Mental Fatigue
As I have said many times I am a newly grad. In fact I’ve only been working full-time as a developer for 9 weeks now. I have loved working and programming for a living very much but one thing that I’ve really struggled with is the mental fatigue. Now my boss likes to joke that if I was a real developer I could power through it and that when he was my age he just smashed out 10 coffees and worked for 16 hour days on 4 hours sleep. I can’t under any circumstances do that, my body just will not let me. I eat quite well, all the fruits and vegetables, I get at least 8 hours sleep a night and drink plenty of water. I exercise each morning, play basketball twice a week with mates. I have reasonably healthy lifestyle, yet I can’t seem to push as hard for as long as my co-workers my age. It's probably just a personal thing, some people can and others can’t. It just means I have to take extra care of myself. It was yesterday when I was working with my boss when it got to about 1 o’clock and I just couldn’t do anymore, my boss after giving me shit for being tied when I don’t even have kids said let's go for a walk, have lunch then we can get back into it. This walk really helped in relieving the mental fatigue that had built up over the week and the day. I don’t think I’ve been taking good enough care of myself when I’m at work because every day it hits around 2 o’clock and my brain can’t write a single line of code more. I think it’s really important that I take regular breaks to keep the mental fatigue at bay. Furthermore, it allows me to get a bit of exercise and fresh air in at the same time, well maybe not so much fresh air in the city. I might even try some meditation to clear up the mind and allow me to be more productive for longer. I used to meditate in the morning but after 3 months of doing it daily I didn’t notice a quantum shift in my mentality, maybe I was oversold the benefits, maybe I didn’t give it long enough. I’m going to give meditation at work for at least 5 minutes a day to see if that improves my mental fatigue. I will also try and get out of the office more, walk around and talk to co-workers and generally not think about work for a bit. I might look into if I have a vitamin deficiency that could be causing my fatigue. I will try a few different things and see how I feel after a few months.