How to Handle Stress and Anxiety as a Software Engineer?
Throughout my career, I’ve faced various stressful situations.
Some I handled poorly, some I sidestepped, while others led me to leave that job altogether.
Stress and anxiety have diverse triggers and coping strategies, and they don’t manifest the same for everyone.
I’ve always been the type who wouldn’t easily succumb to anxiety; given my upbringing where the concept was relatively foreign (my mum wouldn’t even understand if I say I’m feeling anxious :)).
Recognising Stress
But recognizing stress is crucial: do you feel isolated at work? Are you working excessively long hours? Ever felt targeted or bullied? Taking out your frustrations on your loved ones? Experiencing burnout? The list goes on.
However, there’s the other side of the coin – the long hours you’ve been spending on that particular project might be giving you the satisfaction you always wanted; the tireless work and sleepless hours do not bother you as you see the product shaping up in front of you – You feel loved and passionate about yourself with your work, and this is, though not necessarily stressful activity, it does take a toll on you – so you need to watch out for the flags.
Handling Stress
I’ll try to put out my perspective on stress and how to handle it as a software engineer.
I’ve been a software developer over 25 years (still hands on :))— been through the struggles of a junior developer, handled hard scenarios as a senior developer, managed touch people and tech problems as a lead engineer! So perhaps this article might bring out the non-technical nature of me!
But first let’s understand what’s this stress all about. A developer might be undergoing through the stressful phase without him/her knowing it.
Stress in the IT Context
We’ve all been there — experienced the stress at work or home. But what is it?
Stress, in the IT context, is the physical and emotional response to excessive demands or challenges encountered during your work while coding, debugging, fire fighting clients’s demands and so on.
It is a battle to manage tight deadlines, dealing with team members, handling other job-related pressures, battling loneliness, feeling frustrated and list goes on!
Stress for software engineers often stems from tight deadlines, relentless debugging, the need to stay updated with ever-evolving technologies, inferior self perception, low in confidence, under skilled for the job and so on.
You do need to consider your work place ethics, teams’s ability and work culture, project scope, future work, unneeded/brittle friendships/relationships, office politics and a few work/office related things.
We also feel the burden of potential project failures, communication issues, on-call duties, and challenges in maintaining a work-life balance.
These pressures lead to physical and emotional responses that can affect productivity and well-being.
My learnings on Stress
Here’s what I learned about stress and anxiety.
First is to identify the symptoms: are you feeling lonely at workplace? Are you working long hours (I used to work 12–14 hours some days 🤦♂️) and being pushed to verge at times?
You ever got that feeling you’ve being singled out or even bullied? Are you venting it on your family? You getting into “burnout” phase? And so on and on..
There isn’t a simple method to handle stress as a Software Engineer — I’ll answer from my perspective.
Get a hobby
While it might sound silly, it is not! Many engineers I came across do not possess a hobby: after their daily grind, I often hear them say: they’d slouch on the sofa to watch TV, head over to a pub to drink a beer, sleep, binge watch, WhatsApp calls, chauffeuring kids etc.
I also know a few engineers who dug themselves into reading a book over the weekend than watching, running and gymming, gardening and building DIY projects, tinkering home automation and so on!
Picking up a hobby will not only make you feel better about selves, it does provide a long term benefit when we actually retire! People don’t really understand the benefits of having a consistent hobby – it’s a saviour in your later part of life – trust me.
It’s not too late to get a hobby! There are a ton of hobbies you can enjoy- as simple as reading, hiking, travelling to any complex hobbies like piano playing, pottery, fishing, 3D designs to fun stuff like knitting, painting, Lego building and what kit!
You spend a few minutes a day and you’d be building your life turning hobbies!
Becoming “thick” personality
Develop a “thick” personality — “care a damn” attitude would sometimes protect you though it might negatively impact your work.
The sensitive you are the more stress you’d be under (I’m not preaching about being insensitive – just saying sometimes you got to isolate yourself and be in a bubble).
Venting framework
Over the time, bottling up stress will only cause more harm. Venting it out in a controlled and managed manner is a good therapy. You must have a venting session/mechanism developed to get you pour out your hearts content.
Find a friend, partner, anonymous person to chat to. Make sure they are non-judgmental (when I have my friends chose me for them to open up/vent, one important thing I always follow: be non-judgmental.
The second important point is also to listen in. Let the person talk.
I have a few things I do when I’m absolutely down and feel stressed: go out on a walk. Play with my dog. Sit in a cafe reading/writing something other than work; watch comedy shows (I like comedy and political thrillers) with family; pick up a DIY project;
Do what ever is comfortable and convenient to let the steam off. Bottling up is only shifting the burst to later time.
Master your subject
Upskill/reskill yourself. The higher you are in the skill-level scale, the more confident you’d become thus leading to managing your work properly.
Do this experiment if you don’t believe me: pick-up the topic on which team may be discussing on Monday. You have a weekend to catch-up on that new topic.
Try reading a few articles, watch YouTube videos, read in a couple of relevant chapters, knock up a GitHub repository to try out.
Believe me you’d be more confident and on the roll come Monday – Team members will be looking at you with awe during the discussions
Managing time
Make sure you are managing time effectively. I struggled with this aspect in my earlier years but realised the importance of keeping focus on that task that’s on the top of the list.
Do what ever works for you but ultimately try to find the difference between what is your actual work and the noice. Focussing with all your energy on that line of work and ignoring rest of the unnecessary noise is what gets you go further in your career.
Avoid context switching if you can — if you wish use pomodoro technique — except instead of 25 minutes, focus for 55 minutes if you can.
There are a ton of other methods to handle stress that I can recommend— but everyone is different. You must work with yourself that suits you.
Ultimately it is YOU who needs to understand your own state of mind and body!
How do you handle stress? You don’t think about it and let it slide under the carpet? Or actually you’d act on it with perseverance.
Let me know if you have any methods that might help you destress you!
