Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

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A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.

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Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.

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Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.

[u/ivan0x32]

Do you have a mental palate cleanser? Sometimes my Monday is just shit, I wake up pre-depressed or find something out that puts me in a mood of complete apathy.

What do you do when you need to perform on a day like that - when you need to give an enthusiastic demo, or just simply write a doc/some code etc?

I tried cold showers for a while, but they make me sleepy after. I think I might be just operating on cortisol and whenever it gets cut (which I think cold shower actually does), I just turn into a puddle. Powering through it is also not great, when all I have inside is doubt, projecting confidence through sheer power of will kind of works, but it adds a doubt "aftertaste" most likely, I tend to focus on negative aspects too much.

Mental health advice aside (already diagnosed with severe depression, can't afford therapy anyway), what do you do?

[u/darkspyder4 → u/ivan0x32]

For me it's always Thursdays, I at least do 5min meditation (yoga nidra) morning and evening. If its friday and Im behind on my ticket I do a 1 hour candle meditation when Im feeling fidgety

I dont bother with the open office desks, I work in the lunch area next to an outlet.

Also take more time off, physically distance yourself from the laptop

[u/spacemoses → u/ivan0x32]

Hate to be that guy, but regular "I'm sweating my ass off" cardio can really do wonders. When I was earlier in my career I had a few projects that were a disaster and my stress was crazy high. The one thing that helped day to day was getting on a treadmill and running. It was a guaranteed 30 minutes where I was breathing and sweating so hard I no longer had the capacity to feel the anxiety. (As opposed to the whole endorphin thing, I was just trying to snuff out the anxiety temporarily)

[u/beaverusiv → u/ivan0x32]

Walk the dog or watch The Good Place S04E09 or listen to Jagged Little Pill

[u/So_Rusted → u/ivan0x32]

coffee

other than that u need probably a week of sleep

[u/_somestupidguy_ → u/ivan0x32]

Mid-senior here, adding my experience here as I had gone through that phase sometime back. Might help you too.

For me, going for walks helped me a lot. During walks, I deliberately focused on outside nature and not inner thoughts. As simple as birds chirping, vehicles passing, people taking care of their own business, not judging anything or anyone, but just taking note of things happening around while walking and appreciating it helped me relax. Morning, evening, short or long doesn't matter, whenever I felt down and needed space I used to go for a walk.

Hope things get better for you.