most unskilled rote industrial labor intensive job they
have.

Step 3.

Do this for a full 40 hour week.

If after the entire ordeal you're not inspired to quit the temp agency and go
work on your project you should probably quit both.

Problem solved.

Postscript: All the people telling you to go on "vacation" after you just said
you haven't done anything for the last month are in a haze imho.

~~~
rosenjon
How is that going to solve the problem? The procrastination comes from a fear
of failure. Your suggestion is to go take a mindless, shitty job, thereby
suggesting this is what's going to happen to him if he fails? First, that's
probably not the likely outcome of failure, and second, it's not going to help
the fear of failure.

Call it a "vacation", or a "break", or whatever you want. But you have to step
away sometimes in order to clarify your thinking. Startups are a marathon, not
a sprint. Despite all the lean startup craziness, nothing truly gets built in
a day, a week or a month. If he has literally made no progress in a month,
then something needs to change. Personally, I think the most effective thing
is a change of environment. His office has become a toxic place to go during
the day and procrastinate. He needs to get away from it and do something else
for a bit, and then come back to it with fresh eyes.

Here are some further suggestions for what he can do to regain some balance.
[http://zenhabits.net/the-10-essential-rules-for-slowing-
down...](http://zenhabits.net/the-10-essential-rules-for-slowing-down-and-
enjoying-life-more/)

~~~
wturner
The point was that it lends contrast. If you are forced to live without a hot
shower for awhile it makes you appreciate it when you have one.

------
roneesh
Don't feel bad for not coding. The truth is, this industry can make people
feel really bad for not coding constantly. The mantras of "Get Sh*t Done",
"Great Artists Ship", "Always Be Coding", "Hack your life", "If you're not
coding your competition is" and many other lousy, empty and ultimately
meaningless statements just serve to make anyone who's not constantly coding
feel like something is wrong with them.

Chances are you're like most people and have a wide variety of interests and
hobbies, and so trying to keep up the pretense that you just care about your
startup or current project can be emotionally exhausting. It's basically lying
to yourself.

I don't really have a concrete answer for you in how to break this funk. Funks
can happen. The advice all people here have given you is spot on, I will just
add that all that advice should be tried and discarded if not useful, it's
what worked for them, might not work for you. I personally also suggest
include avoiding online content and getting outside. I also suggest you figure
out some way to learn to make peace with tedious work, it happens in almost
all client work.

Good luck friend!

------
unstable013
:) I think I understand your position, because I'm living it right now. I've
found that at times like this, what helps is:

* Actually take a day off, don't pretend to be productive, actually walk away and don't feel guilty about it. Everyone needs a break.

* Get some perspective. Take two steps back, and remind yourself why you're doing what you're doing. Screw, 'becoming a success,' there's a bigger reason that you're making something. Tumblr has fan mail posted all over their fridge [[http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4f0e2ff7ecad04b0640...](http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4f0e2ff7ecad04b064000022-1200/the-fridge-is-covered-with-letters-from-tumblr-fans.jpg) ] and, I've printed out and stuck up some positive facebook comments and emails from our users. It's a lot harder to procrastinate when you know that you have an audience.

* Start over something. There's mixed opinions on this, obviously you should try to get it mostly right the first time, and iterate rather than scrapping and restarting at a whim, but sometimes the invitation of a blank canvas can get you over the wall.

* Embrace your ritual. There could be something, some process that you use when you need to get started on something... As counter-productive as it seems, whenever I'm about to start a big project, I sit down for a night and clear my harddrive, and set up a fresh installation of my Linux distro... the act of 'cleaning out my workbench,' frees me up to start working again..

And finally, I'd point you at [ [http://hellenroxx.com/fighting-cam-
burnout/](http://hellenroxx.com/fighting-cam-burnout/) ] which I found
yesterday... it's slightly NSFW, but surprisingly relevant to our problem.

Good Luck,

Jean-Le

------
coralreef
I'm an app developer, I've felt the same for the past few months. I noticed a
few things directly affect my productivity and interest in my work:

1) Exercise: I need intense, mentally engaging exercise to feel fufilled. I
get this through my martial arts training (muay thai / jiu jitsu). I had to
take a few months off after moving to the city, and I felt pent up and
frustrated without a physical outlet.

2) Music: A short term mood improver is to put on some high energy music,
preferably stuff you can dance and move to. Music gets the brain juices
flowing.

3) Sunshine/vitamin D: Being a night owl, it goods to resync to a daytime
schedule every quarter. Getting to walk in the sun for a few minutes and
observe daily bustle is refreshing.

4) Most importantly, working on challenging and interesting projects: My last
few apps were largely clones of previous successes. This means I didn't have
to think up anything new, or creative. I was unmotivated to work on it because
it was mostly "manual labor", with no new programming riddles to solve. So
obviously, when it was time to get shit done, I just didn't care, I already
knew the answers. I suspect your freelance work is uninteresting to you.

