In today's episode, Matt asks about what to do when he gets bored at his job. Hint: quitting is not always the answer! Thanks to today's sponsor, Linode! Get root access on super-fast linux cloud servers in just a few minutes! Use the code DeveloperTea20 to get $20 credit. Visit http://spec.fm/linode to get started today!
In today's episode, Matt asks about what to do when he gets bored at his job. Hint: quitting is not always the answer!
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Today's episode is sponsored by Linode! Get root access on super-fast linux cloud servers in just a few minutes! Use the code DeveloperTea20 to get $20 of credit when you sign up.
Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and in today's episode we're talking about boredom. Listener Matt wrote in recently and he asked me this question. He says, Hi, I'm a new fan of your show and I have a burning question for you. I'm currently a senior software engineer at a large e-commerce site. Lately, I've been having a hard time feeling motivated because the current project I'm working on is filled with tasks that are not challenging. What should I do? I've been waiting for a few weeks to see if the boredom will pass, but it seems to be strengthening and I'm starting to loathe going in. Your help would be much appreciated. Thanks. Matt, thank you for sending in this question. Thank you for being honest with yourself about your job. The first step to curing boredom is... Well, admitting it. You have to understand what makes you bored. Why is it that you're bored? Matt, it looks like you have started down this path. You've recognized that the reason that you feel bored currently is because the tasks you have on your plate aren't really that challenging. Now, here's the amazing part about this question, Matt, and this is going to kind of surprise you. The answer isn't always going to be to give yourself more challenging tasks. That may sound a little bit weird. Because it seems like to fix the problem, you attack what seems to be causing the problem, right? In your case, Matt, you don't have challenging tasks in front of you. So it seems intuitively that the best way to fix it is to start having more challenging tasks. But the reality of your situation, Matt, and the reality of many developers' situations may or may not allow for that to change. In other words, Matt, you may be stuck with some pretty boring tasks for a while. Now, let's talk about why that is. Let's talk about why you may have boring tasks for a while. When we become developers, we accept a few realities. One, we don't just write the code that we want to write each and every day. That's not how our jobs work. And we aren't necessarily going to add value to the world by always solving interesting problems. Sometimes the problems that we solve are relatively mundane. In other words, sometimes the problems that we solve, actually, are not the problems that we want to solve. They actually have been solved before, and they aren't problems at all. Sometimes what we do as developers is implementation. Now, of course, this isn't true across the board. Some developers do have the freedom to do whatever they want. For example, in a university scenario, you may have the freedom to research whatever you want. You may have the freedom to build whatever you want in an exploratory way. But this isn't always true in the environment like what Matt is talking about. In a large e-commerce provider, you're not always going to have something incredibly interesting in front of you. Now, Matt, what you do have is a relatively maintainable, dependable job. What you do have is some stability in your job. So how do you actually defeat boredom, even though the thing that seems to be causing it is inescapable in your current situation? Now, I'm going to attack this problem from the perspective, Matt, that you want to keep your job. Because at Developer Tea, I highly believe in sticking with your job when you can. It will be few and far between where I tell you on this show to go into work tomorrow and quit your job. I don't think that that is the solution to most problems that people have. I think a lot of problems like what Matt is facing at the large e-commerce provider, a lot of these problems can be solved. Without cutting the cord entirely. And Matt, we're going to talk about ways that you can overcome boredom and hopefully get through this season. And maybe you will see some new problems, some more exciting, more interesting problems come to your desk in the near future. So we're going to talk about today's sponsor real quick. And then we're going to come back and discuss how Matt may be able to avoid boredom in his job. Today's sponsor is no stranger to the show, Linode. With Linode, you can... Instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode cloud. Of course, you have heard that on this show over and over. Now let's talk for a second about the reality for developers. When you are in a position like Matt, then you probably have time outside of work to do some side projects. The problem that a lot of people face is that they don't know what to do with their side project. In other words, they have no idea how to get it up and running. They get it built on their local machine, and then they don't... For a lot of people in this position, Linode is the perfect answer for you. Linode has eight data centers, and their plans start at just $10 a month. And if you use the code DEVELOPERT20, you can get $20 worth of credit. This means that you can host your side project for $100 for a year. That's a fantastic deal. And it's probably the cheapest hobby that you're ever going to find. Go and check it out, linode.com slash DEVELOPERT. Now, I don't want to undersell the power of Linode. Linode is scalable. They have native SSD storage. They have a 40 gigabit internal network and an Intel E5 processor stack. In other words, the performance of these Linode servers is absolutely industry standard. On top of that, they offer two gigabytes of RAM on their lowest tier. That's only $10 a month. And again, you get $20 of credit. So that lowers the monthly average over the next year to less than $10 a month. Go and check it out, linode.com. Remember, they have hourly billing, by the way. So you aren't going to pay for anything you don't use. linode.com slash DEVELOPERT. Use the code DEVELOPERT20 at checkout to get $20 of credit. Thank you again to Linode for sponsoring DEVELOPERT. So here we are solving Matt's boredom problem. Matt, you may even be at work right now, working