Some things that help / helped me:

1. Some serious self-reflection about what the problem is: What are the things you do vs don't enjoy about your job? Do you really like what you're doing or are you doing it because of money, goals you set for yourself / you think this is the most prestigious type of company / problem / etc? Is the problem with yourself or the people you work with? Have you ever been happy at work before (at any job you had) and what was different about that? Or perhaps are you not sure about what you actually enjoy? Or are you just tired?

2. More self-reflection about what work means to you as a person and why: Is your job also your passion? Are you proud of your technical achievements? Do you have daily work hours or do the boundaries blur? Do you put in more work / care more about things than others (e.g. code quality, arguing for the right technical decision)? Do you feel especially good when people tell you you did a great job or somehow acknowledge that you're smart? Do you feel disappointed, unappreciated or like there's something wrong with you if you fail to get this kind of feedback? Not saying this is always the case, but for me they're warning signs for a type of relationship with work that's prone to burnout sooner or later. Maybe talk to a therapist about this kind of thing to help you sort out your stance on this, or just generally about a downward spiral in mood.

3. A big break - unfortunately not everyone can afford this but I'm assuming an engineer with a decade of work experience like you probably can. Go do something else for a while. Definitely a month. Maybe a year: e.g. take a job that's not the most technically or personally challenging but will give you other things: more work-life balance, meet interesting people you wouldn't, will expose you to different subjects you like, give you more freedom with your approach, let you play more. For example, I worked at an academic research center for a few years and it was not without its own challenges but overall broadened my horizons a lot. This isn't going to fix your problems in the long term but maybe you'll realize truly how things can be different - the benefit of perspective.

4. Some small "daily life" changes (obviously huge caveats here about lots of people not being able to afford / allowed to do this stuff but again software engineers usually have this kind of nice privilege, so why not take advantage): Some example ideas: Try to do less things at once, maybe work on one thing at a time even. Work on something with someone you like. Take 5-6 Fridays or Wednesday afternoons off in a row: just see how lessening the load a bit or breaking up the work helps. Enforce a hard-cutoff deadline in the evening. etc.

Now, to actually follow my own advice ...

I am still on my way to be fully recovered (assuming one day it will eventually happen). Things I recommend:

1. Find another thing other than work and, I insistently suggest, other than even CS, that you might enjoy. In my case, climbing. It keeps me healthy, focussed and relaxed. It gives me self confidence as I see I accomplish new challenges and I progress. Also, it has helped me to improve my social skills and to appreciate and enjoy interaction with people with different interests other than computers. Computer Science is not everything.

2. Change your area. Nowadays, I simply refuse to fall back again into that "reactive-devops-trenches-wake-up-at-4:00am-and-follow-this-runbook" or "refactor-this-crap-and-fight-the-folklore". Life is short and health goes first.

3. Assume work does not define you. Do your job the best you can but remember, you are not gonna inherit the company. Become cynical but not toxic.

4. Have compassion for yourself. What you feel is completely normal. You are not weak. You simply got wasted by an industry that is mainly, IMHO a utter shitshow in 99% of the cases. Allow yourself to suffer.

Anyways, I wish you the best and really hope you recover.

I'm a staff-level SWE. I took the last year off of paid employment because I felt anxious and stressed even though everything was, objectively, fine. I had some poor health habits that I was staunchly ignoring and a project I was deeply vested in at my job was ripped out from under me. The meaning I ascribed to that project was giving my life purpose and, with that suddenly missing, and with my health in less than ideal shape, my outlook on the world became dismal.

I took the year off because I wanted to try and rediscover that curiosity you mentioned having lost. I used to LOVE programming. I loved feeling like a techno-wizard making pixels bend to my will. What happened? Why did I now feel anxious and uncomfortable staring at a screen while trying to think critically? I think I got a little too lost in the sauce of the startup world and it became clear that it would take some "me time" to rebalance.

So, from some perspectives, I've been doing nothing. No significant other, no money-making job, not travelling the world or living life to the fullest... but having a project that feels meaningful to me, whose existence is moderately under my control, and that I have sufficient time and energy to engage with -- that's giving me most of what I felt was missing. Well, that and dropping a bunch of widely understood bad habits and picking up some better ones.

