A rather belated response, but hopefully still relevant: consider exploring fields of interest to you that are sufficiently different from compsci to give your brain a break while still being productive?
To explain by means of an example: I happen to have a strong interest in both historical philology and theoretical physics, and I’ve actively leveraged this to my advantage in that when my brain is fed up of thinking about conundrums of translation in Old Norse poetry, I’ll switch gears completely and crack open a textbook on, say, subatomic physics or Lie algebras, and start reading/working problems. Similarly, if I’ve spent several hours trying to wrap my head around a mathematical concept and need a respite, I can go read an article or a book on some aspect of Anglo-Saxon literature. It’s still a productive use of time, but it’s also a refreshing break, because it requires a different type of thinking. (At least, in my experience?) Of course, if I’m exceptionally low on energy, I simply resort to burying myself in a good book (non-fiction or fiction, generally it doesn’t matter).
Another example: a friend of mine is a computer scientist, but did a minor in philosophy and is an avid musician in his spare time. (And both reading philosophy and practicing music have the added advantage of being activities that do not involve staring at a computer screen!)
A rather belated response, but hopefully still relevant: consider exploring fields of interest to you that are sufficiently different from compsci to give your brain a break while still being productive?
To explain by means of an example: I happen to have a strong interest in both historical philology and theoretical physics, and I’ve actively leveraged this to my advantage in that when my brain is fed up of thinking about conundrums of translation in Old Norse poetry, I’ll switch gears completely and crack open a textbook on, say, subatomic physics or Lie algebras, and start reading/working problems. Similarly, if I’ve spent several hours trying to wrap my head around a mathematical concept and need a respite, I can go read an article or a book on some aspect of Anglo-Saxon literature. It’s still a productive use of time, but it’s also a refreshing break, because it requires a different type of thinking. (At least, in my experience?) Of course, if I’m exceptionally low on energy, I simply resort to burying myself in a good book (non-fiction or fiction, generally it doesn’t matter).
Another example: a friend of mine is a computer scientist, but did a minor in philosophy and is an avid musician in his spare time. (And both reading philosophy and practicing music have the added advantage of being activities that do not involve staring at a computer screen!)