
Why Sometimes I Hate Myself - tdziurko
http://tomaszdziurko.pl/2014/09/why-sometimes-i-hate-myself/
======
lmartel
This feeling is an extension of the "HN complex", I think. You see when people
post amazing things on Show HN, but you _don 't_ see when people are sitting
around watching House of Cards. It's the developer version of "everyone on
Facebook is having more fun than I am." Try to remind yourself that your
perception of others is warped.

Past that, I've struggled with this feeling a bit, and this is what I've come
up with (YMMV, of course, but it works for me):

\- Keep trying new, productive side projects--just a half hour every couple
nights, or something. This could be open source work, MOOCs, reading a book,
whatever. Anything that makes you proud of yourself the next morning.

\- Eventually, you'll stumble upon something that grabs you--you wouldn't care
so much about improving if you didn't enjoy some aspect of what you do.

\- If a project grabs you, let yourself get carried away. Buy some red bull.
If it doesn't, pat yourself on the back for trying, take a few nights off, and
keep trying.

The trick here is to keep moving until something clicks. The advantage of this
approach is that you're still doing productive things, but you also have
plenty of time to goof off between tries, and (at least in my experience)
you'll feel less guilty about it. Forcing yourself to spend your free time on
something you don't enjoy to the nebulous end of "self-improvement" will
accomplish nothing and make you miserable.

EDIT: after re-reading the OP, I wanted to add that all this is _completely
optional_ \--if you really do enjoy this self-improvement shtick but have
trouble getting started or pacing yourself. There are many, many software
developers with great jobs that work 9-5 and go home to their families or non-
technical hobbies, and there's absolutely no shame in that. All the corporate
blathering about "passion" is just a ploy to depress market wages.

~~~
sp8
> Try to remind yourself that your perception of others is warped.

I am a strong believer in this effect. I saw it expressed well once in a book,
paraphrased: "You are comparing your inside with other people's outside."

I've held on to that concept and its been an important part of me keeping my
natural self-pessimism in check.

~~~
tonylukasavage
My absolute favorite illustration of this point:

[http://www.viruscomix.com/page528.html](http://www.viruscomix.com/page528.html)

~~~
JTon
I've seen this collection before, but I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.
It's great.

------
sarciszewski
Heh. I can relate to this sort of exeprience.

I used to be moderately to severely depressed at least somewhat in part
because I wanted to get something done by a certain date, but I didn't have
the focus or motivation to touch it. As the deadline creeps closer and closer
and the dust collects on your git repo, you tend to feel a growing sense of
despair that maybe you should just give up because you're not good enough.

Then you say screw it, turn off the computer, go watch a stupid movie with
your friends while talking about inane things like the upcoming World of
Warcraft expansion. The sun sets, the pizza is delivered, maybe vast
quantities of soda and/or alcohol are consumed if that's your thing. The night
wears on, everyone goes their own separate ways. As you lay down in bed,
staring at the ceiling reflecting on how happy this evening made you feel, you
realize you're too stimulated to sleep. Then your mind goes back to your
project. Not the deadline, but the reason why you started it in the first
place. And for once, you focus not on the gulf between where you are and where
you ought to be, but rather the next feature you can't wait to implement. So
you turn on your laptop and code until the early dawn hours. Then you remember
you had to work the next day.

And that is why I have a severe coffee addiction. But it beats burn-out.

~~~
winter_blue
I think this kind lifestyle could take a toll on your lifespan.

That being said, I get the part about the feeling letdown with yourself. I set
a lot of goals, made elaborate to-do (or rather, to-don't) lists, and instead
of executing I spend hours crunching through articles on HN, reading
Wikipedia, etc.

I've been trying hard to let go of what I see in myself as an "information
addiction". I've cut short the hours I spend on HN (but not always), and
replaced some of my online reading with more high-quality reading on my
Kindle. One thing I've found is that _once your start working_ on a project,
keeping on going is easy. It's just the initial _static friction_ that's hard
to overcome. Force yourself to do that project, and in minutes you'll be
enjoying it!

~~~
sarciszewski
My point was that relaxing is often what you need to do to get things done. In
my experience, at least. YMMV

------
Cthulhu_
This ideal is something that's also forced upon us by my company; a colleague
and a manager both frowned upon me or even scoffed when I admitted I didn't do
much (or any) programming in my spare time. Since then I'd rather not talk
about my spare time at all - it'd actually be a risk to my job. But I just
can't find the mental energy or motivation to do even more of my already
mentally taxing job in my spare time. I don't see software development as my
hobby, it's my 9-5 job. Video games and whatnot are my hobby. I won't win much
cool points with those, but that's alright, I do those for myself, not others.

