- PPF Points
- 2,888
Passion’s a weird beast, right? At first, it feels like rocket fuel. Back when I started coding, I was hyped about every little puzzle—I'd pull all-nighters, forget to eat, get obsessed with hunting down every last bug. Honestly, I thought that was just what dedication looked like. But, man, that kind of grind sneaks up on you. My sleep schedule got wrecked, my friends started side-eyeing me, and if I tried to chill for five minutes, I’d just feel guilty for not “being productive.” Brutal. One of my mentors once dropped this line on me: “If you only measure your worth by what you build, you’ll never feel like enough.” Oof, right in the feels. That stuck with me. Passion’s supposed to give you energy—not suck the soul out of everything else.
There was this one guy I worked with—absolute wizard with code, but he burned himself out constantly. Fourteen hours at the laptop, swearing he was “in the zone,” but then he’d hit these brick walls of frustration and end up with migraines or worse. Eventually, he just straight up said he didn’t know how to stop. What started as love for coding turned into this weird compulsion. Meanwhile, another teammate of ours would actually log off at five, go for a run, spend weekends offline, and honestly? His work was top-notch. The big difference wasn’t talent—it was knowing when to hit pause. Boundaries, man. That’s the secret sauce.
So now, I try to check myself: Am I skipping showers? Getting snappy with people? Starting to hate stuff I used to geek out over? That’s my cue I’ve gone off the rails. Passion should make you curious and happy, not isolated and twitchy. The tech world’s obsessed with hustle culture, but, real talk—how do we look out for each other and keep our love for coding from turning into burnout fuel? There’s gotta be a better way.
There was this one guy I worked with—absolute wizard with code, but he burned himself out constantly. Fourteen hours at the laptop, swearing he was “in the zone,” but then he’d hit these brick walls of frustration and end up with migraines or worse. Eventually, he just straight up said he didn’t know how to stop. What started as love for coding turned into this weird compulsion. Meanwhile, another teammate of ours would actually log off at five, go for a run, spend weekends offline, and honestly? His work was top-notch. The big difference wasn’t talent—it was knowing when to hit pause. Boundaries, man. That’s the secret sauce.
So now, I try to check myself: Am I skipping showers? Getting snappy with people? Starting to hate stuff I used to geek out over? That’s my cue I’ve gone off the rails. Passion should make you curious and happy, not isolated and twitchy. The tech world’s obsessed with hustle culture, but, real talk—how do we look out for each other and keep our love for coding from turning into burnout fuel? There’s gotta be a better way.