Ask HN: How can I find something worthwhile to do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can I find something worthwhile to do?

108 pointsyungporko102 comments

I've been a decent mid-level dev professionally for a long time now but been in a sort of rut for about as long as I can remember. Outside of work (which is going fine), I just don't have anything programming related to do. I keep myself busy playing with new tools and languages when I can be bothered but if I really think about it, I just don't have any problems to solve with these tools.

I could lock myself in an empty room for days and come up with nothing. I've been waiting for an "idea" to hit me for nearly 10 years, I don't use any open source software that I could contribute to at all, and I lack the creativity to come up with "just for fun" projects. I feel very stagnant and I just don't know how to move forward anymore. Am I just hard-wired to be mediocre?

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> Am I just hard-wired to be mediocre?

Have you considered the possibility that you're actually clinically depressed? Working on the assumption you are male, I think a lot of guys don't realise that low-grade depression looks like this for a lot of us. Especially getting towards mid-life.

One thing I would suggest is to embrace boredom. Cover up your television, delete your streaming video apps, cut back on social media as much as is possible, stop gaming if you game. Stop avoiding boredom with low-energy solutions.

Get really, really bored. Then see what your brain wants you to do. Boredom is a precursor to a creative state.

Another thought: consider if your "worthwhile" is actually helping other people do theirs? If you can learn new tools and languages easily, could you help others? Could you teach?

I need this change in my life too, and this is the direction I hope my life is heading in.

just wanted to say actively trying to get bored is some of the best things that i've done for myself as an adult in a dopamine-driven world (exercising aside). i'm not saying to do nothing at all, but trying to be bore yourself whenever you're off work. some examples are like instead of scrolling your phone whenever you're in public transit, just do nothing.

can we stop diagnosing unknown people based on a 2 paragraph post on HN? the obsession with finding a label for all sorts of mental states is crazy. I agree with the rest of your post though

Can we stop dismissively projecting pet peeve interpretations onto posts that aren't worthy of them?

I didn't say "you are depressed". I said "have you considered that you might be...". When did that become diagnosis?

FWIW I said "clinically depressed" to draw the specific distinction between colloquial use of the word "depressed" meaning "down", and the medical notion of depression that covers this sort of stuff -- long term loss of direction, low self-esteem negativity etc.

It's just a suggestion to consider the whole picture and maybe seek advice.

I wouldn't call it diagnosing. Just suggesting they consider it.

Personally it all sounds very familiar. So familiar I'd admit I'm mildly depressed. But I do still have a pad of good ideas that I add to.

Also very interesting is that yes even with ideas I'm not good at doing them - but the suggestion that their thing might be the enabling others to achieve theirs really sticks out for me. I'm definitely at my best helping others to do better.

All in I'd say it was a good response.

Thank you.

we should also stop treating depression as the ultimate disease,

Depression is definitely real, and fairly easy to diagnose for.

Absolutely real. So real that every human being will be depressed sometime in their life. It is just one of multiple mental states we have in our framework.

Nope. There's a difference between being sad and being clinically depressed, there's a difference between being distracted and having ADHD, there's a difference between worrying and having OCD, there's a difference between not wanting to eat a particular meal and having anorexia or ARFID.

Please. Having a mental disorder is stigmatized enough already. Please don't play into it by implying it's not real.

And just like any physical pathology, people deserve to recognize and address depression if they experience it.

I’ve been really enjoying Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act: A Way of Being” because of how he reframes creativity and the act of creation.

Don’t wait for creativity to happen. Cultivate it. Make it happen.

> I lack the creativity to come up with "just for fun" projects

I disagree, primarily because I felt this way about myself for many years and later realized how wrong I was. My issue was that I had misconceptions about what creativity is and where it comes from. I felt like it was just supposed to happen, and that if it didn’t, that said something about my inherent abilities. I’d see other people creating things as if the ideas just flowed naturally, and assumed they just had special brains. And even when those ideas are just flowing, I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone without a lot of other factors in their lives all enabling that flow of ideas.

Creativity doesn't always just happen on its own, but can be cultivated. More of a mindset and a way of being than some intrinsic trait that you have or you don’t.

Locking yourself in an empty room sounds like the worst way to spur ideas to be honest. My brain doesn’t get going until I’m moving. Long walks, bike rides, hiking, kayaking. Surrounding myself with new things, the beauty of nature, people who challenge me, trying new software, seeking new experiences for the sake of them.

Creativity for me is the result of my other pursuits in life. When I’m not doing those things, I’m stuck in a rut, even if those things have nothing to do with what I’m trying to create.

That book is really helping me look at the creative process differently and in a more evolved way.

