Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

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Interesting question!

As somebody in a similar age bracket, the things I do:

Stay healthy. My energy levels are generally great if I am getting plenty of exercise and good sleep. And avoid eating junk, throwing off my sleep schedule, or having big worries.

Do things that matter to me. A few years back I was doing consulting that I got burnt out on. So despite a very lucrative bill rate, I said, "fuck it" and joined a friend in a startup. He had a problem that I really wanted to see solved.

Work with people I like. If I'm going to spend most of my daylight around people, I want to enjoy it. I generally like people, so this one isn't too hard for me.

Serve people I like. If I'm making something for people I care about, this is a big motivator for me. It definitely helps for me to actually meet users, watch user tests, and see stats that demonstrate that what we ship is making a difference.

Minimize my commute. I know that some people don't mind long drives in traffic, but I'm not one of them. I live in SF and have occasionally done gigs down the peninsula; it quickly drains not just my enthusiasm, but my will to live. I want to spend my energy on things that are actually productive, and rush-hour traffic is not one of them.

I look forward to seeing what others say.

+1 on minimizing the commute. I switched jobs some time ago in large part because my commute was slowly killing me. I couldn't be happier.

That's an excellent list. The health and commute parts I can definitely agree with, the rest I may have just gotten lucky with in general.

One additional trick I like to use: when the work itself is getting repetitive and boring (similar requirements, etc), vary the way you do it, or parts of it. This can be anything from experimenting with the way you do your estimates, planning and bookkeeping, changing up the tooling (try a different source control tool, code analysis, whatever). Try different frameworks or languages (although preferably only for non-essential projects, in case it goes badly). Read up in-depth about exception handling policies and frameworks, and make use of one in your next project (if you don't already). And so on, the list is nearly endless.

By varying these topics gently (preferably one at a time), you can keep risk to your clients at a minimum, while keeping things interesting for yourself, and broadening your skill set. This might seem obvious, but I see far too many people lose skills and motivation because they're stuck doing the same boring thing for years.

this is a good list. I would add: do a side project, preferably something in open source on github. Firstly, it will remind you why you love programming. Secondly, should you decide you really need to change things up -- do something outside your comfort zone, technically speaking -- having a record of working on different stuff in your spare time will vastly increase the chances of people believing you have the flexibility and plasticity of mind to tackle something new.

I think this is advice that everyone should follow despite your age. Doing things like staying healthy or decreasing your own levels of stress not only do wonders to your productivity now, but you'll be repaid with a lack of health issues in the future as well.

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