~~~
BugBrother
There are lots of people which do better jobs in my subjects than me, while
only caring about the money.

Ideally, those guys should find something they had a real passion for instead.
Because they/you might be really awesome doing something else.

I admire people that love something which won't pay them a salary, then do a
job they don't care about so they are able to "waste" most of their time with
(real examples) their board games, table tennis, etc. It isn't optimized for
GNP, but people must decide [themselves] what they really want from life.

Edit: 'cauterized', note the word "Ideally". The last paragraph is even an
impassioned argument that it is not a bad thing to live for something else
than your profession. Sorry I wasn't clear.

~~~
cauterized
Not everyone has a "passion", and if only the passionate were allowed to be
programmers, the industry would have a ridiculous labor shortage.

Some of us do software development because we find it more enjoyable than,
say, law, and because it pays the bills pretty damn well. Guess what? Outside
this profession, and probably inside too, that's the reason MOST people in
"professional" occupations choose their careers. The difference (that
shouldn't exist) is that in most careers it's perfectly acceptable to work 9-6
to pay the bills and then spend your free time doing something you care about
(like spending time with family) that will never earn you a dime.

------
josefresco
For those of us _old guys_ on HN with kids, that time away from coding is
almost exclusively spent with your children. The time spent caring for them or
just hanging out and being a Dad are sure ways to break yourself free of the
hyper-motivational-echo-chamber that is HN and the greater developer web.

Now a free hour to play a video game? That's especially hard, as it feels like
you're robbing not just your professional time, but also your valuable
parenting time.

~~~
CmonDev
I know a couple of different guys who both are raising 1-2 happy kids and
manage to find some coding time nevertheless (as well as exercising). It
depends on the amount of passion for the craft.

~~~
tonylukasavage
I'm one of those people that find time to code while parenting 2 young
children. And yes, any time spent coding before the kids' bedtime comes with
the unwelcome twinge of guilt saying "I should be playing with the kids," and
therefore infrequently occurs.

The "amount of passion for the craft" sounds like a noble endeavor, but what
it _really_ means is "willingness to sacrifice sleep, friends, other hobbies,
and/or time with your family".

I LOVE writing code. I'd be doing it even if I wasn't getting paid. I'm sure
I'll be hacking interactive art piece for my grandkids when I'm retired. But
if you stand back and look at it objectively, me writing a new JS framework or
embedded system library, even if they are incredible, pales in comparison to
actually spending time with the ones you love. In other words, if your passion
for the craft truly exceeds your passion for your family, you've clearly made
some poor decisions in life.

~~~
CmonDev
_" The "amount of passion for the craft" sounds like a noble endeavor, but
what it _really_ means is "willingness to sacrifice sleep, friends, other
hobbies, and/or time with your family"."_ \- that is true, but you equally
interpreted to make it sound bad. Time spent with family means sacrificing
time spent with friends or time spent on "other hobbies" (unless of course you
have some sort of alliance of people who all share same hobbies and hang out
together with whole families).

"In other words, if your passion for the craft truly exceeds your passion for
your family, you've clearly made some poor decisions in life." \- I guess
Nikola Tesla made a poor life decision?

~~~
tonylukasavage
He thinks so.

 _Tesla never married, claiming that his chastity was very helpful to his
scientific abilities.[9]:33 However, toward the end of his life, he told a
reporter, "Sometimes I feel that by not marrying, I made too great a sacrifice
to my work ..."_

And even though that so perfectly answers your question, it doesn't address my
real point, which is that you made poor life decisions if you chose to have a
family and value your work more than them. Tesla never had a family and
therefore doesn't fit the context of my statement.

------
WBrentWilliams
To give away my age and turn the snark on, I grew out of my "I hate myself and
want to die" period. Rainbow t-shirt included.

Not only did I decide it was "OK" to have interests and passion outside of
work, I embraced the idea. Recently, I've come around to the other side of the
spectrum and have been using my interests to build my professional skills.

There's a point to the electives traditionally opened up in a scholastic
schedule. In my opinion, the whole idea was to provide a space to try new
things, to follow new interests, and maybe even fail. As has been noted in at
least one book and arguments elsewhere, our society as a whole seems to have
fallen into an excellence myth. That you must be passionate and succeed at
everything you attempt.

I see this as the reflection side of the professional passion movement. "Keep
trying, you'll get better" sounds too much like a kid's jingle. To market it,
it's presented to adults with a show of hand-stuffing between a split fancy
roll with gourmet mustard. Open your eyes, and you realize it's still a hot
dog.

------
quaffapint
Nail meet head. That's why I don’t like going to developer meetups and such -
I always feel inadequate. I'm just not as good as the person sitting next to
me. I'm a child and they're the grown up. I'm a 9to5r with feelings of
inadequacy.

I feel such guilt about it and shame that it just makes it worse that too
often I surf pages for way too long counting the minutes until I can get off
the computer. There are moments of true bliss working on some code, but it's
so hard to take the first steps to get there, having to climb over this giant
wall I put up in front of myself.