This book is definitely something that I'll keep forever.

I love this book, listened to it on audio (narrated by Rick himself) at least twice. His interview with Joe Rogan is incredible as well.

There's more to life than what can be done with computers.

Think back to a time before you knew about computers and software. What were you fascinated by? It might lead you to consider a sport, hobby, past-time that you would gain pleasure from.

Sometimes these non-computer/software areas reveal ideas for fun projects.

Personal experience, I took playing tennis. Decided that having a clock faces based scoreboard would be a good idea, spent several months building and perfecting the project. Turned out electronics don't like being in the hot sun, so I gave up on the idea. But it was a certainly a fun project and I learnt quite a bit about embedded systems, etc.

I built a set of ikea drawers last weekend and couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed following repetitive instructions then making something real.

It’s making me rethink what kind of hobbies I want to try because I feel exactly what the OP describes.

Ideas do not come from nowhere. They are the conglomoration of thoughts and feelings obtained through experience. If you lock yourself in a room having done nothing you will be left thinking about how you're locked in a room doing nothing.

Go do something else entirely, you have no idea what will grab your interest or what will come out of it. You could for example start going to music shows, end up really interested in playing an instrument, and end up wanting to create algorthithmic music, or creative visuals. But don't do it this for the end goal of wanting to program something, there's so much more to life.

My variation of what you say is read lots, look at what people are doing, then make sure you have a big space that lets you stop thinking. Once I'm in that "hey I'm not distracted by a million things" space ideas and solutions just pop to mind as I manage to focus on one thing.

What do you mean by "a big space that lets you stop thinking"?

I never have ideas for really worthwhile projects either. It's only happened a handful of times but they've always been just short scripts that I did in a weekend and posted online for people to use. I'd have loved to find a library or software that I needed, but it's never happened that it didn't already exist. A couple of times in the past I tried to start something more ambitious anyway, but without any intrinsic motivation it just doesn't stick long term, because it doesn't feel like there's much point to it.

I'd recommend to keep looking into things that you find interesting, just for fun. I've really enjoyed messing around with graphic shaders recently, which I have no use for. But the more tools on the bag the easier it is to find opportunities to do useful things.

I still try to find useful things to do though, maybe one of those weekend projects can grow into a larger project, it would be really cool. But I don't see much point into trying to come up with something just for the sake of it. I'm reminded of that guy in Spain building a cathedral by himself. Not that there's anything wrong to building a cathedral by yourself if that's what you want, but pretty much the only reason to do it is that, because you feel like it.

Climate! Listen to the Volts podcast (https://volts.wtf) … I’d say about half of the episodes make me want to quit what I’m doing and beg the guest for job at their startup. Climate solutions is a wide-open field, jammed with entrepreneurs and scientists going head-on with tough scientific, engineering, sociopolitical, and business problems, with pretty much everything on the line. The stuff people are working on ranges from fintech products to full on science fiction. There’s something there for you work-wise and mission-wise.

This! Especially climate tech. One idea I've been noodling around with is a package of components for low income housing. Specifically, a low-cost easily repairable inductive stove to replace gas stoves. A window mount heat pump to replace steam or standalone gas heaters and, balcony solar plus battery. Note the battery would probably be built into the induction stove to handle the extra current induction stoves need one running full tilt.

I've spoken with a few municipal managers of low-income housing, and they love the idea. Then they say, we could probably get it approved in 2 to 3 years.

jfcoar...

I know this is practical because New York State had a design competition and has two window mount heat pumps that run off of 110. They are expensive ($2000), but I expect that price will drop with volume and when Chinese manufacturers say, "Oh that's a wonderful idea, let's steal it"

Induction hot plates are available today for $50-$70 retail. I think they are fairly primitive as cook temperature is controlled by pulsing the induction magnet. I have one in my kitchen, and when I'm making a one-pot meal, I use it in preference to my gas stove, especially in summertime heat.

Balcony Solar exists, and there are approved inverters with safety cut off if the line goes dark. These inverters let you plug your system directly into your wall outlet without any worries about giving a lineman a nasty surprise.

The pieces are there,

I’m interested in this. But it seems like most of the work is hardware or political or heavily impacted by legislation and integration. It’s daunting like healthcare startups are daunting.

Do you have any good examples on the software side? (Not saying the other things aren’t important, just outside my wheelhouse)

Almost all of these companies’ approaches have a software component, whether it’s modeling, communication, infra, services, etc., even if their product isn’t itself software. It depends on what your skill set is but these are tech startups with lots of seats for software eng.

If you cannot come up with a satisfying idea, why not shift focus and drop programming as a hobby altogether? At least for a while.