through some of these kind of mundane tasks that you're talking about and listening to DEVELOPERT. DEVELOPERT.com. Try to keep your mind engaged. This can be kind of a dark situation to be in. This is kind of a frustrating situation to be in. And I want to tell you, first of all, that I empathize with you. And a lot of other developers find themselves in the position that you are in. And I want to give you a warning. I want to warn you not to fall victim to the grass is greener syndrome. It's very likely that what you are experiencing, Matt, that it will pass eventually. It's very likely that you can find a way out of this mental state that you're currently in, the mental state of boredom that you're currently in. And sometimes you can't fully avoid boredom. But Matt, what I'd like to do is provide you some advice for how to deal with boredom better. So Matt, I'm going to give you three tips today. I'm going to go through them very quickly. Number one, make sure you take time to invest in a hobby outside of work. Make sure you take time to invest in a hobby outside of work. I recommend that you do something other than coding, something other than computer work, something other than building things. Hopefully something that gives you some kind of physical activity. Having something to distract you from the boredom, number one. And number two, having physical exercise are both going to be absolutely key to getting through this difficult work that you currently are having to go through. By adding physical exercise to your work, you're going to be able to do a lot of things. Number one, you're going to be able to do a lot of things. By adding variety to your day and by breaking up your day with other things, this hopefully gives a little bit more freshness to the work that you do on a day-to-day basis. In other words, when you get to work the next morning after a really hard workout or let's say an intramural game of soccer, when you go into work the next day, you're likely going to be a little bit more refreshed and your mental game is going to be much more on point than if you were to simply go home and, you know, do nothing or code some more on the same project, work late hours or something like that on the same project, just slogging through the boring work. So give yourself something other than your work to do at night or if you work different hours that you can do during the day, give yourself a hobby to invest in. I highly recommend this literally for all developers. If you can swing it, get a hobby that you truly enjoy as much or as little as you can. If you can do it, get your more than you enjoy your work. We've talked about this concept on the show before. A lot of developers are musicians. A lot of developers like doing things like woodworking. A lot of developers also like weightlifting. There's a ton of possible things that you can put your energy and your time and your mental energy into outside of work. I highly recommend doing that. Number two, invest in learning during this time. Invest in learning during this time, particularly because the tasks that you are doing, are not very taxing. You're going to have a little bit more mental energy to put into learning. And what you can do is you can learn, maybe use some of your off time to learn. Or if your company, if the e-commerce company, Matt, will allow you to learn on the job, then spend some of your time learning on the job and then use the mundane tasks that you have in front of you, use the things that you are working on currently as a lens for seeing new programming, new programming concepts. The mundane tasks can be seen as an opportunity in this way because if it's something that you know how to solve very well, you can actually use this as kind of a playground, as sort of like a scrimmage game, right? You're preparing your mind. This is why people use to-do lists, for example, to learn a JavaScript framework, right? This is something that you can wrap your mind around. To-do lists are relatively simple. They have an audience. They have an on and off state. They have a couple of things that make them interesting enough or complex enough to show a particular feature, but simple enough that you can actually wrap your mind around the idea and use that idea as a playground for learning something new. So Matt, if your boss or if the company that you're working for, if they will allow you to use a new technology or if they will allow you to use these tasks to learn a new paradigm for programming, then absolutely take this time to invest in learning. Number three, when all else fails, if you can't do the above two things, especially, Matt, I want you to never underestimate the power of doing your work together with another person. Think about that for a second. Never underestimate the power of doing your work together with another person. One of the most frustrating things that you can go through is being bored alone. Something amazing. Something amazing happens when you do difficult slogging work with another person. When you have somebody else who is kind of in the same situation that you are in, suddenly you are no longer alone. You're no longer stranded in this very boring place. You have somebody else to kind of work with. The secondary benefit here is that you're ultimately going to be able to take your mind a little bit off of how boring or mundane the work is and instead, you'll have a little bit of a competition with this other person. So never underestimate the power of doing your work together with another person. Togetherness is hugely important for your happiness as a developer. This is true for introverts and extroverts alike. If you have somebody that you can do your work with, ultimately that boredom is a little bit easier to deal with. Matt, hopefully this has been insightful. I'd love to hear back from you as you go through this process of understanding boredom and as you go through learning how to deal with boredom in your job. Thank you so much for writing in to me, Matt. If you are listening to Developer Tea and you want to send me a question, you can send it to developertea at gmail.com. Thank you again to Linode for sponsoring today's episode of Developer Tea. Go to spec.fm slash Linode. That will get you $20 of credit at Linode on your Linode account. Go and check it out. Spec.fm slash Linode. Thank you again for listening to today's episode. If you don't want to miss out on future episodes, make sure you subscribe in whatever podcasting app you use. Thanks for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.