How do you clear your mind after 8-10 hours per day of coding?

Question

I'm having a hard time taking my mind off of work projects in my personal time. It's not that I have a stressful job or tight deadlines; I love my job. I find that after spending the whole day writing code & trying to solve problems, I have an extremely hard time getting it out of my mind. I'm constantly thinking about the current project/problem/task all the time. It's keeping me from relaxing, and in the long run it just builds stress.

Personal projects help to some extent, but mostly just to distract me. I still have source code bouncing around my head 16 hours a day.

I'm still relatively new to the workforce. Have you struggled with this, perhaps as a young developer? How did you overcome it? Can anyone offer general advice on winding down after a long programming session?

Comments

[url=http://www.buychihairstraightener.com/]chi flat iron[/url]
[url=http://www.buychihairstraightener.com/]chi hair straightener[/url]
[url=http://www.buychihairstraightener.com/]chi ceramic flat iron[/url]
[url=http://www.buyghdstraightener.org/]ghd[/url]
[url=http://www.buyghdstraightener.org/]ghd hair straighteners[/url]

Answer 1

I found work was a bit of a contrast to academia, in that when you're studying there's no 9-5 — your hours are when you want them to be. In work, I've tried to keep a crisp boundary between the 9-5 day job and my personal life.

Some things that help are:

    * Stick to regular working hours: I try to be strict with myself on how many hours I spend at work. This helps to keep a healthy work-life balance and prevent work taking over my mind.
    * Cycling to and from work: I ride daily and, in addition to keeping me in shape, it helps to take my mind off work on the commute home. (There's no time to think algorithms when you're pre-occupied trying to predict which motorist is going to try to kill you next.)
    * Watching a little TV: After the ride home, a 30 minute sitcom can help me lighten up and get my mind wandering. Or if I'm feeling more serious, I'll watch a few TED Talks and realise there are much bigger problems in the world than my current work challenge :-)