For years, I lived with a constant, low-level hum of guilt.
You know the feeling. It’s Saturday morning. You are drinking coffee, maybe about to g...
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Wait wait, I see where you're going: you want to stop everyone from coding on weekends so that you could be the only one who codes on weekends and go ahead of everyone quickly! 🤨🤣
Shhh! 🤫 Delete this before everyone finds out!
My whole master plan relies on everyone else burning out while I sneak past them on Monday morning fully rested. You're ruining my 4D chess strategy here!
🤣🤣
Smart move
That's a nice one😂
haahahhahaha nice one
🤣🤣🤣
Hello 👋🏿
Hello!
I’ll go even further - at some point you don’t even need to “study after hours,” let alone on weekends. The only thing that drives me to build mini demos and side projects now is pure curiosity, not pressure or obligation.
That is the ultimate goal. The shift from "I have to learn this to keep up" to "I wonder how this works" changes everything.
It is funny how much better the code turns out when you build something just to scratch an itch, rather than because you are terrified of falling behind.
I don't think anyone who does that needs to per say. I think they want to. Most of my colleagues are angry with their laptops after work hours.
And today learners don't even really care. They'll tell you that they'll vibe code.
That's not unpopular but the best thing you can do unless you need the extra coding time to learn for apllying to a better job or you need the extra money of additional billable overtime. Otherwise, passion projects that lead to even more coding in our spare time are bad for life balance. In a perfect world, no developer would have to work more than 4 days per week on their main job, so there's at least one day left for learning and side projects, and still a full weekend for family and passion.
100%. That 4-day split is the dream setup. One day for tinkering/learning, two days for actual rest.
You're right about the exceptions too. Sometimes you have to grind to get hired or pay bills. I just think a lot of us get stuck in that "survival mode" habit long after we actually need to.
For me it’s more like a eureka moment than a routine. I’m not on socials like X, FB, or Insta, so coding just happens in the evenings as my daily dose of poison 😅. Weekends are for relaxing, otherwise the fear of going blind from screens kicks in.
The 'daily dose of poison' metaphor is spot on. It is hard to put the keyboard away when the inspiration strikes in the evening. But I am with you on the eye health—got to look at something further than 50cm away on the weekends to stay sane
Thanks NorthernDev.
"Humans need rest. " Yep
💯❤️✨
Thanks Aaron!
I sometimes spend weekend playing softball. Sometimes go 30 miles hike. Sometimes run halfmarathon. Sometimes we go geocaching roadtrip with my father. Sometimes I hang at home and do coding. I would never self-torture myself by setting "rules" when I can't do what I like. I didn't get exhausted and didn't start questioning my career due to weekend coding sessions but because long-term pressure and overworking in my daily job. That is much worse.
That is a fair distinction. Rigid rules can be just as draining as the work itself if they feel like a cage.
You are absolutely right about the source of the exhaustion. It is usually the relentless pressure and lack of autonomy in the day job that leads to burnout, not the act of coding itself. If coding is what relaxes you, then it serves the same purpose as the hike.
If you want to improve your coding, you need to put in extra effort—but honestly, I’m lazy too. Studying on the weekend feels hard, while watching Netflix or Hotstar is easy, right?
I see people getting excited about different web series and movies and sharing them everywhere. That makes me wonder: is that movie really that fun? Or are we just losing the time we could have spent learning
A lot of thinking is going on in my mind.
I recognize that battle! The guilt of 'wasting time' is tough. But I've started to look at it differently: Is watching a movie losing time, or is it recharging your brain so you can learn better on Monday? If we treat our brains like machines that never cool down, they eventually break.
That’s right, we feel bad every Monday. It’s the same work without rest, so we really need to use our time effectively. That seems like the only solution, I guess
Exactly. If you drag yourself into Monday already exhausted, the whole week suffers. It is much better to hit Monday with fresh eyes than to grind through the weekend and pay for it later with low energy.
100% agree. Implemented strict 'no code weekends' 6 months ago as Staff Engineer → 3x faster Monday problem-solving + actual promotion.
The real unlock: subconscious parallelism. Friday's dead-end becomes Sunday night's 'Aha!' while washing dishes.
Weekend grind = local optima. Distance = global maxima.
Juniors: grind if needed. Seniors: your leverage is judgment, not keystrokes.
The comparison to local optima vs global maxima is brilliant. It perfectly captures why grinding harder often yields diminishing returns.
You are right about the leverage. At the Staff/Senior level, a fresh mind that prevents an architectural mistake is worth infinitely more than a tired mind churning out features.
Let’s say you’re a manager or a business owner and you have this very excited developer that wants to change the tech stack to the next big thing every second week. Chances are you wouldn’t think of this developer as elite, would you?
I think in most cases job pays us to make someone else’s live easier: if in the meantime we work ourselves into the ground or enjoy that’s entirely up to us.
Kudos on promotion and finding a better balance!
P.S. I’ll still code 😝
That 'excited developer' is often more of a liability than an asset in a stable production environment. Consistency beats intensity every time. And hey, as long as the weekend coding is fun and not forced, keep doing what you love! 😝
I wish I could say that lol
Haha i know that feeling!
