Hey guys,
I’ve recently finished my 2nd year as a CS student and during this summer I’ve tried to work hard on personal projects but I find that my depression is keeping me from reaching my full potential.
I’m lucky enough that my current employer (non-Programmer student assistant type role) allows me to work on programming during down time at the office. So I originally set out the following goals -
- Work on my project for 30-40 hours a week ( A web app)
- Take Coursera courses to fill some knowledge gaps (i.e. Algorithms)
- Start researching topics that are covered in next semester’s coursework, OpenGL, Software Engineering, etc.
Now that almost two months have passed, I am nowhere near as productive as I originally set out to be. I have completely failed to achieve goals 2 and 3. I’ve found that I’ve placed more effort into my project than the other primarily because I want to show employers a halfway-decent GitHub portfolio.
But my depression is holding me back from making any progress. I find that simple error messages or difficulty in thinking of a solution to a problem steers me away from working. I will work on my project for about an hour or two, hit a brickwall, and then quit. I am fearful that I can’t break out of this endless loop of bad work ethic.
I have established a healthier lifestyle. I exercise for an hour 4-6 times a week. I eat small healthy meals throughout the day. Despite all the positive changes to my lifestyle, I still feel depressed throughout most of my day.
My question is, how can I develop a level of persistence in which I can crank out code/solutions throughout the day? Is it a mental-health issue that is stopping me from becoming a good programmer?
TL;DR - Second year CS student unable to find the mental strength to work on code because of depression. Wondering how to develop a level of persistence/work ethic.
Thank you
Hi @cs_student
I’ve been in your position as a undergraduate myself, wanting to do it all. This is probably not what you want to hear, but I think you should seriously consider doing less. Or at least, consider not trying to do everything at the same time. Coding for 30-40 hours a week is mentally taxing as is, and adding the kind of studying you describe would be very difficult for anyone (not impossible perhaps, but definitely not easy). Personally I find it hard to do more than about 6 hours of very taxing mental work in the day. I can spend more hours doing more routine code-related tasks (documentation, cleanup, organizing my commits, writing status reports to my colleagues), but not on core tasks like designing algorithms.
Here are some concrete suggestions you could try:
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Try doing less, at least for a week or two. Don’t worry about doing the Coursera courses, or studying ahead. If your webapp is what’s most interesting right now, do that and don’t worry about the others.
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Measure output, not hours. Personally I find it better to measure my productivity in terms of things I’ve accomplished, rather than the number of hours I’ve put. I decide on a couple of important things I need to get done in a day (or week) and focus on getting them done. If that means, that a particular feature takes only an hour or two to implement, that’s great. I can call it a job well done and take the rest of the day off. Any other time I put in is purely optional and stress-free. Conversely, if it means I spend ten hours of a day and stay at work till 8pm, I do that too. In the long run, I’ve found things usually balance out into a reasonable amount of work, especially in the latter stages.
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Don’t feel guilty about taking time off. Reading your post, it seems like you’re beating yourself up over not working long hours. I don’t think that’s healthy. One thing that has really benefited me is really taking time off. When I’m at work, focusing at a problem, I’m totally focused. But once I’m away from the computer, I give myself permission to completely disconnect. I often have code-related problems rattling around my head, I don’t feel obligate to always be thinking about work. This plays into measuring output rather than hours. If I know I’ve met my goals, I can feel guilt-free about watching Netflix or hanging out.
The point of all the above is to develop a healthy and sustainable relationship with your work. Later in your post, you say you feel depressed despite working out and eating healthy. If that’s the case, I would strongly suggest you see a mental health professional. Problems of persistence/work ethic can be tied to depression in intricate and for lasting relief, you should really talk to someone professionally qualified to help you. I’ve been seeing a therapist for over a year now, and it’s been really helpful in teasing apart what aspects of my problems are simply dissatisfaction with my work and which ones are broader depression-related issues.
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