Like many in my profession I’m a little obsessive about my work. Coding is addictive - every problem solved and test passed is another little dopamine hit. Much of our work is arranged to take advantage of that, indeed some XP practices in particular use it - the steady cadence of success becomes self-sustaining because a team used to it will move the earth to keep succeeding.

That does mean that I consciously have to force myself to stop - the 40 hour week rule was there for a reason. Coding is just so much fun. I discovered long ago that I’m not suited to switching off at 5pm - the brain is still going. I’ve had to adjust my lifestyle to cope.

When in contract, one useful habit is evening sports - a gym set or a run helps clear the head. During the winter that can take a fair bit of willpower to enforce - the mind might be working, but the body wants to hibernate.

I have a very bad habit of occasionally working over weekends - whether it’s doing experiments with the codebase that I wouldn’t be comfortable billing for during my billable day (as not directly required by stories), or doing ops or build work to give the team a boost by Monday morning (there are usually small tasks that need doing to help the team move faster). I know it’s a bad practice, and I would be advising anyone else to stop doing it, yet I still have a tendency to spend a half day here and there.

The main reason I haven’t burnt out yet is that my contracts are time-limited. If I was a permie I’d be a wreck at that pace. When a contract ends, I get to relax and restore my life balance. I intentionally don’t do back-to-back contracts for this reason.

Downtime gives me a great opportunity to reset, perhaps do something completely different for a while. I’ve gone back to uni to study twice. I think five degrees is my limit though; not because I’m any less keen on the learning and studying (university opportunities for education and self-improvement are fantastic), but because the increasing age gap is isolating (let’s face it, I had finished my undergrad before most of the current postgrads were even born).

Getting my PhD has given me a licence (at least in my own head) to do scientific research of my own. It’s sufficiently different from the usual software engineering that it counts as a holiday all by itself. Obviously it works better in a collaborative environment, but it’s still rewarding working on my own. The degree has taught me how to use the existing research literature to see what has been done and more importantly see where the gaps in knowledge remain to be filled (exactly as it was supposed to). There are no end of interesting topics to explore.

An aside - I think this is awesome. Scientific research is fractal - the deeper you look at something, the more detail and research opportunities you discover. It’s all there waiting to be explored - it just needs time, resources and discipline to get it done. Getting it published however is a whole other deal - I haven’t cracked that one yet.

So back to the balance - I am a bit of a workaholic, acknowledged. By varying the type of work I do, and making sure I’m pushing my body as hard with training and exercise as I push my brain, I think I do a good job of avoiding burnout or boredom.

Shared at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/work-life-balance-donal-stewart