Wise choice!
Thanks for reading!
Good article :-)
Everyone's skill levels, grasping ability, memory retention, age (reduced energy), life stage, view of competition etc. are entirely unique and any sort of imbalance (overdoing anything) brings problems with it, isn't it.
Every developer (junior/senior/staff) would have the need to (may be some won't have :-)) continually improve at their pace, also considering their urgencies (job switches, need to learn something fast at home without restrictions to gain confidence & eventually reduce that effort in the office task etc.) and then personal preferences. Some patterns are common to everyone - when we do get time to study extra and when life circumstances do not allow us that time, and in these situations, we prioritize what we do on that weekend :-), so to me yes, curiosity & staying updated is one factor, but not the only one. Balance & moving forward is key and yes, at one's own pace.
Happy coding :-)
Spot on. 'At one's own pace' is the key phrase here. The danger often comes when we try to match someone else's pace without considering our own unique context (age, energy, life stage). As long as we are moving forward and staying healthy, that is what matters. Happy coding to you too!
Yeah, this hit home.
I’ve felt that background guilt too, the “you should be coding right now” voice never really shuts up in this industry. What you described about stepping away and actually thinking better on Monday is real. Some of my best solutions showed up nowhere near an editor.
Also appreciate the nuance. Passion helps, but burnout kills judgment, and judgment is most of the job once you’re past junior level. Coding more hours didn’t make me better; being rested did.
Good reminder that we’re humans who write code, not machines proving our dedication by suffering.
"'Burnout kills judgment.' That is such a powerful line. As we advance in our careers, we get paid for the decisions we make (and often the code we decide not to write), not just raw typing speed. Glad the post resonated with you!
The "passion" narrative is the most effective marketing trick the tech industry ever pulled. It’s designed to make you feel like you’re failing if you aren't donating your free time to the altar of the IDE.
But let’s be real: Coding is a high-leverage tool. It is a means to an end. We live in a world that is hungry for capital, and code is one of the most efficient ways to generate it. If you treat it like a sacred calling 24/7, you lose the ability to see it for what it actually is: a resource.
Before you open that laptop on a Saturday, you have to be your own ruthless Project Manager. You need to ask the hard questions that "passion" usually ignores:
If the answer is "I'm just doing this because I feel like I should," then close the lid. You are essentially working for free for a ghost version of yourself.
The wisdom most people miss is that you don’t code to become a better "compilation machine." You code so that you can eventually stop coding and go live. You earn the right to be human by being efficient with the tool.
If a project doesn't have the potential to change your life or your bank account, it’s not a "side project", it’s a distraction from your actual life. Go out, spend the money you’ve already earned, and touch grass. The code will still be there on Monday, but the Saturday you spent staring at a debugger is gone forever.
The concept of being your own ruthless Project Manager is brilliant. We are often meticulous about optimizing our algorithms for performance, yet completely reckless with how we spend our own time.
You are right. If you view code as a high-leverage tool rather than a lifestyle, it becomes much easier to close the laptop without guilt. The code will wait, but the time is non-refundable.
Burned-out devs don’t write better code, they just write more bugs.
My best solutions never came at 1 AM – they came after a walk, a shower, or a weekend offline.
Seniority isn’t about grinding hours, it’s about making good decisions with a clear head.
Coding should fund your life, not replace it.
I have deleted so much '1 AM genius code' the next morning because it was unreadable. The shower/walk debugging method is undefeated. The brain needs that background processing time.
I agree with this completely. I have a run into cascading problems and often AI doesn't help as it gets stuck on going left when the answer is really right. Non-stop coding unfortunately can take you down a rabbit hole. Taking a step away gives you the perspective of looking in the right place when you return or remembering the implication of a design choice you made. Sleep cannot be underrated. Also be mindful of your tech news consumption regarding the next big valuation of a startup. Reading too much about these startups, even when you aren't coding can actually make you feel like you're behind. Triggering depression, anxiety and loss of joy. It can cascade quicker than you think.
The point about tech news consumption is incredibly important. It is easy to let those "billion-dollar valuation" headlines distort our reality and make us feel like we are constantly failing by comparison.
And you are spot on about the rabbit holes. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is close the laptop before you break something that was actually working, just because you lost perspective. Sleep is the ultimate debugger.
That's right! It's better to spend your time moving your code to bin on the weekend. I always do that - clutter up my disk space with text files on weekday evenings, so I can delete them later and say, "That was a valuable learning experience."
I call that aggressive prototyping.
Honestly, the ability to look at what you wrote on Tuesday and confidently delete it on Saturday is a senior skill. It means your taste has improved faster than your typing.
Agreed. Weekend grinding is fake productivity for mid/senior devs. Your career actually advances when you get enough sleep because it makes you sharper and easier to work with.
The "easier to work with" part is huge and often overlooked.
