I’m struggling to disconnect from work. I’ve been working on an interesting problem for the last couple of weeks (compacting change data capture events from sharded MySQL servers into BigQuery). It’s an interesting technical problem. There are lots of optimization opportunities and novel patterns I can introduce.
I’m on vacation for the next two weeks but since starting my trip my mind keeps returning to the problem. I’ve even solved a few issues and come up with new patterns to try while daydreaming as we travel. Obviously I haven’t implemented any changes, I deliberately didn’t bring my work laptop with me. I emailed those solutions to my work email address so they get out of my head but that hasn’t helped. I just visualized more optimizations while hiking today.
There is no expectations from my leadership to work while on vacation.
How do others disconnect from work when I enjoy the problem solving aspects of my work?
Meditation helped me discover how to let a thought pop up and pass through. I get into a very compulsive mode with programming and thinking in general, and find it hard to put anything down. Meditation helped me learn what it looks like when I’m mentally spinning and how to loosen my grip on that and let things settle. Then there’s room for other things to become interesting, and room to function when I’m not in “finding something interesting” mode. So now I’m a little better at being focused and immersed for a bit but not going up the wall when I can’t get back to it.
For me, it was a notepad.
Not a note app or anything digital.
Just a book to scribble the random thoughts in with a pen.
It lets my mind release it, and if I circle back to it when chilling I can always re-read the notepad and make changes or whatever.
If I find myself super bored when trying to have a few days off, I can collate any notes into more concrete notes.
But always pen on paper, in a notepad.
Next time I’m at work, I can reread my notes and make more objective decisions on their quality/implementation
We want everything to be synchronized and accessible at all times which sometimes prevents us from letting things go easily. I agree with taking notes on paper.