Always Be Learnin’: My Developer Fatigue Story

I’m a developer, and I love what I do!

I have been doing this for 10+ years now, and a lot of things have changed since I dipped my toes into programming — Macromedia Flash anyone? Yep, programming for me started with stringing together MovieClips with sexy code like goToAndPlay(10)… let’s pour one out for ActionScript folks.🍾🍾

From there it’s been a freight train of new things year after year … from jQuery, Facebook Apps 🤢, HTML5, Backbone, Angular, and React. Let’s not forget a brief foray into Ruby on Rails, good ol’ PHP, Node.js, and the endless string of build tools — looking at you Grunt/Gulp/Webpack. I could go on and on, which brings me to the primary point of this article…

Being a developer is awesome, but I often feel the pressure of “keeping up” overwhelming!

“keeping up” with the latest and greatest

When you’re a developer it’s like signing a contract that says I will never be done learning. I think continued learning is an integral part to any good developer’s growth, but things change at such a furious pace that this can be draining. Even more stress is added when you consider that your valuable time may be spent learning something that could be obsolete in six months.

For me the pressure to keep up with the latest and greatest becomes daunting at times. I have often thought, if I’m ever lucky enough to have extended time off work would I truly be able to unplug during that time? Sure, my core skills would remain intact, but upon my return I could find that React is old news, and AwesomeSauceJS is the new treat of the week — looks like all my previous expertise is out the window. Ok ok… that may be an exaggeration, but this doesn’t prevent these thoughts from crossing my mind when I take time off.

“keeping up” with others

Have you ever looked at someone’s Instagram feed, and thought damn that person’s life looks amazing. In reality we’re only getting a glimpse of a polished version of that person’s life with all the “bad” filtered out. I feel the same goes when you’re a developer looking through your Twitter, GitHub, or some other social platform — you can’t help but constantly compare yourself to your peers.

• How in the hell does this person have 100k followers? Shit! Looks like I need to message everyone in Canada asking for a follow.
• What!! wobblybits.js just got another 500 ⭐️’s on Github? My open source projects must be suck!
• Holy crap that developer just spoke at 20 conferences last month! I can’t even put together a damn lunch and learn for work.
• Wow! @megadevloper2000 just published a new library, released a new podcast, and managed to write a book on teaching your dog to program.

Obviously these are exaggerations, but my primary point is an hour on Twitter can easily have you questioning the work you’re doing or not doing. Can this same content be used for motivation? For sure, but at the same time, like that perfect Instagram feed, it can have you unfairly weighing your success based on what others are sharing and doing.

In closing

At the end of the day if this is the worst part about being a developer then we are sitting pretty. I feel privileged to be part of this community, and look forward to many more years of growth in the industry. If you happen to relate to any of this I find the following reminders help when I’m feeling overwhelmed:

• If you have time to learn something new that’s great! Make sure to choose something that excites you, and you’re not picking it up because of outside pressure.
• If you’re not in the right mindset, or don’t have the time to learn something new — don’t force it! This will just create more stress on your end, and most likely result in a negative learning experience.
• Be your own judge and jury when it comes to measuring your success, and don’t let comparing your accomplishments to other’s diminish your own.
• People on Twitter pissing you off? That OS project not motivating you anymore? — Don’t be afraid to unplug, even if it’s just for the night it can make all the difference.

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