~~~
chippy
You should talk to the person sitting next to you. I find developer meetups
great fun. I've never met anyone there who compared the size of their GitHub
repos! You can get to meet a whole range of people, and if there's an
interesting talk and free stuff that's a bonus. Pretty much all of the time we
talk about other stuff, where we work, our bosses, the local news, philosophy,
bitcoin or whatever - it could be me, but we hardly ever talk about the
specific topic of the night.

The hardest bit is when you don't know anyone else and have to break the ice
on your own. But the next time there would probably be someone you met the
first time...

------
pjmlp
I learned long time ago not to sell my soul the company or whatever is the
tech of the day.

Go to work, do the 8 hours, only stay if the team really needs help.

No one is going to remember overtime when the next round of firings comes.

One should keep learning, after all the technology changes everyday, but not
at the expense of family and friends.

There is only one life.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
"Reinventing the wheel is a young man's game" \- Gary Bernhardt

Thing is, most young people (read: 20's) _don 't_ understand this. They think
they need to be the person who came out with underscore.asm (or whatever
terrible fad) to work on their "brand." Get those Github stars! Write more
blog posts! Get more Twitter followers!

Because nothing says "hacker" like slavishly believing increasing a bunch of
crappy vanity metrics means anything.

~~~
mwcampbell
> "Reinventing the wheel is a young man's game" \- Gary Bernhardt

Where can I find that quote? I want to see it in context.

~~~
pjmlp
[http://www.ourmidland.com/sports/prep/gary-is-baseball-
coach...](http://www.ourmidland.com/sports/prep/gary-is-baseball-coach-of-the-
year-after-gladwin-s/article_9e487c90-c30a-5e4f-a68d-3951cd061497.html)

~~~
mwcampbell
I think you pasted the wrong link.

------
jgrahamc
_We all like to perceive ourselves as 100% professionals, real craftsmen,
brushing up and sharpening our toolset all the time._

I don't; I'm human.

~~~
bilalhusain
The pretentious programmer culture irks me. As a programmer we are not doing a
decorated job.

We take pride in making ourselves different. In showing off ourselves as
informal, as rule-breakers. "No, we will come to office at 3 PM. In half-
pants." We perceive non-programmer employees as mere mortals. And, oh, we are
so awesome!! We build our own communities, worship our own heroes and immerse
ourselves in our own society; instead of the immersing in the actual society
we live in.

~~~
roghummal
You're misunderstanding that which you call "pretentious programmer culture".

I show up at (0700-1200) or maybe whenever the meeting starts. I wear jeans or
shorts. I leave at 5 if nobody has a reason to keep me there || I'm not
interested anymore. I'm available the rest of the time for a quick fix or it's
interesting.

If I'm awake and I can wave my magic wand and make a coworker's life easier,
why not? I'm never very far. Because computer, network.

Non-programmers are mere mortals. So am I. Maybe I'm awesome, maybe you're
awesome. Not knowing one way or the other I try to satisfy myself with the
idea that, eh, we probably don't completely suck. Go us!

The community you think we should all belong to, the heroes you think we
should worship, and the society you say we live in: Who's the pretentious one
here?

