Most of the time my bouts of "screw this, I hate programming" has more to do with myself and losing sight of what value I'm providing than anything else. Sure,

Most of the time my bouts of "screw this, I hate programming" has more to do with myself and losing sight of what value I'm providing than anything else. Sure, I'd love to have a job where I am constantly in a state of intellectually-stimulating ecstasy tackling new and daunting challenges... so would every other person on the planet, but such jobs don't exist. Programming is a service business. You're solving people's problems so they can spend more time doing work that is more productive/fun/challenging/etc (hey wait a minute, that's what _I_ wanted!) When you lose site of who's receiving the benefit of your work, you start focusing instead only on your own needs and down the rabbit-hole you go. I freely admit that I make this mistake regularly due to distance from those who are using the results of my efforts, but I also tend to burn myself out because I don't segregate work and life well enough. In Dream Job(tm) where I am always being challenged with problems that involve deep thinking, I can guarantee that I would burn out much faster due to this. Hard problem? I'll just work it until I've solved it to the detriment of all other activities. But that's how I work, and I know it so it's up to me to try and short-circuit that when it ceases to be healthy. I would say that finding a hobby where you're working with your hands or engaged in the physical realm tends to help balance things out. All software is temporary and contemplating the months and years spent building something that will most likely be tossed in a decade or less is demotivating. So build some furniture, restore a motorcycle, paint a picture, anything that has a chance for permanence. It helps me, a lot.