What is burnout? How has it affected developers?
According to the Software Developer Burnout Survey conducted by Coding Mindfully in 2020, 50% of surveyed developers lacked the motivation to go to work, 53% have doubted themselves and gotten angry regarding their work or coworkers, 43% feel negative about writing code, and 43% worry that their project will fail without them.
"Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress" -Psychology Today
My Journey with Burnout
Although I am nowhere near the level of sophistication as the surveyed developers, I am still a human like them. Burnout is a real thing that people go through.
After trying to learn ReactJS, Node.JS, Python, and Java simultaneously in my late middle school and early high school years, I completely burned out with the lovely help of school work, clubs, and sports. My passion for programming stalled for the first time since being amazed by Scratch in 4th grade.
It's now 2022.
I've done little to reignite my enthusiasm for computer programming. But everything changed this winter break.
I took my first real break/vacation since the world went into chaos in early 2020. There are 3 main key things I did during this vacation that allowed me to recover from my demotivated mindset.
- Did not open my laptop or textbooks
- Slept for at least 8 hours a day
- Went outside for fresh air daily
During this time, as I completed my mental refresh, I craved to be productive or occupied again. I decided to give another attempt to get back into coding again.
When I got home, I decided to browse Hashnode and newsletters to gain inspiration for a new project. This was especially helpful as I remembered the capabilities that programming had that were mostly achievable in some way or another. I stumbled across Ben Stoke's Tiny Projects website and some statistics regarding the carbon emission from the internet usage.
A New Beginning
For 2022, I decided to completely reconstruct my website to prioritize speed, simplicity, and reduce carbon emissions on my part.
For previous years, I've mainly stuck to the essentials: HTML, CSS, and JS. However, this year I have gained some insight into web browsing that I never thought about before.
Carbon Emissions from Internet Browsing
The internet produces the same amount of carbon as the aviation industry. Mind-blowing. No wonder carbon neutrality has become a rising topic in many communities including computer programming. For developers, carbon neutral means that your website/program/software has no net release of carbon that goes into the atmosphere from the amount of energy that is needed to give it enough electricity and power to run. Though it is extremely difficult to achieve, especially for professional work, it is important to keep that in mind while programming.
The average web page tested produces 1.76 grams of CO2 per page view. For a website with 10,000 monthly page views, that's 211 kg CO2 per year. -websitecarbon.com
Though these statistics show that the internet leaves a significantly smaller impact than industries like transportation, I strongly believe that we, as programmers, should start to contribute to the process of reducing our carbon emissions wherever we can.
I'm just a teenager. So, some things that I've done is that I use a bike to commute 99% of the time unless it is raining, my website is 95% cleaner than sites tested (at the time of writing), and I'm spreading the word using whatever small platform I have.
Post-Burnout
Enough with carbon emissions, let's talk about my recovery from burnout.
After returning from my much-needed break, I found Ben Stoke's Tiny Projects website and carbon emission statistics. Right then and there, I decided that this was going to be foundational "features" on my website for 2022.
The website was going to be fast, minimal, carbon-conscious, and functional.
Timeline:
January 1st, 2022: At midnight, I created the rocketbear27.github.io repository and set it up with a README.MD file and other basic git repo stuff.
January 2nd, 2022: I finished my entire website in the morning and added a post on my blog. I also added a badge from websitecarbon.com!
January 3rd, 2022: I tried adding Google Analytics, but couldn't get it to work. So, I used WatchThemLive as a temporary alternative.
At my novice programming skill level, I highly doubt that I could manage to use anything else to build and launch my website in 3 days that satisfied my design, speed, and other objectives.
Conclusion
With the help of this recovery experience, I've rekindled my passion for coding. I am full of ideas, inspiration, and motivation. If you're dealing with some burnout or want to have some fun, I suggest you guys take a step back and just build a barebones HTML and CSS website from scratch!