ChipLog

Various stuff from some guy.

Lost my hacking mojo

18 Comments Posted by chipx86 on May 16, 2006

I’ve been trying to get out of this funk I’ve been in the past few weeks. It’s been far too hard to just sit down and code outside of work. I can’t even put together a release. A large part of this is due to the amount of work I’ve been doing for VMware as of late on VMware Server. I think another part of it is that I recently finished up releases of Galago, libnotify, notification-daemon, and Leaftag and

I know this is temporary, but it’s frustrating because there really is a lot of cool stuff I’m looking forward to working on. Some may say to enjoy it, take a break, play some games. Problem is, I don’t even feel like doing that! Perhaps after work calms down and I’ve spent long enough doing nothing at home, I’ll have more motivation to code.

How do other people usually deal with this?

Uncategorized Life, Open Source, Projects, VMware, Work

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18 Responses to Lost my hacking mojo

Ed Mack May 16, 2006 at 12:52 AM
When I’m in this situation I just over-focus on another hobby, like cooking, decorating, electronics or fitness

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Rob May 16, 2006 at 12:55 AM
Yeah, I totally second that. Don’t play computer games (in case you were referring to that). For me meeting friends and going out for sports works best.

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Luca May 16, 2006 at 1:38 AM
The same thing happens to me.

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Eckhard May 16, 2006 at 2:19 AM
I don’t even look at a computer in such situations when I don’t have to (this is, at home…). I take a break, read a book, do something completely different like walking, biking. In the end it means for me that I am powered off and should not push it further.

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Anders May 16, 2006 at 3:27 AM
We don’t deal with it!

Don’t think about it, just do whatever you feel like. But please, don’t use your energy on something you don’t have, it will come back eventually.

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nobody May 16, 2006 at 5:03 AM
Exercise is the answer. Exercise in forest, looking at some birds, trees, water, plants, everything completely different from what you do every day will help.

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Cedric May 16, 2006 at 6:19 AM
Stop hacking during two days, go to a dropzone, get your ass out of the plane a dozen time, and rejoice !!! Once you’ve done it you’ve got more hacking mana than before !

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Petar May 16, 2006 at 7:29 AM
Reading is another good option, anything related to art as well… Stay away from computers until you feel the need to hack again.

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Ben G. May 16, 2006 at 7:55 AM
Thirded. Why not head over to End Game in Oakland and learn some geeky board games tomorrow night?

http://endgameoakland.com/cgi-local/calendar/calendar.pl?view=Event&event_id=14

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Scott Perry May 16, 2006 at 9:28 AM
When you find out, let me know. I’m so burnt out right now, I can’t get anything productive done.

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Mike Hearn May 16, 2006 at 9:45 AM
3rd here for sport or unstructured exercise of some form.

If the weather is good I tend to go for long walks, maybe read some good books (even if I read them before), and re-evaluate what I want to do. Burnout can be a sign that parts of your mind aren’t convinced about what you’re doing – how do you really feel about the things you want to work on?

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Mike Hearn May 16, 2006 at 9:48 AM
Incidentally and unrelatedly Gina seems to have dropped off planet tacobeam … her feed is no longer validating I wonder if that can be fixed.

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Colin Barrett May 16, 2006 at 3:17 PM
What I do is is to just sit down and DO IT.

It’s not very effective

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mibus May 16, 2006 at 4:28 PM
I usually just don’t do anything for a week or so.

Used to be, anyway. I’ve been so tired of late (between work + 18-month-old + 2-month-old) I haven’t managed to get into anything in a while, even when I do get the time.

It’s very probably the extra work doing it. The amount of stuff I can hack on at home drops off significantly when work is ramped up.

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segphault May 16, 2006 at 5:40 PM
This happens to me a lot, as I tend to get fixated on things and completely lose my ability to focus. When I get really frustrated, I try to find a distraction or a repetitive task that can occupy my mind for a little while. I find that any sort of task that provides me with the illusion of cleanliness or organization generally makes me feel a lot better. For instance, sometimes I can regain my focus just by taking a shower or tidying up a specific room in the house.

Sometimes when I’m really frustrated and I can’t focus at all, I reformat my computer and reinstall everything. For some reason, reformatting has a really therapeutic affect for me. When I finish getting everything installed, my whole life feels a lot more organized and my problems seem a lot less intimidating. I think it makes me feel like I’m in control.

In some cases, I just need to get away from the project. Try spending a day or two at the local library reading about something interesting, or spend a few hours chatting in a non-developer channel on IRC.

At times, I find that if I write about the programming project I’m working on, it makes it a lot easier for me to get interested in it again. Perhaps you should consider writing a short article about one of your projects for the GNOME Journal.

I hope you find a way out of your rut, I’m always happy to see progress on useful things like libnotify and Galago.

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sredojevics May 17, 2006 at 11:29 AM
That’s because you are the rock star … really

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pejcao May 21, 2006 at 10:41 AM
Sorry to ask you this way, but what is the name of this antispam WP plugin (this anti OCR required on reply)?

In my “Rocky” generation “Mojo” translates to “Eye of tiger”, on Physics is called “Momentum”

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ChipX86 May 21, 2006 at 11:40 AM
pejcao: It’s called SecureImage. The old one I had (Captcha!) wasn’t working well anymore.

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