~~~
bilalhusain
I am not generalizing programmers. I am commenting on the culture which is
unfaithfully becoming a hallmark of true programmer. The problem with culture
is that you can remove the core values (that you work hard) and still flaunt
the culture to pretend that you are a part of that group. Just like you can
dress up and act like a rich person without being rich.

~~~
roghummal
I have a better sense of your frustration now and I suggest you learn to live
with it or let it go. There isn't a "true programmer". If there is, I have no
idea what it means.

"that you work hard" is not a core value of my culture. Couldn't have been
removed, never was. I'm all about the Slack. My Slack comes from midnight
hotfixes, finding and fixing _that_ bug, adding a useful feature with _as
little effort as possible_ , learning something that'll make me better at
something I care about, using what I know to help a friend (coworker?) in
need.

~~~
jschwartzi
It's actually a part of this culture:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic)

Working hard for little reward used to be seen as a sign of your devotion to
God.

------
ggreer
I think this is a case of the typical mind fallacy.[1] We generally assume
that everyone else is as calm-neurotic/driven-lazy/straightforward-dishonest
as we are. That's simply not the case. Genes, upbringing, and life experiences
shape our minds differently. There are people who do nothing but work while
being quite happy with their lives.[2] Some of us got lucky. Others, not so
much.

That's not to say that people can't change. Even tiny alterations to everyday
life can drastically affect one's happiness and/or productivity. Meeting a new
friend, moving to a new place, or just being preoccupied with some new problem
can completely change one's outlook.

So I agree with the author: Don't deny your faults.

But still try to fix them. They're not as immutable as you might think.

1\.
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/)

2\. Jiro Ono comes to mind:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukiyabashi_Jiro](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukiyabashi_Jiro)

------
scott_w
I used to have a similar feeling about not "improving" enough, until I
realised something: doing all that messing about (watching TV, films, reading
books) makes you more human.

When I'm not at a local meet-up, or conference, most of my conversation
revolves around non-programming stuff. Most people don't want to hear my
opinions on Python, Django, Scala, JavaScript etc. but they do want to know if
I saw that ludicrous display last night.

If you want to think of it in "self-improvement" terms, then imagine you're
working on your personal database of trivia that you can talk about.

~~~
slowmotiony
What was Wenger thinking sending Walcott on that early?

~~~
smaldj
Fing about Arsenal is, they always try an' walk it in.

------
norswap
> I don’t play computer games” they say, “I read five blog posts every
> evening”, “I don’t watch stupid TV series”.

For me, saying this would be a point of shame instead of a point of pride (and
it often is). I never understood the "I live for my work" macho-masochism.
Even if you're passionate about something, I think it's healthy to have other
interests.

~~~
sarciszewski
I agree 100%

------
fromdoon
Everyone with more than 15-20 years of experience in the industry I have
interacted with, more or less has the same advice when it comes to having a
good work life balance and sustaining the passion for your work for a long
time.

They tell me that it is very very helpful if you are able to disconnect
yourself from the technical world on a regular basis. This time could be spend
doing anything, but it should not be spent fretting about work or thinking
about the next exciting technical idea.

They tell me that having a non-technical hobby or spending time with your
family/friends/social circle is essential for a rejuvenated mind that can
focus back on work.

I agree with OP, lets no be so hard on ourselves and enjoy life. Cheers!!!

------
jaimebuelta
I think it's more a self-imposed pressure than a external thing.

I've never heard anyone personally saying that you should devote 100% of your
time to be "a developer" (though there are general suggestions that seems to
go on that line, like "constantly improving", etc)

It's more the feeling that you should be able to do as much as "everyone else"
(which really are a very small minority). The ones that creates very useful
tools, do podcasts every week and do a blog post every day. But, normally,
those three activities are done by different people, or maybe it's their full
time job.

Just relax and be yourself. You're doing great.

~~~
tdziurko
That's probably true. We are constantly seeing that someone's wrote a book,
posted something on his blog, created open source library. But in most cases
they are achievements of multiple people, not only one.

And it creates pressure that everybody is doing much more than I am to
improve/learn.

------
joseph8th
When I'm wearing my "artist" hat (painting, drawing) it's easy to think of
goofing off as "seeking inspiration". Sit at South Beach and admire the views
and throngs... Then spend that inspiration by expressing what inspired me. I
think I spend 90% of my artsy time just getting inspired to create.

Coding isn't much different. I think it helps to let inspiration build up
until you just gotta let it out. Part of that is the feeling that I need to do
something rather than the nothing I've been at...