I want to see myself as a more consistent and reliable person. In my 20s, I had infinite energy. In my 30s, I'm finding that's only true if I keep myself away from alcohol and drugs, exercise constantly, connect with people, and, most importantly, be mindful of my physical and emotional state. If I start slipping into a rut, and don't notice it and nip it in the butt, suddenly it can take over my whole demeanor and disrupt a lot of good things I had going. A couple of days of bad sleep, coupled with a desire to keep pushing forward, can cause me to regress into drinking a bunch of caffeine. The caffeine will mess with my anxiety and mood and I'll be more tempted by unhealthy food and marijuana. These decisions start to take their toll, the effects compound, and suddenly I'm in a destructive cycle where I see myself being less and less each day. I start to hide from myself. All these issues were present in my 20s, but they never really seemed to be a hindrance. I could just roll with the punches and remain proud of my accomplishments. Now, in my mid-thirties, I find myself frustrated (yet a little excited) to try and figure out how to keep myself running like a well-oiled machine. I want to remain proud of my consistent growth into my later years and it's going to require getting better at working with myself.

That said, I know me. I don't do well without a project that I can see myself in. It's what makes getting up in the morning worthwhile. I think it has to do with having an avoidant/dismissive emotional attachment style, or something to that effect. So, if someone were to ask me if I'm working on nothing then I guess I would always want to confidently say, "No. I am working on something, but at my own pace and with poorly-defined goals."

So, in an effort to work on myself, I've given myself a project whose goal is to help me, and others, be more consistent and present. I must admit I've taken the most circuitous route possible to achieving this effect as I'm ostensibly creating a digital ant farm which functions as a mental health companion (https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants). The goal is to create a pet whose growth fluctuates with its owners' consistency. I want to see my ant colony thrive when I am consistent. When I am feeling good I want to see my ants take on new challenges, expand their territory, stress themselves out trying to maintain growth, build habituated pathways to foods in an attempt to scale. And then, when I invariably go through an emotional downturn, I want to see my ants yield some of their land back to the fog-of-war, hunker down and weather the storm of inconsistent check-ins and less good habits undermining my personal energy. And then, when I've sated my desire for self-destruction and re-commit to being dedicated to my goals, I want to see my ants rediscover forgotten pathways, regain their ground quickly, and act as a reminder that my emotional downturns didn't undo all my personal growth. The habits are still there, hidden in fog, waiting to be rediscovered with a little effort. I want to have this pseudo-living creature that serves as a visual proxy for how well I feel I'm doing.

If anyone feels similarly and could see themselves finding purpose through this effort - feel free to reach out. I would be happy to talk to you and help you find a home in the project. There's Discord and email in my bio. It's my first game, the scope is way too large, the code I've written is bad, and I have no strategy for monetization. You'll very likely become a worse Rust developer by associating with me :) ... but I know I want to create something that helps motivate people to continue showing up for themselves and I'm confident there are others out there who either feel similarly, or feel lost and could use help finding themselves with the right project.

I've written a lot! Sorry for the meandering thoughts and the weird upsell of a project in a thread about working on nothing... but it all seemed relevant to me while the juices were flowing. Cheers :)

Get yourself healthy. Get some balance -- social interaction. New and different and positive inputs.

I think you'll sit down to the problems you're working on, refreshed.

And problem-solving might have renewed purpose. Improving the world you're engaged in.

Best wishes.

P.S. Another way of looking at this: Get some "domain expertise". I was always a lot more effective when I had a domain to which to apply my skills -- and that motivated me to improve those skills, to improve the domain or the instance of the domain with which I was engaged.

Also, what was it Larry Wall said?

http://threevirtues.com/

I don't mean to sound presumptuous, but I'm going to make a few assumptions...

You sound highly ambitious and you want to achieve more, but maybe you feel the world isn't letting you achieve your full potential. You might feel lost or unsure what to do next. And this prolonged state of unsureness and your experience with your bosses has demoralized you. And now, you just don't want to do anything.

