Ask HN: Does coding give you brain fog? Do you ever suffer from brain fog after a day of intense thinking/coding ? Some days after intense working I leave the office spaced out, to the point I wouldn't drive. Thankfully I hop on the train. I also find the whole prolonged screen exposure and posture just leaves me with a headache and neck ache. I really notice how much better I feel after maybe 3 days off work.. |
But as a competitive chess player, I do usually experience it at the end of (especially) weekend tournaments, where there is generally 3 consecutive days of 8-10 hours of intense concentration. The fog is gone after a good sleep and day of rest.
It's usually a combination of long days of coding and stress that causes my brain fog. The same factors cause me to regularly wake up at 3a.m. with my mind too busy to go back to sleep.
That's a novel approach to exercising.
I work in an open office environment, so I needed one that was quiet. I bought the Rebel Treadmill 1000 and it's so quiet me and my office mates can hardly hear it over the sound of the HVAC system. Not affiliated with the company that makes them, but I heartily recommend their treadmill if you get in the market for one.
[1] https://8thlight.com/blog/doug-bradbury/2010/02/25/walk-and-...
If I'm just doing easy front-end stuff like css, I don't feel this effect.
I used to get incredible headaches after long bouts of coding, it took me a long time before I realized I needed glasses.
I'm rather astonished how relatively poor my eyesight had become before even thinking I might need glasses. Boil the frog, I suppose.
Adjust duration and ratios to suit your own environment.
If you are working on challenging stuff all day, it's probably a really good thing.
Related to the right-to-left thinking mode changes, sometimes the words that I am using at become eerily meaningless or unfamiliar. I've spent a few moments asking myself "is that really the way 'else' is spelled?". I recently learned this phenomenon is called semantic satiation [1].
I thought it would go away once I got into management, but the truth is I solve those problems with the same analysis, so even though I'm problem solving people, I'm still a horrible conversationalist right as I leave work.
It isn't a result of repetition for me though. Since I have practiced meditation enough, I can watch how my consciousness shifts and changes. I remember watching a creeping doubt enter, and then a word loses meaning, or I'd forget how it is spelled, even while staring at it. Knowing that jusf a few seconds ago, I knew what it was. I also chalk it up as a state change. I sometimes google it just to be sure and if it shows up, let it go and move on. I don't remember if I ever tried sitting through and seeing how the consciousness shifts back -- would be interesting to watch what happens.
Metta meditation helps to reset this but sometimes it's so heavy – it's better to take a nap first.
[0]: http://blog.case.edu/think/2012/10/30/empathy_represses_anal...
Now I have a water bottle on my desk and I slowly sip it all day, it forces me to get up every 1-2 hours to use the bathroom and fill the bottle back up -- and I deliberately use the bathroom 1 floor down to force me to go up and down the stairs
This is such a good idea that I'm stealing immediately.
I've occasionally pondered obtaining some kind of fitbit for lungs to see if I can spot said 'variation' on a graph. I'm not really sure I'm not just making it up.
For example, I played and performed music seriously for a period of time (no singing), and it was pointed out by a close friend that any performance that lasted more than an hour and my verbal center would basically crash. It would take at least 30 minutes or even hours before my brain would be able to start talking like a normal person again. Prior to this point in time I had purchased a pocket dictionary which I carried around, seemingly to combat this issue.
At present, when I have been working on something particularly engaging at work my wife notices because my ability to communicate does suffer.
It is interesting that you noted 3 days, just because I recently heard a researcher talking about how getting away for 3 days can have a cognitive benefit: https://www.rei.com/blog/camp/the-nature-fix-the-three-day-e...
As was mentioned, getting checked out by a doctor does sound like a prudent step.
The next conversation I have after the coding stretch usually finds me struggling to make my mouth say the thoughts in my head, and then once it does, the sentence structure I use includes more nested clauses than usual.
But even after a 12 hour day of coding I rarely feel fatigued when it comes to learning something new about a technical area I'm studying, though admittedly I don't always spend my spare time working on those things.
I generally get very focused and periodically hours will go by and I won't realize what time it is, only to realize that it's hours later than I had thought. This is a double-edged sword. The flow state is amazing, but sometimes I wonder what happened to the day, even though it was a pleasant day.