------
1wd
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. \-- Bertrand Russell

~~~
icebraining
He actually probably never said that specific line. But he did write an essay
called "In Praise Of Idleness":
[http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

~~~
ozh
Interesting backtracing of the origin of that quote:
[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/11/time-you-
enjoy/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/11/time-you-enjoy/)

------
arc_of_descent
Its a perfectly rational feeling. The problem is we also like to perceive
ourselves as individuals, but in fact are products of a system.

I spend huge amounts of my time watching movies, doing things absolutely not
related to my personal career ambitions, and yes I do feel guilty. But as this
thread mentions, we are human, and the feelings pass away in time.

I've learned that one hour of focused productivity is worth 10 hours of "doing
stuff" which you think will make you a better programmer.

------
bthornbury
Took me a while to realize 9-17 was 9-5 on a 24 hour clock.

~~~
StavrosK
Huh, I didn't realize 24 hour time was so scarcely used in the US.

~~~
wastedhours
In the UK it's not that it's used scarcely, it's that the expression is
usually written as "9-5".

~~~
StavrosK
Hmm, yeah... In Greece we use it interchangeably with the 12-hour time, but
whenever my brain sees 17, it just translates it to "5", so the expression
made sense. Then again, I skipped that part in the article and only saw it in
the comments, so I may have already been primed for it.

------
pistle
Sounds like a someone fighting with a form of cargo cultism.

There are people who live and breath technical pursuits and were either born
or raised to enjoy/tolerate things and happened to turn out with the outcomes
that others think they wish they had. The irony is that people who find the
life of bathing in their work - likely don't have or care much about the
trappings that come from becoming hyper successful due to their moderately
unique self. SEE NOTCH.

Notch is a timely example of someone who gets so much out of plumbing the
depths of programming that he is not going to be writing the sad article about
how he sold his start-up and feels bittered about it and learned a bunch of
lessons, etc.

For most people (which means it's normal), people are not wired to enjoy the
process enough to be like the OP thinks he's supposed to be. He's internalized
the idea that this is how you get the outcomes he thinks he wants. I'm
thinking there's paradoxes everywhere.

If you: are fortunate enough to love the tasks dearly and not care what
project/role you are on are fortunate enough to love the project/role you are
working on despite the tasks are fortunate enough to love the project/role and
your daily tasks

Then you'll likely not worry about if you do or don't need/want breaks. No
self-hate there. You love what you do.

So, if you aren't feeling your "self" because you think you are broken, maybe
believing that by pretending you're on the path to your desired outcomes -
that your success plane will descend from the sky and bring you "the good
times." That's the cargo cult.

You need to understand you and what motivates you. You need to understand what
you are capable of and how that places you where you are today. You need to
learn what you really care about, then remember where/who you are and where
you want to be. Forget the judgement of others - be your own worst critic.
You'll do fine. Hate yourself for failing yourself, not for failing others.

------
yellow_and_gray
This is the mistake: _There are high expectations to be met_

Why are you setting high expectations?

Don't set high expectations, or any expectations for that matter. Expect
nothing. Expectations are detrimental to creativity (I wish I had a citation
handy that proves this once and for all [1]). You should be actively making a
point of not having expectations.

Work on what you like instead, and focus on getting better not on being good.

[1] Alright, the closest I've come is
[http://intersubjectivite.com/drupal/files/Violations%20Of%20...](http://intersubjectivite.com/drupal/files/Violations%20Of%20Expectations%20In%20Creativity%20and%20Perversion.pdf)
and the last paragraph in the conclusion is below. What striked me as odd is
that there's a propensity towards violence when you violate expectations.
Which makes sense for me, considering I get upset when I work on something
that doesn't feel right.

 _When being the violator of expectations has found a place in one’s hierarchy
of motivations, it may well organize a variety of personal experiences, and
thereby contributing either to a person’s creativity or propensity toward
violence or both_

------
vlunkr
I understand wanting to be great at what you do, but this is ridiculous. It
makes me sad that our subculture makes people feel this way. In my opinion if
you focus on work all day, every day, you're wasting your time. What are you
working for if all you ever do is work? I work partially because I love it,
and partially so I can have the freedom to spend time with
family/friends/entertainment.

------
fndrplayer13
Love it. My wife admonishes me every night that I need to work less and relax
more. She says that the key to productivity is giving your brain time to
relax. If all you do is work, you never give your mind a chance to absorb the
knowledge you've absorbed. Games and TV, reading a book for pleasure, having a
run, etc, give us that exact chance.

I know she's right, even if I struggle with it.

