True. It still hurts though. I _want_ to care. I do my best work, with least effort, when I'm solving a real problem with people I care about.
I enjoy thinking back about stuff I made, knowing it's out there doing its job.
I can separate out my work (which, lest we forget, is the majority of my waking hours, because of the reality of working a full time job) but that's not particularly good for my mental health either. It's part of the reason I am looking to branch out my career into a different, perhaps more durable sphere.
All I'm saying is, if it's affecting you, changing aspects about your career is valid. Just getting used to it doesn't work for me, despite it being fine for others.
It’s hard to stop caring about you’re work. It’s a part of you, you are creating something after all. And often at work it’s hard to let your coworkers down, because the job may be terrible but you like them. It’s wrapped up in our identity. Often when meeting someone new people ask “what do you do?” And the answer is work related.
You say you stopped caring, but you are still stressing. You should look at that a bit.
Other advice here seems solid, other activities will make work seem like what it is, exchanging your time for money.
Part of it is it takes time to adjust. I went from a place where we tried to make software really perfect, to a start up I reported a bug and the CEO told me not to fix it. (In our meeting he assigned it low priority. He said he could see it was bothering me but reiterated to leave it be. He was right, but it hard for me not to care.
Eh, that was a very unfortunate way of phrasing it.
I used to work at startups and take my job very personally, this let to working crazy hours and not having boundaries between my personal and work life. I get the point about caring too much.
You mileage may vary. After burning through my savings, and feeling like I forgot how to code (it was so strange), I found a more stable, and somewhat less exciting job at a SaaS company, and scaled down the role to something more hands-on. This gave me the financial stability I was seeking but also allowed me to spend more time with the people I care about. I also tried to force myself to just do something less "productive" (e.g. play a video game, draw, go for a walk). I know that I was really lucky to be able to do that.
Some people seem to be able to shrug off bullshit at work, just go home and think about things that “matter”. If I see bullshit, things that are wrong, or just legitimately hard problems I have a very hard time not working hard to fix it even though I would not really care about the outcome in 10 years.
The dilemma is the balance between doing work that matters, maybe finding something where I care more about the outcome, or learn to brush things off and focus on other things in life that matters.
i sympathize a lot with all of the symptoms. in my experience, as someone who used to work pretty hard, once you're past the cusp of 'it's all pointless' it makes it really really hard to bother.
Like you're not getting anything out of it. You don't care if the work is done or not. Nobody else seems to care. And even thinking about it makes you feel ill and horrible. Difficult situation to grind hard work out of
I went through the same exactly one year ago. I could not sleep, I felt sick at the thought of having to interact with my colleagues and I just couldn't care less about my job. The only thing I care about was to wish for my day job to be over soon, so I could hide away from the rest of the world. One day I woke up and called in sick and that was the best choice I could make. I never went back to that job and I started seeking for professional help.
It is hard to know what you want if you don't know what you are and what you want to be. During my six months long seek vacation I had a very small side project because for me the issue was not the technical aspect but the stress that you always had to perform. I was working for a mobile gaming company and on top of your job you had to play, find bugs, join stand-ups, communicate on slack... This was all fake for me and stressed me out to the point of no return. In the end it was just faking enthusiasm.
I am not like that. I love what I do, but when I am off I am off and please leave me alone. Some companies push you to always have an opinion and what is the problem with not having one from time to time? What is the problem with just doing something else in your free time? If I want to have a side project I will. If I don't, I will be doing something else.
To cut my rant short what really helped me was to recognise my problem and through professional help I could accept myself for what I am. Don't overdo, take your time to know where you are and where you want to go and get back when you are ready. If it helps reduce the amount of working hours and try to enjoy you free time.
It's a very strange narrative you have. You can't quit? yet you can't stop caring?
Ok so, moving beyond the staggering premise, let's look at the source of the problem - answer the question: why do you care?
- you care because you're invested - physically, man hours, mentally, emotionally, describe these and be honest with the situation.
- you care because it defines you - it's your baby, it's your everything
- I can't think of a third one
Either case, you have to let go of it. Find a way of letting go. Work is work, therefor nothing should be personal. It's a transaction of work, effort, time against money. I know there is more to it, but imagine swapping job with someone random in the world for a day, that's that.
Secondly, nothing is ever yours at work, it is property of some company, or an IP of an entity. You're far more than your work. The knowledge, the experience, the resilience, the care you have for it is irreplaceable and no one can take that away from you.
As for actionable, try pretend you don't work there anymore. You're just on some retainer, some maintenance contract. Mentally check out of the nonsense of your colleagues, because, it's just that.
Set up timers on your phone for breaks at brunch, lunch, afternoon tea and clock out time, follow by them as much as possible. Make work work for you and not the other way around.
At the end of the day, you're replaceable, the work is just money and those dickwads aren't family. I'm being blunt but it sounds like you need a bit of that.
True. Then again, maybe masking that problem with some relief from daily commutes to work is not really a great solution. Recent layoffs in the industry were a good reminder for me that it's easy to be overly emotionally tied to your work.
I agree with much of this, both out of personal experience and that of my friend.
