I am blessed. I get to work a job where I get to do something that if I wasn’t working I would probably be doing on my own. Life as a Career Programmer for many of us is a dream. So many of the Developers I have met in the NYC tech scene have a fundamental desire to program. For many of us this was a hobby we have engaged in since we were kids building Lego Robots.

For me I truly enjoy programming and Logical thinking. It is my Zen. Writing code and then finally getting to see a finished project is inherently enjoyable for me. That’s why I program on the weekends and holidays. It is something that I have a true passion for. So this presents an interesting issue, especially when working in the agency world. What’s it like to have your dream job but with the stress of tight deadlines and Product Managers competing for your time?

When I first started working in the agency circuit I was very stressed and was having a hard time truly enjoying my work. It is difficult to practice your Zen when you have several different people telling you that they need this project done today and the other one done yesterday. I saw myself fall victim to the same thing I fell victim to all too often In highschool and college. I made my Zen dependent on the external measures of my success, grades, meeting deadlines, other people’s opinions of my work. For a long time throughout my life I actually thought that placing your self worth in external measures of success was conducive to motivating yourself to produce quality work. I have come to the conclusion that you may be able to get by doing that in highschool, college, and even some jobs; as a Web Dev in the agency world you will burn out fast if you go that route.

So if we can’t base our ideas of success on how often we meet deadlines and how often we produce flawless work. What is an accurate measure of our career success that will continue to motivate us to be our best but at the same time won’t do us damage when we inevitably miss that deadline or botch that deploy?

The answer to that I think goes back to my first paragraph. If you are like me and didn’t go into programming for the money or the ping pong at work lifestyle, and you actually went into programming because you truly enjoy it, then you can base your career success off your own personal success. You can base your ideas of how you are progressing and how you are maturing in your field by how often you are in that Zen state. When you are in the state where you are actually enjoying writing the software you were assigned to build then I think that there is a great chance that you are doing your best work then.

You can work 8 hours in a Zen state and get more work done the 12 hours in a stressed state. I know i’ve done both.

This is not to say that keeping deadlines in mind isn’t important or necessary, but rather that when you find yourself getting stressed by the deadlines and you’re losing your Zen you need to recenter and realize why you became a Developer in the first place. You love this shit.

And when you truly love something you give it your all. So when you’re in that Zen state you are your most valuable to your PM’s. So regardless of how close the approaching deadline is remember that you love coding and the more you just treat you projects as if you were coding just for the sake of coding the better the outcome for everyone involved.

“You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself – without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat.”

― Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita