[muzani]

Yes. This was the key for curing me from burnout. Vacations didn't help. My "non tech hobby" was spending time with the kids.

This was fine but I went out of touch with what I loved about tech. Teaching helped a little, but lost the edge when my students didn't continue down the SE path.

So I built things. I built them ruthlessly. No plan. No career goals. Just free fall hacking.

Join random online games, then hack together solutions that help you beat them. Don't just limit yourself to MySQL, NoSQL, etc, try making databases in Google Sheets or plaintext. Maybe try optimizing things for no reason. If you feel curious about something do it without planning, unless you're in a planning mood.

Basically you should actually enjoy the hobby.

[raindropm]

"No plan. No career goal. Just free fall hacking"

Hell yeah. Your word sums up the 'play' spirit we all used to have when we were young (that somehow got lost when we entering adulthood)