Over the past couple years, I learned that my mood and productivity pretty
much looks like a sine wave. High intensity creativity and motivation,
followed by weeks of leveling out. Perhaps this is the nature of self
employment.

------
miguelrochefort
I can relate a bit too much.

You probably won't meet anyone more ambitious than me. Yet, I'm paralyzed. I
can't do anything. I have the skills, I have the passion, but I just can't
_do_ anything. I'm not sure why.

I've been at it for 1.5 year. I overcomed all my excuses (you need a new
computer, you need a better chair, you need a better framework, you need a
cofounder), and yet, nothing worked out.

I finally decided to get a job, which I hope will help me gain good working
habits and hopefully give me back some of the confidence I lost in that 1.5
year of being useless.

I'm not sure how I can help you (maybe we share the same "niche"/interest, I
too can't find many people excited by it), but I wish you luck.

~~~
shubhamjain
Hey, I am too quite depressed over my zero output since 3 months. Almost all
my day is wasted over reddit, and hacker news. I despise over how even with my
skills I am able to achieve nothing at all.

Drop me a mail, if you would like, hoping there could be a possible solution
for our sheer waste of time.

------
dchuk
Take a look at your task list and find the smallest possible thing you can do.
Something that you can do in under a minute, doesn't matter. Make that first
on your list.

Do that thing.

After that on your list, put the next smallest thing.

Do that thing.

Then just snowball from there. It's all about momentum. Showing up is most of
the battle.

I get caught in ruts like that all the time. The thing that helps me the most
is timeboxing, so mapping out my day in 30 minute chunks. I'm actually
designing a web app for exactly that process because I'm not satisfied with
existing solutions.

Give it a shot, it might work.

Also, don't be hard on yourself. Take REAL days off, where you don't feel
guilty about not working. It helps a ton.

------
marcus_holmes
I've been in that place. It's really tough, I know your pain.

My tips:

\- Don't make it bigger than it is. Your only job is to write the code.
Whether it's great or awesome or shit is not your problem, other people will
decide that when you ship it (and you can change it later if you agree with
them then). For now, you just have to get it done as best you can.

\- Your inner critic will be running rampant, telling you that it's never
going to be successful, that you're crap at coding, that you should just go
and get a job. You can't shut it up, but you don't have to listen to it. It
might be right, in that what is says may be true, but it's not _helpful_ right
now. Try to disregard anything that isn't helpful, even (especially!) if it's
true.

\- Creating new things is really tough. Go gentle with yourself. Don't beat
yourself up for not getting stuff done, but give yourself some credit for
creating something new. Each day you manage to create something is a day well-
spent, so try and clap yourself on the back for that instead of beating
yourself up about how much more you've got to do.

\- As the others have said; give yourself some time off. You know the point
each day where you start having to push yourself to keep going. Don't. Stop
there, and do something else (I do odd bits of leatherwork, woodwork or
bonecarving, or play video games if I don't feel creative). Gradually, I've
found that the amount I can do each day is naturally extending without me
having to push it.

\- Socialise. Friends' encouragement is good motivation :) Be honest about
what you're facing and how hard it is (and don't be tempted to bullshit).
You'll get a positive response and the support you need.

Good luck, it's a nasty hole to dig yourself out of, but you can do it.

------
ja27
Assuming you're in the northern hemisphere, this is a horrible time of year
for depression. Short days, cold weather, etc. You can fight this with
exercise, diet, getting outside, getting as much sunlight as you can (or using
those full-spectrum lights), etc. So that's one cause.

Then there's the general case of getting stuff done. I try different things
and a few have worked for me. Go work somewhere else. Like I go sit at a
McDonalds or a sports bar and I can focus on just code for an hour or two.
That's not enough to get stuff done but it gets me started again. When I'm
stuck I like to find small tasks and just start completing them. No matter how
small, the act of crossing anything off of my list feels like progress and I
can get going. Then I also like to end my day by writing down small discrete
steps for me to do first thing in the morning. Not big "build a new version"
stories but small stuff like "fix X bug" or "resize icon Y".

------
canterburry
I don't know at what point in the lifecycle your app is but I often have these
breaks in development when anxiety about what I am building subconsciously
creeps in. This often happens over vacation breaks when I've had time to
process and suddenly start doubting the idea, the execution, the potential
etc. It's as if by not completing it, I won't have to face the failure of it
not selling.

As an engineer, I also find myself less interest in a project when its main
technical difficulty has been solved. It's as if my brain says: "great, we've
built it, it works...was fun...I am bored with it now". Reaping any financial
reward from the work doesn't really seem sufficiently motivating to keep my
brain interested.

However...both of the above scenarios are often solved by the slightest hint
of a challenge. I.e. Could I squeeze 10% more performance out of module X by
Y...or...how many signups will I get from a tweet...?

Simply posing myself some challenge to which I truly don't know the outcome
often gets me right back in.

------
abc_lisper
You are burnt out. A vacation will do wonders. We all have been there, and its
hard to believe if this is your first time, but its true.

------
NicoJuicy
Actually, i had this some times. I always got far into creating an application
and then i just stopped. It didn't interest me no more.. Nadda..

Now, some guy of a sport club wanted a member application and i created one
(it's still in beta though and in dutch
(membershipmanagement.azurewebsites.net Demo:12345678). I have never gotten
this far in 2 month (added payments, user management, rough frontend and
positive feedback (= it's finished for him))...

The advice is simple, take a vacation for 3-4 days. And as suggested in other
comments, just do your tasks. It's really that simple. According to what
you've said, you're only going to get more in trouble if you put everything on
halt.. You could find a fellow dev for some clients if you have a writers
block and don't add more tasks at the moment. You're going to get some anxiety
for not being able to finish...

PS. I have a full time job, so i'm not rushing stuff.

------
Morphling
I feel like I'm in a rut, a bad rut at the moment I had ~2-3 week "Christmas
holiday", but I spent most of that time moving my mother to a new house and
setting up tech for her and while it was nice change from coding it was maybe
even more stressful than the work I do and now deadline is approaching fast
and I'm stuck on delivery. I'm not far away from delivering, but I have no
idea how to even start to solve my problem.

Basically it's just trial and error at this point, I should just step up and
start playing with the code, but it just feels too hard and frustrating at the
moment.

I know this is pretty much off-topic, but I just have to 'vent' a little.

------
hcarvalhoalves
Opposite than other comments, I won't come up with a plan to get things done.

Take a break. Exercise. Are you on the northern hemisphere? Try getting more
sun. When we don't have willpower/concentration to work, it's our body saying
our battery is depleted.

------
blooberr
Do you have a close friend you can talk to during the day or maybe just sit
next to while you try to work? Does not have to be technical at all. That
might help.

Are you in the bay area? Feel free to reach out if you have nobody else to
turn to.

------
l33tbro
The secret is to stop thinking of what you have to do as being 'hard' or
'stressful' \- and just start doing it. It sounds very simple, because it is.

------
tdowns
Nothing wrong with you - you're experiencing a form of writer's block.

As a single contributor how is your project managed? Do you have a to-do list?

