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?
I struggled for years, and then the burnout got bad enough where it forced me to choose between keeping obligations with friends and family and maintaining my commitments at work.
I now have a very well defined separation from work time and my time. I picked up some hobbies, and I try to avoid leisure time at my desk with my work laptop on. It can wait til the morning, it can wait til Monday. No one is going to die in my line of work if I don’t push out a fix or get ahead on project planning.