I'd recommend joining some kind of club where you get to spend your time with other people. In my experience, anything social is much more rewarding than even the most heureka moments achieved by myself in some room.

Looking at people's GitHub or blogs, is similar to looking at people's lives through the lens of Instagram. So much of it is manufactured and fake.

If you can just write some basic software, you're probably in the top 1% for computer skills in the global population. There are people in every niche of the world crying out for such help. Find something you're passionate about, and volunteer your time. I help my local political party run a website, do code clubs and Scouts.

Also, I'm part of a woodworking club. I'm rubbish at it, but it's fascinating just to watch and listen to other people who are much better than me. I've built a couple of things myself which I'm proud of.

One place to find volunteer opportunities is at https://justserve.org , if available in your area. It is free and connects available volunteers with organizations who need the help.

> Am I just hard-wired to be mediocre?

"Work with what you love, and you will never love anything ever again".

Software development is your profession. By your account, you keep up to date to new tools and languages - and that is a good practice to keep yourself employable.

Find a hobby outside of programming. Maybe try your hand at creative writing. Maybe learn how to play an instrument. Or maybe try sports, I have a friend that in his late life decided to train to run marathons. Hell, find a group to play tabletop RPGs or Magic the Gathering.

Don't internalize that bullshit hustle culture that tells you that you have to be passionate about your job. Your have to be competent at your job, and that is all. Focus your passions elsewhere.

Try thinking about some minor annoyance in your life and if you can solve that with a simple app, or something you really enjoyed that could be made into an app.

Some things I’ve done —

StreamSwitcher for turning Apple Music links to Spotify links —https://apps.apple.com/us/app/streamswitcher/id6450388510

Cancel your gym membership online — https://byebyefitness.com

Step by step translations of the Dao De Jing with beautiful artwork — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daily-dao/id6465685578

Your are constantly being wired to be mediocre. It's your job and your environment. The same is true for 85+% of the population.

Look at the stuff in the list below, progress recursively. Think children, education, competitions and or real world problems, progress recursively until you hit something.

Everybody gets 'there' on their own time. There's guys tinkering with robots and rockets while others barely find the motivation to build the irrigation system in their garden. 8 years from now, people in various regions will have problems that started decades ago but could have been mitigated now.

The markets won't serve any of the solutions without binding people to subscriptions and when they can't pay, the service ends.

People are not able to learn anything all the time. That's where you come in, you can.

If you can't come up with anything, build everything with FOSS. Think local, don't ask, just build. Improve your town, your school, your hood. With indie tools, skills and hardware.

https://simplicable.com/world/real-world-problems

https://www.competitionsciences.org/

https://www.nextgenlearning.org/

https://www.millennium-project.org/projects/challenges/

https://resilienteducator.com/classroom-resources/real-world...

http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en

This is why I work at a company. I have ideas all the time, but they are in the context of work. It’s there that I can work on stuff, and I like to think some of it is worthwhile.

I don’t think everyone needs to have a bunch of side projects related to their day job. I’m sure most plumbers don’t spend their nights and weekend creating and solving ever more complicated plumbing projects in their home. I think it’s nice if a person can have a hobby that scratches an itch that is completely different from their day job.

Hey. I know _exactly_ what you are talking about.

I've been thinking about that for a quite awhile now, and I guess I have some perspective, but don't have exact answers and I don't think I can fit it into a HN message nor have enough motivation to do so.

_However_, I'll be more than glad to chat personally, maybe we can figure something out together. So, if you¹ want, drop me an e-mail. Address in profile.

¹) You, the topic starter or anyone reading this message who finds it relevant.

> I just don't have any problems to solve with these tools

It's possible you're placing too much emphasis on the type of problem you need to solve. You might be trying to think of a problem that many people experience, or a problem that others recognise as important, and getting frustrated that you don't have any ideas.

If this is the case, I'd recommend making something for one person instead. Make something stupid, that only a single person in your life will enjoy. Programming doesn't have to be Amazon or Netflix. Programming can be a knitted scarf.

> It's possible you're placing too much emphasis on the type of problem you need to solve.

Yeah I think so as well. With as much experience as OP has it’s unlikely, if not impossible, to not experience problems or friction in terms of tech.

Sometimes they are completely unsolved, but much more frequently they are just solved poorly. “I wish it was easier to…” is an extremely good starting point. Personally I get these feelings from being lazy - I get annoyed when things are slow, tedious and most importantly complicated. I’m more of a “I can’t believe in 2024 it’s still hard to…”.

Conversely, the enemy of this mindset is “it’s just me being slow/dumb/lazy”, “a lot of smart people have already tried” etc etc.