~~~
submarine
Yes I do. I've tried sitting down to work but never get past formatting my
code.

My main worry is that nobody else will want my software, and even if they did
I wouldn't know how to price it, market it, and sell it. All I really know is
to code, even if it just barely passes programming convention and security
checks.

I envision so much for what I'm doing, but I have no idea how to get there.

~~~
phantom_oracle
This isn't exactly something you are facing in isolation.

I think a majority of people who write code and want to be tech entrepreneurs
face this.

I myself call it: "Build it and they will not come".

I think I will dedicate a blog post to this issue and I will try to use some
methods to resolve this issue.

Mainly though, from a philosophy I learnt from a career coder: I'm building it
for myself to use or just for the sake of it

The above is a great way to churn out 'dumb' projects purely for the sake of
building them out. Carry that momentum to the startup, if it fails, it fails.

This also makes me wonder about the mantra of some people in tech circles
urging founders to "fall in love" with their startup.

This is actually a very interesting discussion. Kudos to you for being brave
enough to admit that: I like to code but I just don't know what the fuck I am
doing anymore.

------
gurvinder
Find a co-founder, he will encourage you and also help in "marketing, selling
etc " which you think you are not good at.

~~~
submarine
It's a super niche market, nobody I've met is into it. The people that _were_
into it told me to make sales and contact them again.

------
motyar
Take it easy.

------
danso
Exercise.

Sorry, that sounds like a simplistic, pat answer...but I know when I've felt
either out of it, or even sick, just doing something as simple as a 5-7 minute
workout can inexplicably shake me up in a positive way.

Of all the things that are within my power to just _do_ (as opposed to _wait
for_ ), exercising is the easiest. There are also purported health benefits to
it, too.

~~~
submarine
I'll give it a shot.

The really painful part comes from wanting to do so much while being
paralyzed. People have told me to get myself checked out, but I was in therapy
for a while and it turns out I'm perfectly healthy - just anxious, and mildly
neurotic.

~~~
danso
Having had those periods, thankfully brief, it's all too easy to fall into the
spiral of "Another hour/day/week wasted, why a sorry sack I am", while not yet
feeling, "I need an intervention". Maybe you (or I, or anyone in a down mood)
really _do_ need outside help. But while you debate that, exercise is, for the
most part, something you can control. And if you haven't exercised in awhile
(which is for me, basically any given day)...you can also benefit from the
phenomenon of "well, something is being done, so things must be changing for
the better"* (even though you're the initiator of the change). Really, the
most important thing is that it's something within your control.

* there's a name for this...it's related to some study where researchers kept repainting the walls of a factory and observed workers becoming happier, regardless of what the color was...

~~~
innguest
The name is "Hawthorne effect".