I'm about half introvert, half extravert, but for me the most fatiguing thing is being in meetings that seem to last too long relative to their yield. I end up drained and need to recharge for a bit afterwords alone before I'm ready to do anything.
I run 10 miles a week and bike long distances, make all of my own meals, and have been working with various doctors for years. Nothing seems to help 'fix' the issue altogether.
What I also find is my heart is always at its lowest at around midday.. drops to 49/50 before lunch.
I get up several times in the morning and walk around, but if I get in the zone with a problem I am always spaced out By the end of the day
You reminded me, I might try employing mindfulness more again. Let things be as they are for a bit. Thanks!
Short answer: No, I've never had anything like that.
After concentrating for an extended period, I'm slightly out of it when switching to talking to someone. But it clears up quickly and has never been anything so bad that "I wouldn't drive."
Intense mental work can drop your blood sugar and oxygen content in your blood, as mentioned by others. Start checking your health and engineer health back in for better coding.
Walking to another floor's bathroom, stepping away from your desk to walk around the building, getting a sit-stand desk, regularly stretching... there's a bunch. Get a tracker, and start experimenting. The same thing for nutrition.
If you haven't, work on deep breathing exercises and consider getting a pulse tracker so you can find a pattern. This is any other data pattern, the effects are just very close to home. If you feel like you should be coding, consider if your life was a resource management game and at what point you would expend resources to get better productivity from your base unit (aka. you).
Good luck!
Check out the Calm app[1]. Its helped for me because I had no idea where to start. I have no affiliation with them and am sure there are alternatives out there, this just happened to be the first I had tried. I've just started using it the past few weeks and use it at least a couple of times during the work day, and I try and take a walk at least once a day during work as well. Its really helped with everything you listed above.
I also noticed this was a side benefit of having a good test suite- if your test is valid, thorough, and passing, then you don't have to remember as much mental-model (because it's encoded in the suite), which would normally discourage you from getting up at all
The workouts keep me healthy and makes my brain active during coding.
And writing code creates the mental concentration which has built up my mind-muscle connection.
Both go hand-in-hand really. Never do too much of anything. Too much of writing code drops the code quality. And too much of physical exercise will not allow for muscle recovery. Just apply common sense and do what feels right to you.
And yes, buy a good keyboard. A really good one. It will help you years later.
I find physical activity (walking, biking, going to the gym) to be the best, with the added benefit of the "Eureka" moments you get when you're NOT at your desk. I now try to go for a walk for at least an hour if I start getting that. It took me some time to find a job/boss who understands that.
So yeah, it happens to me every time I concentrate too hard for too long, especially when coding / working on logical problems.
Like others are saying, a few things that might help: stay hydrated (water, not coffee/soda etc.), get a good night's sleep ahead of intensive coding days, don't eat crap food at your desk and don't stay in the "zone" for 6+ hours without getting off your chair at least once and doing something different for 30-45 mins (ideally involving fresh air, outside of the building).
I have been doing this job 20 years now and I think this feeling is more prevalent now. The combination of family, commute, and sitting at a desk coding is frankly tiring.
I often get up and walk around, and drink water, etc.. I cycle to work often, used to do gym sessions at lunchtime And that definitely helps..
But sometimes when you are thinking intensely you just zone out...
I used a little poetic license regarding "I wouldn't drive" just to get my point across.
If I am marathoning, though, I use a pomodoro timer and meditate or do something similar to tai chi in between coding sessions. If it isn't that intense, I tend to self-regulate in microdoses using techniques from meditation and an art like tai chi.
I only require multiple days of recovery when I burn out, often resulting from sustained interpersonal conflicts. I have noticed that has been improving since applying techniques from Crucial Conversations.
Regarding getting out of the fog - drinking is the only thing I've found to be reliable, but seldom do so during the week
I would often dream about coding, or solving a problem that I was stuck on.
I did not however, get headaches or neck aches. In fact, I found being spent mentally to be somewhat of a pleasurable state!
I haven't had much time to work on it for a while. Contributions are very welcome!