Don't overthink it. Don't search for the perfect project. There never will be one. Just start sth, also multiple potentially multiple things, and keep active on those which are fun. It's good to do small projects (timescale: a day to a week or so) which you can maybe extend later.

Games were already mentioned, and I share this recommendation. Those are usually fun, and you have the whole spectrum of tiny to huge, simple to very advanced, touching also basically the whole stack, almost the whole field of computer science, and beyond, as much as you want it.

Otherwise, maybe some electronics? Robotics? Machine learning?

Or think about your daily routine, at work or also privately. Isn't there anything you wished would exist or improved, which would make your life easier? I have countless of small little utilities which evolved with such motivation over the time.

I think your premise is flawed.

I've never understood why you should do the same things in your free time as you do at work. I personally don't and know a ton of programmers and non-programmers who don't as well. Find other hobbys, they are worthwhile too!

I was thinking the same thing. Sounds like the OP wants to nurture their creativity and writing software just isn't scratching that itch.

I'd advise them to broaden their horizons. Take music lessons or a creative writing class or a welding class or drawing lessons. If there was a subject you wish you had more time for in college, maybe dig back into that.

Or maybe broaden your horizons a little more literally: take some time off and travel.

Write personal software. I just wrote a home proxy to facilitate my home services via vanity domains and allow custom tool creation accessed via web pages.

This is software that solves problems I have. I don’t care if anyone else sees it. I don’t need the admiration of others.

I absolutely agree. I write little apps for myself that I know no one will probably ever use, but these are arguably the most fun. I also keep coming back to add features that I needed, and feel more productive than my work when I'm doing that.

Have kids or get a hobby.

I'm in the same boat tbh, I don't find interesting things with programming anymore, maybe when I did it was just that I had less other stuff to do. I'd rather learn something new now e.g. last year I started doing some home music recording/production. What is your goal - if you want to upskill for your career or to start a business, fine, if not find something else to do.

I was going to write something similar, "start a family". However, the problem is that that's not just something you _just do_ - it's not like you wake up one morning and decide, "I'm going to start a family", and boom! out come the rug rats.

Getting a hobby is orders of magnitute easier.

> it's not like you wake up one morning and decide, "I'm going to start a family", and boom! out come the rug rats.

Takes less time than getting good at a hobby really.

But not than _picking up_ a hobby.

Arguably the very beginning of this process is also satisfying.

I frequently see people respond to those struggling with feeling empty in life or lost by telling the person “have kids” and it always disturbs me.

(I’m a 35 year old childless married man)

You don't need your job to be your hobby.

Programming was one of my main hobbies, I started quite early when I was about 9-10 years old, as a hobby it stayed with me until I was about 25-27, after working professionally for about 10 years.

After that I don't have the lust for programming that I had during those first 15 years. I have ideas but nowadays I also have the experience to know those ideas will demand more effort than I'm willing to commit to come to fruition, I found other things in life that fulfill me much more than sitting down and coding a solution for 1-6 months.

The remnants of programming as a hobby to me are scattered through areas I had never the chance to work professionally: embedded systems, electronics projects, DSP, and other fields which feel fresh and at the same time somewhat approachable after 20+ years of experience. I just don't work on them in any terms related to financial interests, it's purely interest based, and if the interest starts waning, and a project becomes dreadful I just abandon it for a while. If it's interesting enough I will pick it up as a hobby again at some point.

Working with electronics is a lot more joyful to me than programming yet-another-compiler, yet-another-library, yet-another-API. It gives me some connection from code to the real world, lights blinking, things moving, positions in the world becoming data, etc.

You'll only be stagnant if you stop being curious, if you stop adapting to the inevitable changes that happen in this field. Apart from that you gotta find the things that give you joy, not necessarily glory, or even to not be "mediocre" as if everyone is bound to something great.

Just don't stop caring completely because from my career that's when I see programmers really going down the spiral of not only mediocrity but also leaving a trail of issues in their wake for others to fix...

Perhaps .. (I've done this several times)

Look for a job not at an IT FANG company. Look at jobs on offer in machining, in mining, in agriculture, in energy, in surveying, geophysical data aquisition, drill logging, etc.

There are quasi unskilled jobs galore for field technicians to assist with all manner of things you've likely never done before.

If you've got the time, freedom and cash then maybe take a vacation on an Australian cattle station, or some South American ranch.

You're now somewhere new surrounded by things to learn and it's likely that will either stimulate you afresh to do the old stuff or suggest something that mixes what you can do with what new (to yourself) people need.

If you can't scratch your own itch anymore perhaps find others with an itch they need to scratch.

Appropriate recent article: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/former-auckland-doctor-jeff-ka...