------
joesmo
I'm proud of being a "9-5" (9-17 in the article) developer. People that spend
all their waking time focusing on development are likely to burn out very
quickly and produce mediocre work. They're generally hard to work with and
unnecessarily opinionated/confronting in my experience (having been one).

The real achievement is achieving balance in one's life. It's easy to spend
all one's time hacking away at work and after work. What's the challenge in
that? Give me a balanced employee over any one of these soon-to-be burnouts.

The industry will have you believe that if you don't spend all your time doing
coding-related task, you're not worth it. Some will go as far as to use a
github account or similar in lieu of a resume. This is a lie. The best
developers I know do not work on open source. They might have at one time but
are now too busy with other things. They have varied interests. They're
interesting people.

There isn't a single other industry I can think of where people are almost
expected to work even after work. If that's your thing, great, but expecting
that to be your thing and hating yourself for it over it leads me to thing
that there is seriously something wrong mentally here. These expectations of
workaholism are unrealistic. You wouldn't expect someone to be an alcoholic or
drug addict nor praise it. So why praise an equally destructive addiction? Yet
the computer industry does so over and over again because it's in its own
interest and the workforce is generally so young, it doesn't know any better.

If you're feeling down because you're not a workaholic, perhaps the question
to ask yourself is why you would want such a terrible addiction in the first
place? I'm just as thankful that I'm not a workaholic as I would be if I had
gotten over any other undesirable addiction. The people still caught in the
addiction are no measure to measure oneself by.

------
ryan-allen
I was reading a book about how people remember certain kinds of stories of
success, and these are better for marketing purposes, but the reality was that
it was a bit of luck and a hard slog mixed together.

The example was how the eBay founders had this big mission to build a huge
barter platform but the public didn't care until the 'marketing story' about
how one of the founders had the idea because his wife wanted to 'trade pez
dispensers'.

I forget the book, but it reminds me of this. The truth of the matter is there
is probably no such thing as shining brilliance, it's just smoke and mirrors
when advertised, and true achievements are partially luck based, but that
doesn't mean that we shouldn't live our lives studying and working and giving
a shit.

But we don't need to do it 24/7, and we don't need to sacrifice our lives to
be good enough.

------
nicolsc
Winning the Champions with your fav little club in FM is in now way a waste of
time! (Proof : it made you happy)

Seriously, live your life. There is much more to it than reading tech books or
whatever career-related stuff. Just do what makes you & your family happy.
Keep an healthy balance.

------
jprince
I still feel bad that I lack a real blog or website. I bought a domain over a
year ago and still haven't thrown anything up. The reason was that beside my
9-7 job and the 15 hours of freelancing I did on the weekend, I was spending
too much time and drowning in too much business to actually put up the damn
website.

Then, I got an offer to work for one of my clients full time, for 2x my
salary, and now I STILL have no time to put up the website after taking the
job.

On the one hand I feel bad because it seems I have failed in becoming a public
voice - on the other, I'm doing so well in my career right now it seems I
don't have time to look like I'm doing well!

Perceptions != reality. Sometimes, someone who has a great web presence may
not have much else to be doing! ;)

------
mamoriamohit
I can relate to this hatred very well. There was a time when everything was
new to us and learning was fun. But then, the technology improved rapidly and
we got a lot to learn and create. If I look back, I find myself lucky to have
begun programming at the time when I began (11 years ago). There's just so
many things that one needs to learn to call himself a programmer.

And now, when I know enough to build software of any scale, I hate myself too,
for not being as productive as I was as a beginner. As a beginner, I would
learning continuously for weeks (with food and sleep breaks in between).

And as self-learners, we always have tendency to be better than what we were
yesterday and thus the anxiety begins to build up.

I feel you, brother.

~~~
mamoriamohit
Although, I have recently found that mini side projects help keep the
productivity at a healthy rate.

------
lnanek2
Amusing that he considers reading blogs a productive thing that you would brag
about.

------
bsg75
> We tend to keep it underneath, showing only our fully professional face: “I
> don’t play computer games” they say...

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

I am 45, play video games, watch TV (its all lame), and everyone in the office
knows it - because they do too.

I don't know if its still the case, but a decade or so ago, recruiters used to
lament the lack of "well rounded" applicants in tech. People who only do tech
often have trouble communicating with their peers in other parts of the
business, and therefore are less productive then their skills would otherwise
imply.

Other interests, be they practical or impractical, are valuable.

