Tips for mentally handling a rough feature release aftermath

[steady garden]

Does anybody have any tips on mentally handling the aftermath of a rough feature release? I do keep a prioritized list of work but It feels like there are new issues or constant questions almost every day. This makes me feel incredibly overwhelmed and it seems like there is an endless amount of work added on with no end in sight. Just jumping from fire to fire.

Things have gotten to the point where I have started feel incredibly stressed, incompetent and demotivated. Sometimes, I'm really struggling to mentally persist and iron out the kinks in my work.

[opaque fjord]

Step 0: see a therapist regularly
Step 1: talk to your manager about how you're feeling. This is one of the parts of their job to help with.

Are you the lead on the project, or is someone else?

[steady garden]

Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it.

I am the lead of the project (only developer working on it).

[opaque fjord]

It can be overwhelming for sure leading a project, especially if it's solo - it can be hard to do any actual work on it if you spend the time doing the project management parts.
Getting someone else to help with any part of that can help a lot. Whether that's helping interface with stakeholders, or triage issues, or fix some bugs, just relieving the pressure. Your manager is the one here to talk to about who could help with this.

Then, you've got to start setting boundaries.

1. Stop, and breathe.
2. Remember that whatever this project is, it isn't actually important in the broad scheme of things. It's probably not going to sink the company. It's not going to matter in five years if it was delivered late. Your kids won't give a shit about it. It won't be in your obituary. Perspective helps.
3. Take a look at all the things that are happening and place them on an Eisenhower matrix: https://asana.com/resources/eisenhower-matrix. Say no to the not urgent or important ones - you have that power. Be firm, and if there are problems tell them to escalate to your manager. Put the things that are important but not urgent in your issue tracker. Don't bump off current work, don't get distracted. Remind people that you've already committed to things right now. If they insist it's urgent, force them to convince someone else to give up their thing that's higher on the priority list.
4. Create blocks of time as much as possible. Set up office hours for people to ask you questions instead of whenever they feel like it. Close slack while you're doing other things.

I also recommend setting aside some time to try to see the bigger picture of your work, aside from just the categorization part. There are two really important things to look at:

1. Do we need to do the things we're doing? Things change over time, and so you want to go back to the original problem that you're trying to solve with this project - is this still the best approach to solve that? Are there pieces you can cut?
2. Are there patterns in the tasks? A simple example is "I spend time doing these small manual tasks, and instead I could build some automation to handle it", but it can be more subtle, too, like "3 of the last 5 critical bugs would have been prevented if we had automated tests that covered this flow". If you can find these, you'll need to talk to people about "investment" while you're delaying doing all their things so that you can build the thing to eliminate those tasks. Make sure to make it as quickly as possible - this is the area for 80% solutions, or honestly even 30% solutions. It doesn't matter if it's super hacky - as soon as it gets out there and starts saving you time, that's time you can reinvest in improving it.

This, btw, is senior work. You may be able to handle it, and if so that's great. But you may also not be prepared to take it all on and that's ok.
I had someone on my team who I gave a big project to because a) I wanted to give her a chance to grow and b) I didn't really have anyone else available. She wasn't prepared to handle it on her own and I didn't have time to properly give her support, and it burned her out and she left the company. That was one of my major failures as a manager and something I regret. I don't want to see anyone else go through that.