Good example, I've written a lot of technical code (math, geophysics, GIS) and driven a 100+ tonne haulpak (gives insight into fleet management challenges from both system and "cog in machine" perspective).

Thank you for this post, I though I was alone in this, I used to love study and learning during my free time, but recently I feel the same as you do, I sort of feel like I "need" to come up or code some project, but I really don't know what to do and what do I "want" to do, that's when I realized that I probably need to take a break for now during weekends, so I went out trying some other stuff, maybe one day I'll find something meaningful enough to me that makes me wanna code again, maybe not, either way it's okay, and I still try my best for my job, that's all it matters, hope you find a way to deal with this, cheers!

It can be hard to force an idea. I’ve had so many that just aren’t quite a fit. Long wanted one that was a real home run and this year I’ve had to churn a ton of ideas. Finally found a couple that rock.

Ideas:

Build the scaffolding for an idea. Then when one hits you just add the domain bits. You might trigger something along the way.

Think about who you would like as customers or even just users. What problems are there for those users that you might help with? Focus on them, not your lack of idea. Just ask them questions or read their reddit posts to look for pain points.

Start something directionally right. Just move in a direction and see how it fits.

Put your toe in the water. Try something today, no commitment to continue.

The focus here is to practice starting. Build a few things. Try connect to people and see what they need.

>Outside of work (which is going fine), I just don't have anything programming related to do.

I don't know of any other field where people so regularly aim to be doing more work outside of work. Why is it a problem to have hobbies unrelated to work?

it isn't, but i enjoy programming and would like to do more of it

> i enjoy programming and would like to do more of it

The two timeless answers are (A) make your own language, or (B) make a game. Whichever feels more exploratory, experimental, open-ended in potential ideas to tinker with to you.

Another avenue would be to take something in widespread adoption and currently only offered in Electron-or-equivalents, and make a fully compatible, fully up-to-par "native-r" version. Make VSCode but as a TUI or GTK/QT. Same config file formats, same NodeJS-based Extension Host, same Extensions API, just not itself made in JS & DOM.

Or, make an LSP SDK generator toolkit that spits out full-protocol LSP clienting and serving code in any language it supports (using LSP's metaModel.json), where over time you add one language target after another. Whoever is making languages, in whatever language they're making them in, will be eager adopters.

Frankly I'm surprised this thread isn't dumping more ideas on you, since you're out of them. There's so many "would love to do|have this but not enough time given my other stuff" ideas in most everyone's head. Mostly developer tooling admittedly. But at least in that realm, there's just no limit to how much better things could be =)

Dev, and gaming — the two areas it's where the existing stuff is by definition never just "good enough". Good enough to use, sure, but not good enough to cease all further development, exploration, experimentation..

Do you _really_ want to do programming in your spare time? I know that this is a common thing in the industry, but that should be the exception more than the rule. No reason your hobby should be related so directly to your profession.

I'm a fairly senior engineer, confident in my professional abilities, and I'm similar to you: I just don't have anything programming-related to do, and don't have ideas either. Well, I haven't done anything programming-related in my free time in ~5y, focused on other stuff (music, climbing, crafting, travelling, socialising) and I'm very happy about it. In fact, the least I touch a computer the happier I am.

One of the best advices that I have learned is "take something that people do, and remove a step (or make the step super easy)". Perhaps that provides some fresh perspective on your conundrum.

You talk about not using open source software, what about contributing to Wikipedia? Or that kind of project? Interesting in food ? Help Open Food Facts. In plants Plantnet! Etc.

I hit this point after a few years working. I realized that outside of my day job, which at the time felt very much aligned to the stylized "Bullshit Jobs", I felt like I was just a consumer of things others made.

I got into woodworking, and I started building up new skills in anticipation of hanging my own shingle in the Data Science / Development space.

Its been almost a decade since, and....

- I got into exercism.io to really deeply learn languages I was using, and learn others besides. The same set of problems but new languages. Learned Python and C much deeper, then got to play with nim, rust, java, C++, and more. Super helpful to learn.

- I started looking at open source projects I use all the time and seeing where I could possibly contribute.

