Are you properly handling the stress in your dev life right now?

Being stressed out because you have pending code to write or not being able to stare at your IDE for longer than 10 minutes without tabbing out and browsing the Web are both symptoms of developer burnout. In other words, youve spent so much of your energy coding that you no longer can stand it.

This happens to all of us senior and junior devs alike. Its the problem of having a job that sometimes is also a hobby. When that happens, you love coding so much that you spend nine hours working on it and then a few extra working on your personal projects.
Dont worry though at least not too much because there are ways to avoid burnout. You just have to understand what youre going through first.

What Causes Developer Burnout?

For you to understand how to avoid it, you first need to understand where it comes from. Burnout comes from spending too much energy on a single activity, which in turn affects every other aspect of your life. Its that simple.

That can be seen in many ways, for instance, making coding the only activity you do your entire day. When you spend 12 to 18 hours a day coding, what else do you have time for? Other than eating and sleeping, I mean?
Or, perhaps only focusing on coding, even when youre not writing code. Reading about coding, coding techniques, new frameworks, other languages. While youre not actively writing code when doing any of these things, youre still only focusing on a single task. Your mind is unable to break from the coding state of mind. Even if youre not consciously thinking about them, your coding blockers (pending tasks on your daily job, future features youre trying to implement on your pet project, new frameworks youve been dying to learn but havent had the time for) are adding to your stress and anxiety.

You can tell yourself youre doing it for a reason but no matter how noble that reason might be, youll end up burning out. Even if your mind resists it, your body will yield. Youll start seeing physical problems such as losing (or graying) hair, stomach issues, upper back or neck pains due to strained muscles. These are all symptoms burned out developers feel. I know because Ive felt them myself.

What Can You Do To Avoid Burnout Then?

Stop coding. Thats the first step.
Not entirely of course, but give yourself a fixed time window in which youre allowed to code. Then stop.
And by stop I mean it. Close your IDE, stop Googling for a solution, and making notes for tomorrow. Its you time now.
I dont care if you love coding. You are not a code-writing machine, youre a person, and we humans need more than one thing in our lives. You need interaction with other people or activities that will keep your mind off of coding.

What can you do? Here are a few ideas:

Play a game

If youre not a social person, playing games can also help.But, please don't play a game you developed, if not you will get disturbed is there are any bugs in the game play.

Find one that speaks to you and captures your attention, then dive right into it. Mind you, dont change one burnout for the other, but try to balance your gaming time within your day. Maybe spend one or two hours after work as a way to help your mind make the context switch into not thinking about code anymore.
And if you are a social person, you can still implement gaming with friends (especially now that were all isolated) through online gaming. Use voice chat to pretend youre all sitting together; that also adds a lot to the experience and allows you to have an actual conversation about other peoples interests. Itll force you to stop thinking about your code and think about something completely different.

Read a book / Watch a movie

While theyre not the same type of activity, they both contribute in the same way: they take you out of your world and put you into a different one. If youre more into not thinking and letting others do the work for you, then a movie is a great escape ( I personally love watching movies to forget about work problems).
If, on the other hand, you have the time to read a book, then itll have the same effect. Itll take you out of your house and into a completely different world where your problems (and your context) dont exist. Youll spend a few hours completely unaware of whatever is causing the burnout. Youll feel refreshed and re-invigorated once youve closed that book for the day.

Catch up with friends or family

If you can, leave your house. But if you cant, a video call or even a phone call will do. Talk to other people and actively listen to them. Making a call because you have to and then going back to coding will not have any positive effect. Instead, spend some time having a conversation about life, about problems, or about anything that is not work-related. Something as simple as that will help you get your mind off whatever is causing your burnout.

Take a break

Funny story, I didnt know how to finish this article, and I had been writing since 4 a.m., so I left for a walk right at this point. It was a beautiful day, so my wife and I went for a walk. We picked up my kids from school, spent some time with them, and in the end, it was too late for me to go back to writing. Its the next day now, my mind is fresher, and I know how to move forward. I couldve stressed out about the fact that I couldnt finish this story yesterday, but instead, I gave myself time. Thats the whole point of taking a break.

Get off of social media

Look, I get it, I love using Twitter, Clubhouse & LinkedIn, and Im sure you have your favorite social media platform, but you need to stop using them from time to time. Some people even recommend uninstalling these apps from your mobile devices, so you can remove the notifications-related anxiety from your life. This is great if you notice that your social media activity is 100% related to your burnout. If youre getting burned out because you have an open source project thats getting lots of activity online, then your phone is probably buzzing with updates. Stop it. You cant unplug if youre constantly reminded about it.

Remove work-related notifications from your mobile devices

In the same vein as the social media app removal, if its work thats causing your burnout, unplug from it. That means turning off email and slack (or whatever combination you might have) notifications, or even if you have a dedicated work phone, turn it off if you can. If youre not meant to be working, you should not be looking at work-related notifications. Thats the rule you need to live by.

It Can Wait

Thats the mantra you need to keep in the back of your mind. That problem youve been trying to solve for the past five days? It can wait a few more hours. Take a break. That new release of your framework? It can wait a little longer. Spend some time with your family. That email you started writing three times but got interrupted? It can wait; its you time. Go read a book.
Once you accept the fact that everything but your health can wait, then taking a break becomes slightly easier.

What are you doing to lower or avoid your own burnout? How are you handling stress during the pandemic? Share your experience with others in the comments.