I started with something that's completely unrelated to my professional work and to my other side projects: home computer emulator programming.
I moved from C++ to the much simpler C which I started to enjoy more because it's not putting such a "mental barrier" between my brain and the problem to solve (another option would've been to use an entirely different programming language you're currently interested in but can't use "at work").
Basically: have one or several fallback projects which are completely different from your usual work, without any self-imposed deadlines or long term planning to go back to when the other work becomes boring or overwhelming, just having fun is the main point, and part of the fun is going back to the core of what makes programming actually fun: Just whipping out code in a way that "feels right" to you, and seeing things actually happen, free from outside opinions or priorities.
From time to time (usually over the Christmas holidays) I take a deep dive into this project, but otherwise it's just a few hours a week at most, usually with months-long pauses inbetween.
PS: it took me a few months to "detox" my brain from the "professional software development process" that has become the norm in the "industry" ("agile" processes, software development patterns, estimates, tickets and all that crap). Those had been deeply ingrained into my brain in the last decades, but it's important to realize that all these things are, in fact, turning programming into a chore where burnout is ineviatable.
I moved from C++ to the much simpler C which I started to enjoy more because it's not putting such a "mental barrier" between my brain and the problem to solve (another option would've been to use an entirely different programming language you're currently interested in but can't use "at work").
Basically: have one or several fallback projects which are completely different from your usual work, without any self-imposed deadlines or long term planning to go back to when the other work becomes boring or overwhelming, just having fun is the main point, and part of the fun is going back to the core of what makes programming actually fun: Just whipping out code in a way that "feels right" to you, and seeing things actually happen, free from outside opinions or priorities.
From time to time (usually over the Christmas holidays) I take a deep dive into this project, but otherwise it's just a few hours a week at most, usually with months-long pauses inbetween.
PS: it took me a few months to "detox" my brain from the "professional software development process" that has become the norm in the "industry" ("agile" processes, software development patterns, estimates, tickets and all that crap). Those had been deeply ingrained into my brain in the last decades, but it's important to realize that all these things are, in fact, turning programming into a chore where burnout is ineviatable.