Mind in Beta

  • why software devs keep burning out headlights

    why software devs keep burning out headlights

    ySoftware development jobs are often seen as luxurious jobs. They are highly rewarding in terms of security and salary, according to people. But what people don’t know is “all that glitters is not gold, sometimes it’s overused tubelight, that’s gonna pop off.” Then why do software devs keep burning out?

    Nowadays, software devs are burning out faster than ever. Statistics show that about 80 percent of software developers have suffered from burnout at some point in their careers. It’s no wonder that nowadays technology is evolving very fast, and devs are under a lot of pressure.

    Why software devs keep burning out:

    Programming is very rigorous work in terms of mental effort. Not only is this the reason, but there are several other reasons like:

    Unrealistic deadlines:

    When the month’s about to end and everyone is busy with their work, all of a sudden CEO appears from somewhere and says, “Hey, you know what? We need to build this feature within this month.” Now here’s the trap: if you do your work honestly as much as you are intended to do, you won’t be able to complete your work in the given time. And if you fail, you will be blamed for not being a good employee. They will tag you as a failure. So, to complete that work, you will have to work extra hours.

    Unappreciation:

    When an employee works extra hard to complete his task on time, he rarely gets appreciated for that. Humans’ brain is wired to work when there is a reward and appreciation. But instead of appreciation, they get more work. So they get stuck in a loop where they have to keep working, but there is no reward.

    Rapidly changing technology:

    Nowadays, change in the field of technology is not unnoticed. Things are changing a lot, especially after exponential growth in AI. To stay in the industry, developers have to keep up with that. That’s why they have to worry about what’s changing even after work. They have to read the documentation to keep up.

    Toxic culture:

    In the tech industry, people don’t have emotional awareness. Don’t think that sleep deprivation is an achievement, it’s brain damage.  But devs think that this is an achievement. They motivate each other to sleep less and grind more.

    Unhealthy competition:

    In 2019, there was a shortage of programmers. But now the market is oversaturated, and to get a job, people are ready to work for free as an intern. Then there is another thing, when people used to work hard, they would get a promotion. But then everyone started working at that level, and it became the norm. If all of the people in the company are working hard, they won’t get promoted. Now, companies expect people to work more than they are paid for.

    Isolation:

    Isolation is another major reason for devs’ burnout. People are working on their computers for long hours without talking to anyone, this is a major problem. Humans are social animals, and if you take them away from community, it will start to destroy. Humans don’t work and survive just for themselves, they do it for their community. If they are not in the community, then it would lead to burnout.

    How to avoid burnout:

    To avoid burnout, you just need to not fall into these traps that I mentioned earlier.

    Recognize stress:

    To avoid burnout, the first thing you can do is to recognize it. Most people can’t realize that they are stressed. If you are constantly tired. Stressed people sometimes don’t want to either sleep or wanna stay awake. If you have headaches. You wake up and don’t feel relaxed, this is a major sign of being stressed. You feel tense and can’t relax. Once you realize this, take a short break. You can meditate or do gentle exercise.

    Take micro breaks:

    Taking a short break to cool down can prevent you from popping your headlight and burning out. You can use 30 minutes work by 5 minutes break or if you find it difficult to get in flow after  taking a break, yo can try a 60 minutes work session and 12 minutes break. During the breaks, don’t start scrolling social media. I know that it provides escape but during active stress, you need to relax, not escape. If you find escape, then it would be harder to come back and work. During micro breaks you have to do some relaxing activity like deep breathing or meditation.

    Find time to talk to people:

    This won’t only help you with stress, but it can also improve your communication skills. Talk to other people, be a friend, and try to make them feel comfortable. Over time, you will notice an improvement in your mental health and your working life.

    Don’t externalize your values:

    You are a human, and you can do a lot of things, except just being obsessed and thinking “I am a programmer”. No, recognize that you are a human. Despite coding and programming, do other things like drawing. You don’t have to be an expert of intermediate, just draw if you like. You can play cricket, or learn martial arts. When we realize ourselves as human, we are less stressed and more opportunities are available to us.

     

    I hope this helps you. If you have further questions, contact me through the contact us form to get personalized advice.

  • The Day I Became Curious Again

    The Day I Became Curious Again

    How I became curious:

    As a child, I was very curious. Just like other kids, I asked why the moon moves with me when I do move. What are these dust particles in the air called? But never got an answer. I was always excused, and when I asked the question, I never backed off. I always got the wrong answer because people around me were not interested. They said that these dust particles are children of the sun. I grew up in the same educational system and kept memorizing facts. Asking questions wasn’t rewarding at all.   For me, learning wasn’t fun; it was hell. For me, errors were failures. No matter what I did but I was never happy doing anything.