Work is a distraction from what is really gnawing at your ankles. Even if you start to burn out it still feels preferable to the alternative, if you're even aware of that in the first place.
And to be honest, it's valid even though it's massively unhealthy. Facing your underlying issues, whatever they are, is hard work but also, it's ultimately the most rewarding work.
I've a lot to share about the matter, but it's a bit much and a little too personal for a public response here.
A lot of things will fall through the cracks if people don't pick up.
Professionals are not hourly workers, you're not there to do A->B, you're there to deal with the complexity, which means picking up pieces.
That said - you definitely do not have to worry about stuff. A healthy sense of detachment is actually kind of good for both you and your employer.
Your job is a civic responsibility, it's frankly moral to do a 'good job' - but that doesn't mean 'over striving', it doesn't mean 'being taken advantage of' and it doesn't mean having to worry about the bigger picture. That's definitely not your job.
I think a lot of people could be just as productive if they figured out the emotional strain part.
One little trick is to say to yourself 'I Don't Care' - but then go in the office, and put one foot in front of the other, and just get whatever is in front of you done. It's weirdly liberating and can be productive.
Like 'corporate mindfulness' - be present in the thing that you're trying to do - and not caught up in the giant hill of politics, bits and pieces, it's just noise.
"If you're the big fish in a small pond you're not only missing out on learning from others, and creating impressive things, but ingrained cynicism and having an over-inflated sense of worth are also risks."
Absolutely true.
"Fortunately having an unchallenging job can provide lots of time and energy for research and side projects that can lead to jumping into more interesting work."
You know, in theory this is true. In practice, I've been in this situation a couple of times in my career. And it sucked. Hard. It was soul crushing. It was depressing. I found myself emotionally drained at the end of every day. I would complete my work in a short timespan every morning, then somehow end up mindlessly cruising Facebook (or whatever passed for Facebook back then) throughout the day. My latent productivity plummeted in direct correlation to my plummeting mental engagement.
Maybe I'm an unusual case. But oddly enough, I find a boring, trivial, meaningless job almost more draining than a challenging and extremely fast-paced one. In the latter, at least I am revved up, and thus I have energy for side projects on the weekends.
On the one hand, I do think this what you're attempting to cultivate is essentially learned helplessness. This is the road to depression and burnout. If you're frustrated all the time with bullshit at work, just ignoring it and pretending not to care _will_ have long term ramifications for your mental health. Trust me, this is a road that leads you to particularly dark places you do not want to visit and that can take a long time to get out of. This journey into darkness can consume years of your life. 2 out of 5 on Tripadvisor.
Beyond that, if you want to care less about work, my advice is to fill your life with things that matters to you outside of work.
I'm struggling with this as well. Working for the sake of pleasure. It seems that I'm so fixated on how the end result will turn out that I've forgotten the joy of actually doing the work.
I recently started therapy because I relate to this. I'm a definitely a workaholic and I enjoy coding as an artform.
I found myself using work as an escape mechanism for my mother's suicide, and it has taken me 11 years to realize that was a mistake and I should focus less on career and more on being a caring social person.
I have a really nice job and I'm thankful for what it has given me, but it is clear that I have to walk away and work on being happy rather than productive.
I wouldn't say it's impossible. There are a few ways to fight this feeling.
First, try and understand why you care so much, if that excess of care is giving you too much pressure.
Maybe you care too much because that's your livelihood, and that prevents you from taking risks? In that case, try and shop for other jobs and maybe seeing what other options are available will make you be more relax.
Or maybe you care too much because the timing means you have only one shot at whatever you're working on? Then work beforehand on having more options. Or lowering the risk of your project failing. Think about a plan B, or C.
What I'm trying to say basically is that if you feel that you're at your best when you don't care too much, find ways to create that distance or relaxation. That might need some time, logistics, or introspection, but it's certainly worth it.
As a young adult I could absorb myself in projects like this...in recent years, mid career, it just doesn't seem to happen. I can't make myself care enough about anything to the extent it's very hard to imagine how someone could do anything like this project. Anyone have a suggestion for how to find that again? Maybe I lost the ability to focus on anything I'm not required to do to get paid. Or maybe I'm mildly depressed and don't know it...how does someone do this?
I care too much about work. It follows me into the evenings, the weekends. It disturbs my sleep. I have trouble letting go of things.
Trivial things most of the time. I get stressed out by bad communication, things which are not clear. Sometimes, I feel like the people giving me orders are 30-40 IQ points below me.
There is special a kind of stress from working with people who don't have the self awareness to realize what they don't know. A kind of confidence of fools. Sometimes, I lose the will to speak, just utterly defeated.
My brain dwells on these things. Worse, is that I always feel like the bad guy, even if I'm justified.
I enjoy thinking back about stuff I made, knowing it's out there doing its job.
I can separate out my work (which, lest we forget, is the majority of my waking hours, because of the reality of working a full time job) but that's not particularly good for my mental health either. It's part of the reason I am looking to branch out my career into a different, perhaps more durable sphere.
All I'm saying is, if it's affecting you, changing aspects about your career is valid. Just getting used to it doesn't work for me, despite it being fine for others.
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