Software development is a team sport. No matter how brilliant the code is, no one wants to debate architecture with a sleep-deprived, irritable engineer. Rest improves your EQ just as much as your IQ.
i was trying to work a side project yesterday and even after spending 4 hours with chatgpt exploring ideas , i discovered that i don't enjoy coding until i am being paid for it
so , coding is a profession for me and not passion
i will enjoy my weekends and relax from now on
There is a lot of freedom in admitting that. The industry pushes the "passion" narrative hard, but treating it strictly as a profession is completely valid.
You do not need to love the syntax to be excellent at the job. Enjoy the downtime.
Pursuing other hobbies on weekends may help sharpen your mind, indirectly improving the problem-solving skills that help you to code better. Personal experience: I recently joined a bouldering club, and found that it's a sport that not only challenges my physical strength, but also tests my strategic skills in coordinating my position to reach the end point. This practice eventually helps in better analysing the cause of the issue while working as a developer
That makes sense. It forces you to be present in the moment.
I notice the same thing regardless of the activity. As soon as I step away from the screen and do something physical, my brain tends to solve the complex bugs in the background while I am not looking.
Yeah… this resonates a lot.
I don’t think the “no weekends” part is the magic — I think it’s what stopping did to your relationship with the work. The industry really did wire a lot of us to equate passion with exhaustion, and that low-level guilt you mentioned is painfully real.
What stood out to me is the subconscious problem-solving bit. I’ve noticed the same thing: the moment you stop forcing solutions, your brain quietly keeps working anyway. Half my best ideas show up when I’m doing something completely unrelated. Weekend grinding often felt productive, but in hindsight it was mostly me being too tired to realize I needed distance, not more effort.
The promotion point is also important and doesn’t get said enough. At senior levels, output isn’t just code volume — it’s judgment, communication, and knowing when not to build something. Burnout kills all of that. People trust calm, rested engineers more than frantic “always on” ones, even if we don’t like admitting it.
I also appreciate the nuance. Some people genuinely enjoy weekend coding, and that’s fine. But a lot of us aren’t doing it out of joy — we’re doing it out of fear. Fear of falling behind, fear of not being “real” enough, fear of being replaced.
The last line hit hard: we’re not compilation machines. The irony is that the more we treat ourselves like machines, the worse we get at the parts of the job that actually matter.
Curious where people land on this too — especially seniors. At what point does hustle stop helping and start quietly hurting?
The point about trust is critical. A frantic engineer makes stakeholders nervous, whereas a calm engineer signals control. It is hard to project that confidence or make sound architectural judgments when you are running on empty.
To answer your question: I think the hustle starts hurting the moment curiosity turns into obligation. When you are coding just to silence the anxiety of "falling behind" rather than to actually solve a problem, you have crossed the line into diminishing returns.
I feel you bro! "Real Developers Code for Fun" is what my sleep paralysis demon's whispered to me every night for years.
It is the ultimate gatekeeping myth. It took me a long time to realize that 'Real Developers' are just people who ship code, regardless of what they do on a Saturday. Hope the demon is quiet now!
I’ve been a CTO for over a decade. The biggest career jumps I’ve seen — mine and others’ — didn’t come from coding more hours. They came from better decisions.
Spot on. One smart decision often saves weeks of brute-force coding. It is impossible to have that kind of clarity when you are just grinding tickets 24/7.
I work 95+hours a week right now and its all fun for me
If it feels like play, you never work a day in your life. As long as the passion fuels you and you are happy, that is what counts. Respect for the hustle.
I have never coded on weekends. When Friday a specific time hits I'm done until Monday.
You are miles ahead of most of us then! I had to learn this lesson the hard way through burnout. Keeping that strict boundary from day one is a superpower.
I agree about the sub-conscious mind working things out while doing other things. I spent a whole evening plugging away on a problem I was having. The next morning, I woke up with the answer.
It feels like magic, doesn't it?
It is proof that the brain needs that downtime to index the information properly. "Plugging away" often just adds noise, while sleep clears the signal. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is simply go to bed.
Next week i will try take rest. Nice article by the way
Take a good long rest and then be creative! Im glad you liked it!
Taking time to unwind and recharge is just as important. Coding can be mentally exhausting, so it’s no surprise that things often flow better after a day or two of stepping away.
It is strange how often a problem that felt impossible on Friday afternoon becomes obvious on Monday morning. The brain just needs that hard reset to process the information properly.
Totally! Better for your physical and mental health as well, better for everything ... nothing to add!
Thank you! Glad you liked it!
I think I quite agree with this. Sometimes it's good to just step aside and play in the grass
I couldn't agree more. Stepping away completely is usually when the best solutions actually come to you, not while forcing it in front of the monitor.
Oh come on! At least you can find some compromise and do 4 hours.... for the whole weekend.
Haha, the problem is that '4 hours' rarely stays 4 hours in this line of work. One bug leads to a rabbit hole, and suddenly it is Sunday night! For me, a clean break is the only way to be safe. 😅
How you take breaks and time off is more valuable then how you work.
That is a great way to put it. The quality of your downtime dictates the quality of your uptime.
Thanks NorthernDev, I already feel ease Reading This