Tech-fatigue and how I got over it
From tech-loving fanatic to wanting to ditch every tech I had and back again.
The tech-loving fanatic
Let me paint you a picture first…
To kick things off, here is a short history — it'll be short, I promise — of how this all came to be…
At the age of twelve, about twenty years ago, things kicked into gear when I bought my first computer. As of that moment, I knew I wanted to work in IT when I grew up. From high school to college, my whole life revolved around technology and computers, especially the web.
I was — or am, I don’t know — a fanatic. One of the extreme kind. I felt like I needed to know, well, everything there was to know about web technology. Every library, JQuery, MooTools, HandlebarsJS, KnockoutJs… I tested them all. The list goes on and on, but I'm sure you get the idea.
I had enough free time to learn every framework and library out there. I tinkered with hardware and software, I had thousands of ideas… In short, I felt unstoppable!
Fast-forward to my first job as a web developer. I had the time of my life! Working for some high-profile clients, going to conferences and learning new things at a very rapid pace. I kept it going for five years. During my job interview, before I started working there, they asked me “where do you see yourself in five years”. I told them that, if I’m still doing the same thing after five years, I would be looking to switch jobs.
And that’s exactly what happend.
The year is 2011. I moved over to the company I currently work for. I liked the idea of becoming a consultant specialised in web technology. Again, I got the opportunity to work on some awesome stuff for major international companies. And then, about three years ago, it started to go downhill…
Experiencing tech-fatigue
Burn-out? Bore-out? I don’t think so!
More and more people around me started to suffer from burn-outs or bore-outs. I too was feeling something I couldn't exactly put a name to. But, what I was certain of, was that I was certainly not suffering from burn- or bore-out.
I would be the one jumping out of bed in the morning, happy to go to work.
I would be the first in line to help organise our monthly after-hours tech sessions. But suddenly, I felt ‘uninterested’ in the topics some of my colleagues were posting in our company’s Slack channel. Not long ago, I would’ve dropped everything and I would have dived in eagerly to explore them. Why was that no longer the case?
Then it hit me…
When I looked at my to-do list, the list where I noted all the things I wanted to explore, build, and investigate, I noticed that there was more tech-related stuff coming at me then I could handle.
At the time, I was really into web frameworks and playing around with hardware. I wanted to be the best in Angular, React, VueJS, you name it. I wanted to test the latest smartphones, gadgets, printers. The whole shabang. Looking back, wanting to master them all, it would’ve taken me like 24hrs a day, twenty-four-seven with no sleep — at all. It just wasn’t feasible.
At a certain point, I simply stopped caring about tech in general.
I wanted to throw my smartphone away and go back to my good old Nokia 3210. When I came home, my laptop wouldn’t even make it past the living room door. It would just wait for me in the hallway until the next morning.
And, if the occasion occurred where I spent the evening on my laptop, that would result in an evening of a thousand page refreshes on Facebook or reading pointless discussions on whatever topic I came across. Not really productive, I can tell you that.
Finding my way back to tech
The power of peers
Introducing knowledge sharing and tech sessions at work, it became a huge advantage on selecting the things I needed to pay attention to or follow up on.
We would pick a topic, look into it, and present our findings to the rest of the team. Because my colleagues and I share a lot of the same interests, I could easily follow their judgement on topics I was interested in or that were listed on my to-do list.
Hackathons ftw!
When the interest in a certain tech topic was big enough, we would organise a hackathon. During a period of two days — mostly during the weekend — those who participate would create an MVP — Most Viable Product.
The increased learning speed and the large amount of knowledge sharing during those two days is priceless.
We would have designers, programmers, and functional analysts in the office, in a totally different vibe then during ‘normal’ working days. Informal talks, casual clothing, lots of food and drinks.
And, in the end, everyone has increased their knowledge on a certain topic, and you have something you can tick off your list. #bliss!
Let’s Meetup?!
A meetup is an event where — usually — an expert speaker comes to talk about a certain technology and where you can meetup — pun intended — with other people from the industry to share your findings.
The power of these meetups lies in the fact that you get all the information from an industry expert, rather then from someone who spent a day or so looking into it and then telling you whether it’s good or bad.
Follow your gut
When you are working in the industry long enough, you get a feel for the things that you should keep an eye on and for the things you can ignore.
For example, when a web framework is backed by a large community and is well-maintained, that’s one you can add to your bookmarks. But when someone comes around with yet another way to — let’s say — spin up a node webserver, it’s better to start with that bookmark you’ve already added than adding a new one.
Figure out what you want
If you are working in the IT-industry, there are a hundred career paths you can take. The most important question you need to ask yourself is: "What do I want to do?"
During this period of “tech-fatigue” — finally, I said it! — I realised that I wanted to investigate and build phygital solutions— combining the physical and digital world — only by using web technology.
By defining what I wanted to do, defining the path that I wanted to take, I could eliminate half of the items that were on my to-do list. There was no need to test some new HTML5 gaming framework. I wouldn’t be doing anything with it anyway. Investigating how I can use bluetooth from within the browser, now that could move up the list and other things could go down. Defining a hierarchy, putting things in order gave a sense of…zen, I guess.
Plan your “Me-time”
The final advice that I can give you, is to plan in some “me-time”, time especially set aside for you. If you are single, that’s easy. If you have to take into account other family members, it’s a little bit trickier, but still doable!
With the combination of a sorted to-do list, knowing where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do in my future career, and not having to worry if I could tick of everything on my list, I could schedule my me-time more easily.
Whenever the family would go and sit in front of the TV in the evening, I would read up on things involving topics on my list, create small proof-of-concepts, or work on some new features. If it was time to go to bed, I would go to bed. I didn’t work trough the night. Tomorrow’s another day!
In the weekends, that’s where I could get the most work done. Saturday and Sunday morning is my “me-time”. I get up the moment I open my eyes, usually around 8am. That gives me 2hrs of extra sleep a day, which is enough. On a typical Saturday or Sunday, I would get around 2h 1/2 of work done in the morning. The rest of the time depends on how our days are planned.
Final word
So, there you have it. It was a strange couple of months in which I went from tech-loving fanatic to wanting to ditch every tech I had to someone who knew what he wanted and how to get there just by following the steps above.
Know that you don't have to figure it out on your own, trust the community you are in, and create some balance and clarity for yourself. Those will get you a long way!
This article was written for those who might end up in the same situation, and hopefully help them out. If you have experienced something similar, and you have more tips on how to get rid of tech-fatigue, please comment below.
Keep on creating and building awesome stuff!
