How To Deal With Developer Anxiety

Every seasoned developer I chat to has experienced some form of anxiety in their career.

It's inevitable.

Working in a team, reporting to a client or questioning your output can all lead to feelings of anxiety. Our goal in this issue is to address different ways to deal with anxiety and ensure you're always performing.

Let’s dive in.

Write things down

Being a developer is a high-collaboration environment. This is great for some but daunting for others.

You've got an email from a client waiting. A team members needs you to check some code. You need to wrap up this feature in the next few hours. It all gets very overwhelming. Being overwhelmed is a quick step away from panicking and becoming unproductive.

My advice: write things down (physically or digitally). Make just a few notes of what you're needing to get done and then start working your way through them.

It's human nature to see things disproportionately. If you're feeling overwhelmed because you have so much to do, you'll naturally start to amplify that feeling in your head which will cause a further spiral. Counter this by writing down what is critical and getting it done. That feeling of progress will also release dopamine (makes you feel good) and entice you to push a bit harder to be more productive.

It's a simple trick but seeing a list of what needs to get done is far better for you than trying to recall it from memory.

Don't create a tone

The majority of our communication between team members or clients is through messages or emails. Meetings are great but generally halt output so more companies leverage message-based communication tools.

This increases efficiency but also increases the chance for a "I misread your tone" scenario. On average, direct messages are kept short and informal so as to help be to-the-point. However, our brains don't read messages the same way. We'll read that message as if it was in a conversation and, generally, a short response is indicative of a negative emotion.

"Send me that file" comes across as far more aggressive than "Hey Ted, would you mind please sending me that file we spoke about?".

This is why we should avoid adding tone to a message and rather just focus on the content of the message.

Too many people develop a negative opinion of others because of a poor communication infrastructure and reading negative tones where there were none.

Double check your code

The simplest way to avoid stress or anxiety when sharing your code with others: double check it.

Developers often just want to get something done. As soon as we feel the code is working, we send it off for review. Then we actually conduct a review ourselves and notice all the little mistakes. Mistakes that other developers, with a fresh set of eyes, will notice and point out. Queue anxiety.

We quickly rush to try and solve these issues before anybody can notice but the damage is done. Either in introducing unnecessary anxiety or by having another developer point out something that was obvious.

Take a couple of minutes to review your code before you have others give it their approval. Your future self will thank you.

Answer the question

All developers will be working with some form of client or management. That's just how business works.

I see a lot of developers feeling anxious that the client/management is going to ask them a question. This could be in a meeting or just in a team chat. They panic and introduce unnecessary anxiety by just fearing something that may or may not happen.

You're a developer and a part of that team for a reason. Your job is to solve technical problems. Every line of code you write is actually an answer that you're giving. However, in this scenario, the client may be asking you something about the solution.

You have two scenarios here: You know the answer or you don't.

If you know the answer then simply take a moment to formulate your response and then clearly answer their question. No need to ramble or go on. They asked a question and you're giving an answer. If they ask you to expand, then that's another question and you can then dive deeper with your answer.

If you don't know the answer, be honest. Don't thumb suck or make something up. That never works and only backfires. Rather offer the response, "I don't actually know the answer to that offhand but give me some time to go do some research and I'll get back to you ASAP".

Most people are reasonable and would accept this answer because:

1. It shows honesty and humility in your knowledge
2. It shows taking initiative to go out of the way to provide an answer

People appreciate that.

Hopefully you've found these 4 insights valuable and you'll be able to use them to help calm any potential anxiety and ensure that you're performing as a great developer.

See you again next week.

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