- I started getting into my hobbies. Woodworking where I can (I prefer hand tools to power tools), exercise, teaching kids (my own and others in neighborhood) strategy games (usually starting with chess), starting a garden where possible (we've moved a few times)

- Working towards cloud certificates. I haven't come across a need to actually get them or keep them up to date as a data scientist or (now) executive, but being able to plan solutions with cloud resources is super useful

Maybe you're not the idea person. Find a cause you believe in and offer your services there, or look for a cofounder and profess your allegiance.

lots of answers for how to find something to do, few addressing an important choice of word from OP, "worthwhile". imo, adding this requirement in the beginning of a process is quite destructive, because at each new idea you will be asking, "is this worthwhile?" and inevitably it won't be, because no idea starts that way, and you start the loop again.

i am an artist, which has led me to try to understand creativity and idea-generation closely, and i have stumbled on two concepts that helped me to get going on stuff:

“I‘ve forgotten who it was that said creation is memory. My own experiences and the various things I have read remain in my memory and become the basis upon which I create something new. I couldn’t do it out of nothing. For this reason, since the time I was a young man I have always kept a notebook handy when I read a book. I write down my reactions and what particularly moves me. I have stacks and stacks of these college notebooks, and when I go off to write a script, these are what I read. Somewhere they always provide me with a point of breakthrough. Even for single lines of dialogue I have taken hints from these notebooks. So what I want to say is, don’t read books while lying down in bed.” - Akira Kurosawa

basically: do something else to trigger your creativity, get more inputs into your brain.

and the second is that great ideas are not born, they are created. you start with something small, an inkling of something. it's dirty, unpolished, stupid even, but then you start to make something of it over time. it grows and you get feedback on it until one day it's become "worthwhile" - or not. then you cut your losses and try again, with more knowledge.

anyway - i think you will find more great ideas if you get started and think less on whether it's worth your time.

I think, closest to answer is scientific marketing. It will answer to two questions: first, what people looking for now, second, are these people ready to pay for this thing. I believe, I should not prove you so obvious things.

Many famous people claimed, they don't use scientific marketing (most known example Jobs), but when insides leak from their closed circle, all people ho learn marketing clearly seen, they do almost same as classic University marketologist, just name things other names.

Sure, you could save about 100$ on classic marketing research and do things yourself. It is even possible, doing things yourself, you will got more clear and more reliable data on your case.

BTW exists many books on how to stay small in business, and have good enough economy (everybody don't need to become Google to succeed).

Any way, most powerful business heuristic - Just do it, don't wait, don't procrastinate, do not doubt, do and calculate results and only then think on results.

Why do you think you need an "idea"? Seems to me like you're trying to live out a script you have pre-written, and you're judging yourself as "mediocre" because your life isn't corresponding to the script

Life is not scripted, it's improv. Follow your nose. Do more of what you like, and less of what you hate

i think you might be projecting some stuff onto my post that wasn't there? i'm quite content with my life in general, i just enjoy programming and would like to do more of it and hone my skills but i struggle to think of ways to do that. i can't just open an editor and start writing "code", there has to be an end goal in mind.

I never force myself to do anything and always go with the flow. Sometimes I tickle my own itches some times I find obvious money hacks that could be worth my time just by following random side interests.

It gonna sound somewhat esoteric but I think you need to completely let go to get to the good and fun ideas.

I don't see the point. Your work is going fine, so why not look for a hobby that you enjoy instead of making a burden out of finding a work related hobby? There are plenty of non coding things to do and their differences from your day job may bring new ideas and perspective.

> You have 80,000 hours in your career. This makes it your best opportunity to have a positive impact on the world.

80,000 hours is a non-profit dedicated to helping you find such a thing.

https://80000hours.org/

What worked for me recently was working on an extremely new technology outside of work. I needed an app for tracking some medical information, and I wanted it to be a web app but didn't know or was willing to learn JS. I work with and love Kotlin, and saw that efforts were being made to run it on the web through WASM. I started building using that, and so far it has been very fun. It kind of returned me to that state I had in my college days where I just wrote code for fun. There's next to no documentation, and one day I spent 3 hours just trying to make a network call. It should be frustrating, but since I don't have any obligations, it's actually just fun. Oh and I also play a bunch of video games, which is nice.

Go do something to help people. Volunteer somewhere. Talk to real people and help them with their problems in a low tech way. Engage with your local community.

If you don’t have any ideas after doing that for a few months, then you are screwed.

You say "programming related". Have you considered writing documentation or tutorials for an open source project or explaining some new technology that others may want to use (in the form of a YouTube video or a blog)?

> I keep myself busy playing with new tools and languages when I can be bothered but if I really think about it, I just don't have any problems to solve with these tools.

If you learn about a new tool and write about it/make a video about it for others, you might help them to solve their problems. Or you'll free up the developers to spend more of their time improving the tool further.

Find hobbies, things to do besides programming. You will find problems to solve for yourself eventually.

I play tabletop games and lacked a good tool to plan dungeons as a DM. So I wrote a dungeon planning tool. ( https://h4kor.github.io/dungeon-planner/ )

I like blogging, so I wrote my own blog software ( https://github.com/H4kor/owl-blogs ) as I disliked WordPress and static sites were too limiting for me.

