We all know this feeling.

Feeling when you are nervously fiddling with a text editor, solving a complex problem, and the whole world outside your monitor fades. You forget what time it is and what you will eat. You are lost in the wilds of the screen, lost in your task.

I have never taken hard drugs, but I assume that they have a similar effect.

Such a life with ease turns into drug addiction. And this addiction is one of the most insidious. But it is not perceived as physical addiction ... rather, as productivity.

Perhaps you manage to finish the job, get good money for it to maintain dependence, but at what cost?

Your friends and family do not share this addiction. After you sit down, pick a few hundred lines of code in the jackhammer mode and feel satisfied, they will not be able to feel the same.

The balance between work and life for some developers is an elusive goal. Relationships are a key part of happiness, so it is very important for us to understand how to build and maintain them.

Share your thoughts on work

Let's face it: explaining complex technical things to a less technical-minded person can be like torture.

When people ask me “what have I been working all day?”, I often reply “you won’t understand.” True, I recently realized how badly this harms relationships.

As I said, friends and family often do not share our love for programming and problem solving. Though they love us. That is why they are always curious.

If you are tired, not in the mood or do not know how to share it, at least try to talk about working with friends and family. They appreciate these efforts, and who knows, they can somehow help your impotence.

Take regular breaks and breathe fresh air

If you want to make better use of your time, take breaks. It has long been known that regular pauses in any activity increase productivity in the long term.

"Well, I will take breaks, but what should I do during them?"

The key to effective pauses is movement:

Move your legs.

Move your lips.

Walking is easy. Go outside, walk your pet, just go to the kitchen for a glass of water. You can do a run, but personally I don’t like to sweat when I program.

Depending on what kind of environment you are in, moving your lips can be a daunting task. If there is at least one colleague nearby - super! Talk to him about something. If you work from home and you have no one to talk to, use the telephone. Call your grandmother, friend, girlfriend, father - anyone.

Please note that I do not propose to write. Phone calls are much more meaningful, they stimulate more than texts, and can help to divert the brain from work.

Spend time with loved ones

For most developers, work is also a hobby, they often do not understand where it ends and where personal life begins. I do not know a single accountant who would like to keep accounts in his spare time. But I know a lot of developers who rarely go out.

No amount of messages in Slack or IRC will ever replace live chat. Meet with friends somewhere, do crazy things, make mistakes, travel.

Our brain automatically groups similar memories to save space. The developer may perceive the past few years as a few weeks if he does not actively receive new experience.

(No, changing the color scheme in Vim is not a "new experience").

Can it be that after ten years you don’t want to remember something other than the routine that you go through every day?

Only one thought about it terrifies me.

Do not live in anticipation of success

Anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit probably thought in a similar way (I did just that):

"I will work 18 hours a day until my application is on its feet, then I can relax and spend time with friends and family."

Entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint. Be it a third-party or main project, you need to understand that donating relationships for the sake of it is not worth it.

Of course, you can always make new friends after you "come to success." But you can never understand their true intentions. Your old friends, those that you had, when your brilliant idea was just an idea, those who were well with you not because of money, but because of your personality, will try to keep in touch with you.

Do not ignore their efforts. Be flexible. Plan your weekends to spend time with them. Come up with something.

Everyone wants to be successful, but if you lose friends and family while you succeed, what is the point?

It’s never too late to embed these principles in your life. Do not delay this task until it is too late, you will be left alone, and family members will turn into barely familiar people.

No need to take all the tips en masse and run to apply them, select a pair or even one. Gradually build them into your life and watch your relationship develop.