Today's lesson: if you never make an effort to do anything, you'll get bored out of your mind. A life of leisure is neither fun nor rewarding.
If you're bored and unmotivated at work, and you've been spending your time surfing the web looking desperately for something more interesting, you may be stuck in a vicious circle. If you're bored with work and try to avoid doing it, you will become even more bored. That sense of boredom will permeate the work you're not doing, making you feel like the work itself is boring, which makes you try even harder to avoid doing it. (There's a chicken and egg problem here -- does the boredom come first, or the avoidance?)
If you find yourself needing, desperately, to work on something more interesting, then you may be stuck in this trap. If you begin to feel like your skills are atrophying due to lack of challenge, then you may be stuck in this trap. If you resent every little difficulty you encounter while working, because it means you actually have to pay attention to what you're doing, then you are probably stuck in this trap.
The only way to get out of this is to realize two things: 1) that moods are largely self-reinforcing, and 2) that if you don't actually put effort into doing something -- anything -- then you will be bored. Follow the chain of cause and effect backwards, and realize that it's your own damn fault you're going crazy.
Paying attention to something boring is like doing exercise -- at first, you hate it and you'd really rather go back to sleep. But eventually the endorphin high will hit you, and maybe it'll get you high enough to get out of your funk. After all, there's a reason you decided to become a programmer in the first place, right? You like programming. The endorphins are there waiting for you -- all you have to do is put in enough energy to shake them loose.
They feel so good...
Posted on August 8, 2003 04:58 PM
More programming articles
So I've spent the last month reading about monads, closures, continuation passing style, dataflow languages, combinatory logic, parrot, xaml and everything else under the sun that I've found interesting. But i've gotta say that these 5 paragraphs have been the best thing i've read all month.
thanks for the post. (obviously it hit home :) )
Posted by: New Fan at April 30, 2004 02:30 AMMeh, great theory, not so true in practise. What if the workload is too much, you're a team of one, your manager wont listen to your concerns, you dont have the tools to do the job, you targets are stupidly high and you only get paid a tippence compared to the sales reps on the road who you co-ordinate. They;re on 3 times as much, work far fewer hours, are to blame for your lack of success because we're a team and they're letting it down.
I was really into my job, then as times gone along i';ve realised that there is nothing i can do to bring success to it. Problem is, with the hours i work, i dont have time to look for another job - i work 20 miles outta town in a business park.
Its a nice theory you've got - but it just aint so in all cases.
Keep posting!
J
Posted by: joe at January 10, 2007 11:19 AM