It seems you've exhausted ideas within software. Try hardware but not on its own, first get a hobby. For instance mine since covid lockdowns has been to practice playing music and learn basic theory with synthesizers. It's been a long path of learning both about music but also about how to connect and control gear. There's a shortage of 'connector accessories', or the ones that do what you want cost way more than they should. Watch some maker youtube videos in an area that you might want to dabble.

Ask 5 people around you what they need help with? Try to help them with technology to achieve their goal. Then it's a choice whether to keep it as side project or expand.

I felt the same and picked up sports. Now I cycle, do weightlifting and occasional other types of social activities like playing ball (volley, soccer, tennis-like stuff)

Honestly not worth forcing yourself to do what you don't truly love. I don't hate programming but there's so much more to do out there, even learning foreign languages or picking up some art stuff and make something with your hands sounds better than fighting with python/node and dependencies in my free time

There is no shame in having your work - even software development - be a means to an end.

You are well within reason to work to survive, tuck a little away, and use the rest (of both time and money) to explore unrelated interests and passions. I really enjoy gardening.

The cross-pollination of interests, passions and professional experience may well lead to a fun and interesting project where your $DAY_JOB skills come into their own in a way you’d not expect.

Work to live, not live to work and all that.

You can start not from what you love to do, but from what generally brings you pleasure. I love perfume and became interested thanks to https://www.fragrantica.com/

Try Arduino. You can use Arduino IDE to program many different platforms (ATMega, STM32, ESP32). Plenty of cheap $2 boards, plethora of sensors and periferals.

Start with the basics, be your own customer. I do a lot of automation. If there is something slightly annoying like hard to see unreads in Slack, I'll make a script to highlight them. A given keyword mentioned somewhere, make a script ding! If I need to authenticate on 10 different websites every day I'll make a script for that. Any annoyance and busywork is worth being automated.

What you are looking for is Ikigai... I am not quickly finding a good article so these will have to do. ;)

0. https://becomingbetter.org/ikigai/

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai

Thanks for the question. Here are some ideas: unlock yourself, go outside, go for walks, and do "nothing."

Watch what happens. Appreciate even the tiniest things, breathing, that you might observe or do. Be especially grateful that we don't have any problems. I strive for mediocre. Remember that the TAB key on your keyboard stands for: Take A Break.

Try working in a startup if you are fine with getting a different job.

Get some product management courses. Alternatively, partner with a product manager, they usually have a bunch of ideas. I always want to make new products, but I have the opposite problem: I need devs that are motivated enough and are willing to create new products in uncertain environment.

Make a video game.

similar to my pick, a great infitite project with infinite programming detail to explore =). good suggestion!

There are no tools that you use at work that are open source and that you wish had just _this_ feature or _that_ feature?

most of programming languages and tooling are open-source these days, even the more enterprisey stuff. Or, at least, they have Open Source alternatives.

The other thing to do is to find a girlfriend, marry her and have kids. THAT will take a LOT of your time.

„Worthwhile” is relative. https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/

Find something you deeply believe is worthwhile. Something like volunteerinfor homeless, helping war victims, religion. Make this your anchor point.

you're almost there.

get a pen and notebook. and have that on you everywhere.

have periods where you sit and do nothing. nothing as in - you're not on your phone, watching tv or reading. then let your mind wonder.

read a lot - i.e skip the typical tech news but read regular stuff like books, newspapers etc .

let me know if you do that and don't come up with 'ideas'

> Outside of work (which is going fine), I just don't have anything programming related to do

This is a bad thing?

> I could lock myself in an empty room for days and come up with nothing.

Most good ideas come from observation. At work or outside look for things people do which could be better served. See how you could improve it.

Coming up with things people never needed or thought of is much harder.

why do you measure yourself by programming creativity? Sometjing worthwhile is totally what you make of it, you can decide. it doesnt need to be innovative, or even good, as long as it satisfies you in some way. So then, what is it you enjoy? Do that.

I mean, I'm biased, as I enjoy writing. But when I stopped trying to come up with an idea and just read good fiction books, written in a style I hadn't really tried out before, voraciously, gobbling them up, I got a fair number of ideas that I was actually excited to write about.

Stop thinking about ideas. Do what you like to do in your free time; read, doodle, whatever. Read good books, learn interesting things.

You reflect the media you consume. Consume good media - stuff that makes you happy, stuff that makes you think, stuff that makes you feel. But stop trying to come up with goals, stop waiting for an idea to hit you. I did that for a while with writing, then I couldn't use electronics for a bit and I gulped down those books and I had cool book ideas, weird acronyms that suggested evil organizations, stuff like that. I don't know what the programming analog of that would be - or the nonprogramming analog that doesn't involve writing.

