I don’t know who needs to hear this, but take it from a Software Engineering veteran:

Burnout is real.

Even though you may feel that you can “power through it”, despite the pressures of life, you have to step away and recharge.

When early in your coding career you may feel that burning the midnight oil is a badge of honor, but marathon coding sessions are detrimental to mental health.

Sitting in front of the screen for long periods of time is not only also detrimental to mental health but your physical health too.

As software engineers we need to continue stimulating our minds by reading books that are not only tech related. Even being fully immersed in a subject can lead to black holes and tunnel vision.

Often we isolate to focus on work, but we need to make time to socialize. We need to find a balance between work life and personal life.

Do this: Reach out to friend every day. Don’t send a SMS, Slack or Discord message, pick up the phone or have a voice call. It will make a difference.

What has helped me is using the Pomodoro technique to step away and stretch every once in a while, as well as using the break to step away and relax my mind.

As much as I love reading about code and new ways to accomplish something neat, I also enjoy not reading tech related things. Tech related things will then make me want to hop on to the computer and try out whatever it is I’m reading about leading to even more time in front of the computer.

To make sure I don’t do that, I’m heading to my local library regularly. I enjoy reading both fiction and non-fiction. My current favorite series is from the Tales of the Otori.

Time slips away and everyone is growing older, getting more busy.

Here I am working on my day job and all my side projects after work but time slips from my fingers without me noticing it.

Lastly, I leave you with this thought: Family first. After all, everything we do is for them. If we kill ourselves trying to provide for them would it have been worth it? I am willing to bet they would trade everything just to spend some more time with you during your final days. Make memories instead by spending quality time.

Work and passion projects can wait.