    Lie about Learning and Fun:

    You might have struggled with the same things and never noticed. But then I realized that sitting to learn wasn’t as tough as it is now. I thought I should change this fact. Like most people, I started watching tutorials and doing research, guess what I found? People now believe that learning doesn’t always have to be fun. While, according to me, it should be fun.  Just think for a moment, if learning wasn’t fun, then why would Einstein learn without being assigned? He was not grinding, I can assure you, because he said that learning has to be fun, and it should give you intellectual growth. Learning is a part of our evolution, indeed, it should be fun. But it is not fun because of school poisoning. Basically school poisoning means killing the curiosity of young minds so that there are servants, not leaders, and problem solvers.

    Became Curious again:

    Even though I found the answer that learning doesn’t always have to be fun but I was never satisfied. I kept asking myself, and I realized that curiosity needs breaking your brain’s beliefs. It might sound irrelevant, but it’s not. One mistake a lot of people make while learning is that they believe things. If an article says to them that recently scientists have discovered that Earth was never round but we started seeing it round out of fear, I think people would start to believe it without a second thought. But when people choose uncertainty and start moving a little bit, they become curious. If you are just uncertain that Earth is round or flat but never read, never imagined, then it’s not gonna make you forcefully curious, but it would be hell for you. But it’s not so linear that you start being uncertain and things go in your favor. Most people don’t know how they can be uncertain. Don’t worry, I will guide you with that too.

    Breaking pattern recognition:

    When we are kids, we don’t assume results, but as we grow up, our brains start to believe certain things as they are expected to be. If the tutorial says that doing this will lead to this, the adult brain is 100% sure that this is gonna happen, or this won’t work. But when there is a state, this might work or this might not work. There are other things, like people judge things a lot. They often subconsciously take the name of a topic as a reference to its details, and if the details are not what they expected, they become frustrated. So, better not believe anything. Hope you get this, but I am not sure even if some read this completely, maybe you did or maybe not.

  • Emotions Are the Mother Tongue of Neuroplasticity

    Emotions Are the Mother Tongue of Neuroplasticity

    “Emotions Are the Mother Tongue of Neuroplasticity. When I was born, my brain never knew English,

    but I still knew how to cry. People taught me language,

    not emotions. They were built into me.”

    The Law of emotional encoding:

    This might sound poetic to you, but the world never taught us how to feel. Our feelings were inbuilt. And language influences them very little. If your brain processes that you need attention but no one cares about you, it will start crying. If your sibling is lying that they gave you chocolate but they didn’t, you will feel angry. Because that was an injustice to you. Now your parents don’t teach you “son, feel angry if there is injustice with you”. But your mother nature does.

    Neuroplasticity:

    Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change. Most neuroplastic human beings are kids and youth. Their brain is like clay, which can be molded into anything according to need. But in adults it becomes less, and in senior citizens it is very little. You might be thinking, “Because senior citizens lose their muscle power, they need rest, they can’t perform high mental activities. But what about some people like Einstein who had plastic brains from the initiation of their lives to the end? What made Einstein learn physics?

    Emotions Are the Mother Tongue of Neuroplasticity:

    Albert Einstein’s father gave him a compass, which showed him direction. Just think that you were given something you know nothing about, but it always tells you the direction. You might wonder, How is this happening? Is there something inside it that drives it to act like this? Well, when Albert tried to find out, he came to know that there was nothing visible that would tell him the direction. But there were invisible forces that made it move in different directions. As a kid, this was very intriguing for him. He began to study forces that were not visible but still exist.  Then he studied gravity and other forces. But since he couldn’t see them, it created a desire but emptiness; he thought that something was there, but he couldn’t see it. When there is desire and strong emotions, it leads to innovation. He found a way to see those forces through “visualization”.  He kept visualizing and kept learning.

    The two main Emotional Pillars of Neuroplasticity:

    Different combinations of emotions will lead to different types of changes in the brain. A constant fire to take revenge will lead to an aggressive and impulsive personality. A desire to be cunning to control the situation will lead to learning important rules of controlling other people and staying calm. What will lead to genius? Two emotions that will lead to genius are Curiosity and uncertainty. It’s human nature to try their best not to be uncertain, and this leads to curiosity. So key here is to never feel what you know is the complete truth, and feel it. It’s funny,y but it’s an old saying that “Disrespect and cold weather affect more when you feel them more”.  Same is for this, the more uncertain you feel and keep thinking about it, the more changes occur in your brain. Stay uncertain, stay connected with Mind In Beta xyz. That was it for today, see you later with some other great prespective.

