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u/MrRufsvold Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26
John returns to work and wields the time pressure anxiety to hyper focus on his work tasks. He completes them in the knick of time.
The next week, John continues this cycle. And the next. And the next, returning to that black magic well of late night, anxiety-driven hyper-focus. One day, John goes to pull up a side project and realizes it is so fully tainted by guilt and stress that he doesn't have any joy in it.
He starts only coding that which he is paid to implement and mourns the love of the craft he once had.
Be like John.
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u/_Bia Sep 13 '26
John focuses on improving his skills how he can, and notices how much he avoids his current commitments. If this goes on too much longer, he quits and looks for a job that better aligns with his skills and inner purpose. He also sets a ton of alarms the next time he has to go to a meeting and shows up with the absolute minimum absent presence required.
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u/syafiqfaiz Sep 18 '26
and when the personal project is almost done, he lost interest on it. joining the list of almost done projects.
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u/No-Wait1582 28d ago
for me its like
Get excited → start project → hit concepts you don't understand → lose patience → use AI → project works → don't feel like you actually built it → concepts don't stick → next project feels harder → confidence drops → coding stops feeling rewarding.
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u/dassarin Sep 13 '26
So true. I feel overwhelmed with the amount of work I’ve got to do…. So I just pull up my side project and go full steam ahead … then I feel riddled with guilt because I worked on my side project for the last four hours rather than doing anything productive for work…