From Anxiety to Motivation in quarantine as a Developer Perspective

Everybody said the quarantine should be a moment to get the advantage of your life, accomplish the things you ever wanted but never could, to finish your forgotten projects.

If you belong to the IT sector, you realize this career offers benefits and advantages, almost all the roles can easily work from home, unless you are an on-premise infrastructure admin.

Now you are at home, it has been 4 months, at first you were so happy, how cool was work on remote? You surely did your task faster, you increase your productivity, and you have more time to spend with your loved ones.

However how long do you keep motivated? after all this quarantined time, do you really feel eager as at the beginning?

Probably not, you are bored and tired, you would want to go out and have a fun day, so this is my best tips to keep motivation

1) Do workout at least 3 times per week, even in-home, you could get a training couch online, seriously, I have one.

2) Sleep Well, 8 hours at least.

3) Write a lot, Write a dairy, Write your study notes, write everything you learn, write your plans to keep it close.

4) Continue learning and pay it if is necessary, pay for a course, many things are free now at days, but if it is free and it’s always there for you, it becomes worthless for you, you could postpone it to next month and so one.

5) Keep close to the peoples you admire, subscribe to their youtube channels, social accounts, learn from them, finish their tutorials, listen to their experiences.

6) Do something far away from your career, especially if you move away from screen or TV, (Videogames with friends can be an exception) play a chess board game, read, sing, cook whatever makes you feel comfortable.

Be aware of what is your energy drink, maybe your enthusiastic spirit is off and weak, but surely is there.

For example, you could be a poet and say

• Share experiences about what you need to know when you were Junior
• Never stop your studies to become a successful person
• Contribute with the community
• Pursuit a better future for me and my family

Or objective fair-minded

• Get a job
• Get a promotion
• Fair to fail
• Earn more money
• Ambitious motives
• Become an authority figure
• Found your own company

Sounds good my friend, right?

These are words that every motivational coach would say despite the fact that they do not always act as they mark, so is important to make sure if someone gives you a tip that people make the things they talk, for example sharing how they applied in their life.

There are a lot of impostors, by the mere fact, motivation is a hot topic, that means, more earnings on youtube, more views and shares, more readings. Then let me tell you how I applied those tips.

At first, I was happy and excited, was so cool work remotely I did my task faster, I increased my productivity, I start a little technical project in order to learn new technology, I began my youtube channel and have been improving my English.

Although this is not happening anymore, especially this month, my motivation decrease, I know I have had a poor performance in my job, I start to miss my on-site job, the social component in my life. Still, I love work remotely.

Seeing that, I needed to identify the reason

• I have been more than 2 years at my current company, doing the same thing, it started to bore me
• The idea to do a breaking change and work for a foreign company is strong in my mind
• The Idea of increase the popularity of my Youtube Channel
• To get a better salary
• And more personal and intimacy reasons

The fact is, every person can feel anxious, have difficulties to avoid boredom, but the secret is to be aware of that, so those are the things I’m doing to overcome the boredom

1) I’m doing Crossfit, dopamine from exercise help to maintain mental health, I pay for an online class with a trainer online couch, and I will keep this model for the remaining year

2) Sleep, my worst enemy, if I don’t sleep I will have an unproductive day, to be honest, its a lot of effort to accept this fact, because I hugely enjoy sleeping until later, so I stayed away from your phone, relax or hear a meditation podcast It helps me

3) I have my personal notes system, I build with certain rules, I write ideas, new videos topics, and more, to do that I use OneNote App although I’m slowly changing to Notion App, just by one reason, it allows me to insert code notes.

4) I have a subscription for course platform Platzi, I bought other ones on Udemy but definitely, my favorite is Pluralsight, which I’ll acquire next black Friday, although is understandable if you can’t pay it, in my past, I used a lot of tricky tricks to get it all free however when you start to earn money, you will learn something important

“professionals pay for services, and avoid piracy”

5) Sometimes you only need to see someone else doing what you want, to remember your self that it is possible. I have subscribed to every channel which has given me this value especially the technical ones.

6) Since the Quarantine every Friday I usually play videogames with my colleagues and friends, an old classic “Age of Empires 2”, it recharges me, the social component is important for all, never forget it.

Remember is ok to feel anxious, sad, or guilty, and only if you know your self, you could do change it.