pphaneuf wrote about it's problems with morale slump. There was a time when I believed that this was the difference between professional programmers and amateur ones. I was wrong, it just happened to be very used to be productive. Then I had my own shares of problems with productivity. As a matter of fact I just slowly get out of one.

There where a few good comments on the phenomenon. I only have to add one thing which really annoys me. Chemicals! I have in my neighborhood a doctor which happens to be a family friend. Once, seeing the kind of color I can exhibit (all day long on front of my monitor, what do you expect ?) suggested to take a few vitamins. A couple of pills an my mood, energy and productivity was back.

During stress and long periods of intensive work, we often feed irregularly and badly which makes our metabolism a bit unbalanced, this can cause again depression and in the end get our productivity down the floor, which again makes us feel even worst.

I don't really believe in drugs, but here are a few things I found to be very useful to me during bad times, and which are not very serious drugs to make me worry to much about the fact that I use them from time to time.

• Magnesium and B6 based vitamins
• From time to time we do use to make crazy things like, sleeping 4 hours a day and working 16 and this for many weeks. This chaotic activity doesn't do much good to our neurons, plus that they don't really grow back once they died. So here is Piracetam in small doses, which gives a pus of oxygen to the brain and protects the neurons.
• When things are getting even worse, and we are constantly depressed, there are the anti-depressive drugs. Now, this is a bit to much for me, but once again I've got a good tip from my doctor friend. Natural anti-depressive like Hypericum perforatum ( known as St. John's Wort ). You can find some pills containing the plant and does wanders despite the fact that it's the pure natural plant only and not some synthetic chemical.

If I only knew how to post an reply to an advogato.org article I would be saved, but hell I can not find how.