Typically, writing code and designing apps (while getting paid) is a fun and fulfilling use of time. But after your hundredth login page and thousandth contact form, things can start to get stale a bit.
No two apps are the same (probably), but the excitement of having to figure out a solution to a problem is all but gone. You build the form the same way that you did yesterday, and the only thing that changes is often times the CSS palette of colors that you use.
I've been a programmer for almost 20 years now, and most of my day to day work is no longer what you would call "fun". It's just too easy. In fact, much of my work I've automated to scripts which I can run with a single command (those are fun).
So in order to stay relevant and engage and avoid falling asleep throughout the day, I'm constantly changing things up.
If you find yourself getting bored these days with for loops and form validation, then read on and learn about what I do in order to keep things interesting.
Refactor your code
Nothing wakes you up more than visiting the code that you wrote 2 years ago at 3 in the morning. Sure, it was incredible at the time and the code did things that only few people will ever fathom. At least, at that time.
But that code is aging and odds are, it's probably not keeping up so well. That's where refactoring comes into play.
The main goal of code refactoring is to improve the overall design and architecture of your codebase in order to improve readability and reduce complicity without having to affect the functionality. That could include things such as:
- Removing duplicate code
- Removing unused code
- Improving performance on algorithms
- Externalizing functionality
And you should be doing these things frequently regardless of boredom level. I tend to schedule my refactoring time to around once per week. And I can assure you, it isn't boring. In fact, it can be outright frustrating sometimes.
Often times, it can be boring working with a particular codebase because that code is just difficult to work with in general. It might be too complex or it might just be one giant function. In either case, improving the readability and overall structure of the code can help the future you be more productive.
Brush up your skills
You might think that you know your current tech stack like the back of your hand and that there is nothing left to learn under the Sun.
But I can assure you, that probably isn't the case. Programming languages change all the time, with new features getting added and older features getting removed. The same is true for frameworks and 3rd party libraries.
You might have noticed that most frameworks, or languages, are running on version 5+ these days. If you're still running your code on good old version 1.2, then odds are you are missing out on the latest and greatest improvements.
Instead of learning a new language and starting from scratch, it might benefit your career more to get better at your current tech stack.
Read more blogs
You don't know what you don't know and the only way to fix that is to know more. For me personally, blogs are the best option when it comes to finding out what's new and relevant out there in the coding world.
Odds are that within 5 minutes of browsing through articles, I'm going to stumble onto something that I haven't heard of before. And that just means more research on my end. And in that research I will undoubtedly learn more and more about things that are outside of my current knowledge base.
If you haven't checked it out already, here is a list of 5 blogs that I frequent on the daily in order to stay up to date.
There is alot going on during the day in terms of coding and the development world, and keeping up to date with all of those changes can be a near impossible task. Blogs help to alleviate some of that stress.
Stop doing boring work
The main culprit when it comes to boredom doing anything, is in the fact that whatever you are doing is probably boring.
Yes, contact forms are boring and so are login forms. At least, when you build them the same way each and every time.
I myself, did the same thing over and over again in the past. Mainly because of deadlines, but also because they worked just fine. If the code runs as intended, why risk breaking anything?
These days however, I tend to find more value in building the same thing, but in a different way. That might mean that my contact form, instead of just sending out an email once filled out, might also now send the contact information to a CMS using a 3rd party API.
Or maybe I'll use a different SMTP provider altogether. Whichever the case, you really don't have to build apps and modules in the exact same way that you did prior.
Wait for inspiration
You can't be on 24/7 I'm afraid. Sometimes, depending on the state of the world, the economy (your economy), and whatever else influences daily life, things get slow.
All you can do during this time is to wait it out until the variables change and inspiration strikes again.
This happens to me all the time as I go through my daily life. Someone might bring up an interesting idea during a lunch conversation triggering a flood of dopamine in my brain as the visual cortex starts to coalesce the idea into my mind.
Then, of course, comes the actual building of the thing, which might take some time and which will (inevitably) become boring in it of itself. But at least you'll have a stable codebase to work with at that point.
Boredom is a part of the creative process for everyone. You just have to learn to detect it early and to let it do its thing and work on other stuff while it's there. Like with most things in life, eventually it just passes on by.