tips needed; dealing with mental block while coding

[Rob Sutherland]

I've been coding for a living since 1978 I guess, with a few breaks due 
to bad luck
or bad planning or both. What I've found is that to live long and 
prosper as a coder
you have to:

      - Learn your limits and respect them. Don't let other peoples 
needs or your own
         obsessions push you into neglecting your own needs to eat, 
sleep and be merry.
         I almost died in my 30's by not understanding that. There are 
some good tips
         in this thread about self-maintenance techniques.

      - Understand that it all comes in waves and organize your work to 
take advantage
        of this. Coding uses up a certain type of mental resource 
(Hackinium :-) ) but
        there are lots of project related work that doesn't. I try to 
set things up so that
        when I burn out on coding I can do something mindless until it 
comes back, like
        reading code and putting in blank lines and correcting 
indentations :-) If I burn out
        on computer work completely I do something like go to the 
Drummers in Exile
        and jump up and down for a while - http://drummersinexile.com/

     - Don't get swallowed up in no win situations. No matter how grim 
it gets and as a
       survivor of Stalag Cobol I can tell you it gets pretty grim, if 
you can say 'It's just a job'
       at the end of the day and turn to something that gives you some 
sense of accomplishment
       then you won't feel like you have to die for the Emperor or whatever.


Rob
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