The Professional
The inimitable Tommy Angelo offers a fiction to poker players: The Professional, who dies if he busts his poker bankroll. For The Professional, there is no recovery from professional failure. Every decision, then, not just in poker but in life, is made through the poker-survival lens. (What would I eat for lunch if poker survival were literal survival? How would I brush my teeth? What would I read before bed? Where would I bank?)
I emphatically do not recommend treating poker survival as if it were literal survival, but I've used it often as a tool for thought, and it works as well for programming as it does for poker. We can't keep score as easily as poker players can, but I often think of myself as a quasi-athlete, trying to optimize a certain kind of output. In that frame of mind, it's pretty easy to imagine myself as The Professional.
I find that The Professional makes different choices than most professionals do. He makes health and fitness professional concerns. He worries more about being trapped in local maxima of competence. He thinks more about the future of the craft. And so on.
If you have a manager, it's useful to pair their management with conclusions from The Professional. Your manager isn't as concerned with your career as you are, and HR will get very grouchy if they critique your diet or personal life the way The Professional will. (But your manager might know a lot more about your company's internal dynamics than The Professional.)
The modal reaction to this technique is, I think, disgust. Subordinating your life to your profession, even as a tool for thought, strikes many of us as abhorrent. But I'm struck by how life-affirming the dictates of The Professional are. The Professional permits no excuses about my health, my relationships, or my approach to work. Ordinary "professionalism" might include a notion of work-life balance, but The Professional's professionalism tends to issue better guidance for my actual life. You might consider him an angel or a devil, but I'm happy to have him on my shoulder.