If this is what you're feeling, I want you to know that this feeling is more common than you think and most people don't talk about it. The way to solve this is to not overthink this and surround yourself around positive peers (perhaps even ideally non-tech peers) to get away from our usual comfort zone and to give you a chance to breathe the fresh air of the world outside and enjoy the green trees. Remember to take everything one step at a time. Here's a relevant motivating story from Arnold Schwarzenegger from yesterday. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-45168200

You sound like you need a short break away from your usual routine to give you a chance to clear your mind. You're in Berlin. Maybe take a spontaneous solo trip to Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, or Switzerland for a week. Perhaps stay at a Youth hostel, meet cool people, and explore around. That should give you a chance to breathe.

Once you have a clearer mind, make a roadmap of what you find meaningful in life and slowly work towards that goal, even part time if necessary. I promise you you'll find your way.

Hope this helps. :)

That is to say, I focus on what I can change or improve and let someone else deal with the rest. I've put too much energy in the past on things I can't change, broken processes that everyone else is completely OK with, lack of testing/CI, horrible leadership teams, bad architectural decisions. If I can change any of those things I do, but a lot of time it's political and really difficult, you often have to "boil the frog slowly."

I also try to squeeze the absolute most I can out of the job to advance my career. Any chance I can to gain a new skill or improve existing ones, or just work on something interesting, that's what I'll do.

This allows you to enjoy your hobbies without being bogged down by usual bureaucracy/pressure that you might deal with at work. So, continue working in tech (maybe reevaluate your role, amount of responsibility etc) and take music lessons, volunteer, join sport leagues, take pottery lessons etc.

The issue is not taking passion for granted and ending up being bipolar, ability to actually enjoy mundane casual work is good. But it's also tough to balance with marketplace demands, sometimes you can't have unproductive days even if you're out of attraction (say a large contract badly built on fragile tech with no design and no care). Your paycheck depends on it.

As a result, I wouldn't overthink the details of work/side game etc. right now. You need to understand and treat the underlying psychological problem that's making it hard to function. None of us can really speculate about that, so I'd recommend finding a therapist and/or psychiatrist you feel you can trust. Start thinking about what's happening to you in terms of symptoms and feelings, rather than to do lists and motivation. This is not something you're doing because you're weak or lazy, it's something that's happening to you, either because of your early life or because of your brain. The more pressure you put on yourself to "get out of a rut" through determination or reconfiguring your professional life, the deeper the rut will get.

Good luck! I hope you get the care you need soon, and that you can feel better. Once you do, the rest of life will sort itself out with no trouble.

In retrospect I actually knocked that project out of the park, but I was miserable for a number of reasons, burned out, and siloed off on a project that the company was bizarrely apathetic about. I developed a bleak outlook on what I was doing, and as I hit obstacles I think the bleak outlook increasingly extended to myself.

It was a great learning experience. These days I'm fairly sure I'll continue to learn because I love what I do, so long as my brain's still working at least. I might slow down here and there, but it's a mistake to think you've actually hit a hard limit or something. It's almost certainly external.

When I feel down or like I can't do my job well enough, I just remind myself how far I've come despite how low I've felt before, and how things have continued to go well. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. Do let yourself take a break, though. You might need one to get a fresh perspective on things.

Good luck!

In the meantime, start trying to think up ideas and write them down, even half baked ones. Idea generation is a muscle. At my peak I write down a new idea every few days. Sometimes that slips to once a month. Regardless, you'll find that if you start doing this, you start getting excited about those ideas which leads to....

...moving forward. Either to a new job, an open source project, learning a new skill set, approaching your boss with an idea, or a new geekup meeting or whatever.

The underlying issue was that my priority alignment is heavily skewed towards delivering solutions to technical problems. On discussing with my leadership, while they appreciate that I'm hands on their read was my organizational experience and "oversight" for major projects was the most valued.

Knowing that really helped me to relax a bit and understand that I won't always be working late nights to deliver some sweet resiliency workflow and thats fine.

TLDR: sync with your leadership and ask what value you bring so you can align your time to their priorities. Warning, this may not be a fun conversation.

If you feel related and want to chat a bit, let me know! I'd love to chat with someone about this.