------
ky3
Excerpt from a book:

 _In today 's culture -- where our self-worth is tied to our net worth, and we
base our worth on our level of productivity -- spending time doing purposeless
activities is rare. In fact, for many of us it sounds like an anxiety attack
waiting to happen._

That's from Guidepost #7 of Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection. That
chapter is subtitled _Letting Go of Exhaustion As A Status Symbol and
Productivity as Self-Worth._

The previous chapter on cultivating creativity is also worth a read.

------
sidcool
A short and meaningful post. We all indulge in the so called "wasteful"
activities, but I have found some of my best ideas and inspirations sprang
from those wasteful moments. It is during these moments, I believe, the brain
is relaxed enough to have a spark of creativity. In these moments, brain
consolidates knowledge and finds connections. Even if that does not happen,
the joy that such activities bring is in itself priceless.

P.S. I have also posted this comment in the blog post.

~~~
chippy
Like taking a walk in the woods, for example. I think the main thing is that
these should be done without the anxiety of thinking "I shouldn't be doing
this" \- rather they can be done as you say, in a relaxed way.

------
Paul_S
The gentleman doth project too much.

------
DogeDogeDoge
Personally i love playing games and not only computer games like DoTa or
Heroes of the Storm but some more involving titles like World of Warcraft.
Besides this i play Magic The Gathering card game and loads of board games...
never felt bad about it. But same time i'm not a guy who says working 12 hour
a day is a stupid thing and striving to be perfect is just a road to insanity.

------
rdlecler1
Maybe the hyper smart feel this guilt. I spend most of my time plugging away,
but I constantly fall short. Compare this with my hyper intelligent friends
from CalTech: the ones who work hard are Directors at SpaceX or working on
Google Glass, while the ones who are lazy are working at second tier financial
institutions but sadly still doing better than I.

------
azurelogic
This article made me feel so much better about taking some time off from my
current side project to splatter zombies in Dead Rising 3 lately. I do need to
get back to it soon though...

------
henrik_w
About wasting time: I like this quote from Bertrand Russell:

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."

~~~
icebraining
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8323814](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8323814)

~~~
henrik_w
Thanks! I won't attribute it to Russell anymore, but it is still a good quote
:-)

------
Gusfoo_2
It passes in time.

------
crater
well the opening paragraph was a little dramatic

------
bobspsitumorang
Just do suicide you stupid fuck! :P

------
malvosenior
To offer a dissenting opinion...

There are developers that LOVE what they do and do it nearly every waking
moment. Guess what? they're way better than the average developer.

Personally I don't like articles like this because they basically make excuses
for mediocrity. We as a society shouldn't shy away from excellence and
striving for it.

The guys that work their asses off doing what they love and excel do exist and
ARE awesome and we shouldn't take anything away from them.

I'm pretty sure I'll get down voted for this btw :)

~~~
sarciszewski
I think you'll get downvoted for missing the point, not for daring to
challenge the status quo.

"There are developers that LOVE what they do and do it nearly every waking
moment."

Agreed. I'm one of them.

"Guess what? they're way better than the average developer."

Good for them! But this wasn't about skill, it was about self-perception,
social pressures, and coping with imperfection.

"Personally I don't like articles like this because they basically make
excuses for mediocrity."

Mediocrity is irrelevant. Even excellent programmers can suffer from
depression, burn-out, or discouragement.

"We as a society shouldn't shy away from excellence and striving for it."

No, but neither should we obsess over it like a bunch of severely autistic
extremists who value only programming skill and nothing else. Humans are
wonderful, complicated things. Obsessing about excellence in one area at the
cost of everything else that makes us who we are is dehumanizing.

"The guys that work their asses off doing what they love and excel do exist
and ARE awesome and we shouldn't take anything away from them."

Yeeeeeah, I'm pretty sure everyone would agree with you on this comment, but
NOT IN THIS CONTEXT.

~~~
malvosenior
I guess I don't understand the point of the article. He says that it's a "lie"
that people love their craft and take it seriously. I'll take umbrage with
that since he's not speaking for me and many I know.

This article is basically the equivalent of some guy that goes to the gym a
few times a week saying that professional athletes are really just watching
Breaking Bad every night instead of waking up at 5am to train and that they
would be better of being more "well rounded" than following their innate
passion.

There's already too much "everyone gets a medal" mentality in our culture, it
doesn't really add anything.