  • The Dark Psychology Behind Gaming Addiction

    The Dark Psychology Behind Gaming Addiction

    Psychology Behind Gaming Addiction

    Mental Triggers of Gaming Addiction

    The Game Beings:

    There is a day in your life when your friend suggests a game, or you install it from any online platform. You start playing the game for the first time, you easily tackle it, and feel like this was easy. You feel like this is over hyped and it’s not difficult. At that time, the game is intentionally making you feel confident. You put your guard down. This is the phase when you are letting the game control your emotions. But this is a very dangerous throne because in the next phase, you will be tied with a chain. This is not a coincidence that every time it’s the same process. It’s a trap. Psychology behind gaming addiction.

    Bruised Ego:

    It’s basic human nature that when they underestimate something, they would consider themselves superior, and they won’t ever let themselves down from that thing. Now, since you underestimated it and you start the second game. Initially, it makes you feel that you are in control, but later, all of a sudden, bots are replaced by real players, and they suddenly defeat you. Now your ego is bruised. You want revenge, and the game knows this very well. And the third phase begins.

    Empty Revenge:

    In the third game, you want revenge by outsmarting other players and keeping your guard up. But this time you will have revenge, but still you will feel empty. Because this time, there would be no players, but all bots. You will win the game, but from inside, you will know that this is not the level where you got trapped and defeated. Your ego won’t be healed, but your self-doubt will be fed by this.

    Bounce Back:

    To fix this problem, you will start a game again and play it passionately, and you will end up having a dopamine rush from winning the game. Your mind will think that you made progress, and that was very easy progress, by just playing a few games. You didn’t lose any energy. You just played and won. Your brain will crave this easy way to get dopamine again and again.

    Bird in the cage:

    You are successfully trapped. You will play again and repeat the cycle. If you try to uninstall and leave it, you won’t have enough stimulation, and you will feel empty. This is the psychology of gaming addiction. Now you are trapped, and it’s not easy to get out of this hell. But obviously, there are ways to make the path a little bit easier.

    Gamming addiction symbolic picture

    Ways to make a way out of it:

    To get out of his I am not gonna tell you steps, because steps are meant to be taken, not told. But I can show you the way of awareness where you can walk and take steps yourself.

    Environment:

    It’s an old but very wise saying, “the nature of a human reflects his environment”.  If you stay with those who talk about games and play games, I guarantee that you can’t escape gaming addiction. So, stay away from gamers and don’t watch gaming-related content.

    Schedule:

    If you want to leave games, don’t try to ’em. What you have to do is fill your time with productive things. Start sleeping at a time and make a schedule that doesn’t allow you to spend time thinking about what to do. Because when you think what to day, your brain says “gaming”. Why? Because it’s an easy and rewarding process, and you can do it any time. But if you have a schedule in which you talk to your friends, your family, and study if you are a student, in such cases, you won’t have enough time to waste on this so-called rewarding process.

    Purpose:

    You spend time in games because they show you progress, but you are more attracted to them because your progress is very fast. You get something for every game. But in real life, it’s a bit slower, but still, it’s the most effective thing to leave gaming. Just decide what you want to do, maybe get a good physique, or get full marks, or become a good father. It can be anything, but give yourself a compliment for every step you take. It won’t make you crazy working overnight for work, but it will help you to stay on track.

    Hope:

    Let me teach you this final and very important concept through research. Scientists took two mice and left them in a big jar of water with no edge. Mice started struggling, and after 30 minutes, they gave up and died, drowning. Then, in another experiment, they took mice of the same breed and same physical conditions. This time, when mice were about to drown, scientists got them out for a while and then threw them back in the jar. But this time, mice had a hope that they would be taken outside, so they kept swimming, not for a day or two but for sixty hours straight. So give yourself hope that when you leave the game, you will have a better life and better relationships. The time you die is not when you die, but when you stop trying and leave the hope. If you need a better environment and don’t have then you can change your environment through books, videos, and podcasts, or with Mind In Beta xyz. It’s not about how you will change your environment, but it’s about when you will change your environment. Best regards from me.