I second the ADHD check. This sounds like classic ADHD symptoms to me. Once you sort of reach that pinnacle you've been striving for, it's easy to lose the drive when you can relax and quit striving or when things are less challenging. You will find your motivation will wax and wane, week in and week out. You start avoiding the real work so much with distractions that it becomes painful just to face it and your own procrastination, which magnifies the symptoms by an order of magnitude.
Do NOT let this relatively easily solvable problem destroy your career. I made this mistake early on in my career and paid for it with a lost job. I'm glad things ended up the way they did, but it would have been better if I left there on good terms.
Even if medication is a temporary fix, it might be what this situation calls for. Often in life we have to chose the best of two evils, and your career is not something to put on the line. I know that I am way happier working 40 hours a week steady than I was when I would binge hack for 120 hours straight while riding a motivation wave.
If you can get yourself back into the groove and being productive, try to figure out what gives you motivation and try to work your way into a position that continuously feeds you these things. That's what I'm working towards.
> I second the ADHD check. This sounds like classic ADHD symptoms to me. Once you sort of reach that pinnacle you've been striving for, it's easy to lose the drive when you can relax and quit striving or when things are less challenging. You will find your motivation will wax and wane, week in and week out. You start avoiding the real work so much with distractions that it becomes painful just to face it and your own procrastination, which magnifies the symptoms by an order of magnitude.
Holy crap, you just described my life. There's no way I'm an extreme case, but maybe I really do have a little ADHD going on...?
I think everyone finds themselves with those thoughts and feelings.
I think that the lack of drive and focus is a symptom of something, in rare cases perhaps ADD/ADHD. However from personal experience I usually discover a core problem that was causing these symptoms. Resolving that problem takes care of the lack of motivation and focus.
Perhaps the specific work environment isn't for you. One job I worked directly out of university crushed my soul as a developer. As an intern I had vast responsibility and did a lot of interesting projects. Once I joined on fulltime, they were going through a restructuring period and I ended up doing trivial work putting out fires. Luckily they downsized a third of the company a few months later and I was fired - a blessing in disguise there. A week later I was running a small team doing innovative new projects at a large corp.
Often it can be outside factors in life that strangle your productivity. When my father was very sick and hospitalized, my work drastically suffered. I'd like to consider myself a strong individual whose outlook on life would allow me to deal with such events with ease. However, in the situation without knowing it at the time it was impacting my life. Instead of taking a few weeks off and dealing with the issues at hand, I threw myself into my work while my progress continued slowing exponentially. Eventually I was working 16 hours a day and writing 0 lines of code. I ended up quitting that job, and taking time to deal with my life.
Anyways, the moral of the story was stepping back and discovering the root cause of these symptoms can be very beneficial. Don't block it out with meds unless that is really the cause.
>Anyways, the moral of the story was stepping back and discovering the root cause of these symptoms can be very beneficial. Don't block it out with meds unless that is really the cause.
If the meds fix the problem, and they have proven fairly safe, why not use them? (I mean, they aren't absolutely safe, but they are very safe compared to, say, driving to work every day.)
It's not a lifetime choice, either. You can decide that you need some help, and get it for the next six months, then stop and work on your personal issues. This is actually what I'm doing now (though, I'm nearing the end of my rest... it's time to get some work done.)
I agree with everything you say. Often there are other factors. It sounds like this is a consistent problem with OP though, and regardless of environment or lifestyle, he's still having issues.
While we all have a little bit of it in us: let's face it, nobody wants to work on a dull project, ADHD symptoms become so exasperated in these scenarios that they become debilitating and self-destructive. The brain turning to mush that OP described hit it right on the head. The best litmus test I've found is to the conversation test:
"frequent shifts in conversation, not listening to others, not keeping one's mind on conversations"
I can have "black out" episodes where I impulsively and immediately walk away from conversations without finishing them, often with a little amnesia. I've asked my girlfriend a question, essentially immediately forgotten that I did so, and turned up the radio volume.
No, it's normal, and blaming it on a medical condition is dangerous and not helping you fix it. Perhaps in some people it's due to ADHD, but in most it's not.
Do NOT let this relatively easily solvable problem destroy your career. I made this mistake early on in my career and paid for it with a lost job. I'm glad things ended up the way they did, but it would have been better if I left there on good terms.
Even if medication is a temporary fix, it might be what this situation calls for. Often in life we have to chose the best of two evils, and your career is not something to put on the line. I know that I am way happier working 40 hours a week steady than I was when I would binge hack for 120 hours straight while riding a motivation wave.
If you can get yourself back into the groove and being productive, try to figure out what gives you motivation and try to work your way into a position that continuously feeds you these things. That's what I'm working towards.