But just find something you enjoy, doesn't have to be related to coding, and do it.

Also, stop thinking about stuff being "worthwhile". Something you like that doesn't hurt other people is worth doing, and if it happens to be something weird, like gardening while hula-hooping, or pretty much anything and a unicycle, that's okay.

Lookup "Steal my ideas". There are people all over the place sharing interesting to implement ideas. Most of us don't have enough time in the day to implement them all. Enjoy!

Who told you you have to do something? Should come up with _anything_

Where did you get these expectations and goals that are obviously not yours and not relevant to your current point in life?

Try doing this task: http://www.boundvariable.org/task.shtml

It sounds like you think you should do some programming outside of work - that if you don't, there's something wrong with you. But I think you don't have to have something programming to do out of work. You can have a wonderful, full life without it.

I mean, you need something to do outside of work, but it doesn't have to be programming. Go hiking. Play ultimate frisbee. Join a band or a choir. Become a Big Brother or Sister. Volunteer at an animal shelter. Teach some disadvantaged youth how to code. Get involved at a church or a homeless shelter.

Find your thing and do it. It doesn't have to be programming. (And, if you haven't found the programming thing yet, I think that's telling you that programming isn't the thing you're looking for.)

Everyone I know who is extremely successful in the field is the opposite. They have way more ideas than they have time for.

This is partly a matter of confidence and psychology, I think.

Lots of us have ideas that we simply never entertain because we are too good at quickly shooting them down when we spot small difficulties, before we've even let the idea out of our heads.

People who are good at ideas are also good at getting them out there, in an imperfect state, and letting other people assess whether those difficulties are dealbreakers, or whether in fact they could help mitigate them.

For example a lot of startup ideas are discarded because of fear of process/legal/regulatory stuff, when actually what you need is to know someone who can help with that. Getting your ideas out there in an open, deliberately naïve way can help.

Relax and meditate, this makes your mind fresh and gives you worthwhile things to do.

Doesn't it depend on the purpose of your life? I have written about this at my web site (in profile, nothing for sale, no stylistic ambition). You can email me if you can't find it in there. For me, it is to have joy, by glorifying God through learning and service to others. And he gives us all, in return. We all have to choose.

(I agree; it is an interesting challenge.)

(Thoughtful comments appreciated with any downvotes.)

I have found that one common element in the things I want to build or fix is that I am opinionated about that thing. I am going to claim that having opinions is a prerequisite to being motivated to shape the world to suit my opinions a little better.

If I think about everything that I don't have an opinion about, it's things that I don't understand very well. For example, car washes. I do not care what a car wash tunnel has, if it is brushless or not, if it uses some fancy shampoo or not - I have zero opinions. I can never find motivation to want to go redesign it, fix it or develop software for it.

But something like Github's pull request review? Oh boy. It's absolutely insane that you can not comment on an unchanged line in a file you are reviewing. If someone changes a function call 3 out of 4 places, and you want to leave a comment on that unchanged line of code saying "Hey, you forgot to change this too" - guess what? You can't. In my opinion, this is insanely moronic. An opinion like this can easily motivate one to want to go fix a thing or build a thing. (I don't want to solve this problem for other reasons, but that's unrelated to this discussion).

How do you form opinions? I don't know, but my guess is that listening to opinionated people with good taste really helps. Dan Norman's book "The Design of everyday things" [0] is one example of a very opinionated work. Bryan Cantrill of Oxide is also often very opinionated on system design, and his podcasts and talks are really fun [1]. When Steve Jobs was talking about just anything, he couldn't help being opinionated af [2]. I love "In praise of Shadows" by Junichiro Tanizaki where he just talks about experiences but you can tell he is deeply opinionated [3].

I don't know how one can develop good taste. Being around art, music, movies, people who obsess over details, people who care, people who expect perfection and accept nothing less - I believe there's some sort of osmosis where you just absorb aspects. I believe surrounding yourself with fantastic art, hiking through majestic trails, chilling with inspiring people - all help reset your acceptance of mediocrity down to 0. I am convinced that this is essential.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expand...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTVfAMRj-7E

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdplq4cj76I

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Praise-Shadows-Junichiro-Tanizaki/dp/...

After programming for 40 hours a week, it's normal not to have the motivation to work on more programming things. It's not mediocrity or clinical depression.

My passion for software development died with my first full time job and returned as soon as I changed fields.

Go touch grass, find new hobbies.

Many ideas are serendipitous. They come while you are doing something else entirely. Do something completely different for a few hours. Experience something new and you will be surprised at what might pop into your head.

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