How can I be a better engineer? I'm slacking at work.

1. Why does it feel repetitive exactly? What kind of work do you do?
2. Do you get the freedom to choose your work?
3. How interesting is the product you work on?

I've felt this way many times working at Meta, and even occasionally while working on Taro. The best thing that helps me is the social aspect of my work.

• At Meta, I'd work closely with a coworker/friend and try to have a joint goal. Alternatively, manufacture a deadline with someone senior and use that as a forcing function to get something done.
• At Taro, I'll just message Alex or Charlie and ask when they're free to work together. We'll find a coffee shop or library, have lunch, and then work together for a few hours.

(In the ADHD world, some people call this "body doubling")

Getting things done will make you feel better and make you a better engineer. Some good discussion on that here: How to be more productive working from home?

I used to enjoy doing the work I did but as of late it feels repetitive, and even though there is so much scope to learn, I get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of it and let it go

I would work with your manager to delegate repetitive tasks away to teammates who don't have as much experience with that task. To grow, you want to be working on tasks that are on the edge of your ability. This is how you continue to develop new skills over a long period of time.

You can have two people work on the same skill for ten years. If one continually pushes their skill development each day by trying more and more challenging things, they'll be a lot better compared to someone who goes through the same rote routine and motions every day.

When you mention there's a lot of scope to learn, I would try to break down the material into bite sized chunks that you can work on. When I hear "too much scope to learn", I would be careful that you aren't trying to just consume information rather than producing something valuable. You actually don't need that much information to start. Bias on producing a deliverable rather than reading. You'll learn a lot more this way.

create more impact to be a senior engineer

I would try to reflect on what behaviors and projects you've had or worked on within the past year. Then, I would come up with the profile of a senior engineer. From this, you can work backwards to see what behaviors and projects you need to work on for the next year to reach senior engineer.

Overwhelm comes due to two primary reasons:

1. Overreaching in how much you can reasonably do or setting unrealistic expectations of yourself.
2. Telling yourself negative stories about the potential outcomes if you drop the things you won't get to.

Which one is true in your case, and why?

Here are some things to consider when you feel overwhelmed:

1. Are you being reasonable with your velocity?
2. Are you setting impossibly high expectations of yourself such that no achievement ever matches what "could be possible?" Our goal should be to set achievable targets while challenging ourselves reasonably.
3. Are your catastrophic fantasies about the dropped stuff actually true?

On any team, the path to becoming a better engineer starts with doing a good job on your assigned tasks. Some questions to ask yourself are:

1. Do I know the coding language well?
2. Do I know my tools well, like IDE, terminal, etc?
3. Do I know the dependent libraries and services well?
4. Do I know the "peripheral systems" well? This everything that makes your specific service work.

As far as motivation is concerned, I talked about its connection with career and higher aspirations in this thread: https://www.jointaro.com/question/Zl5nKMUanIKHEtJBEaZY/weekly-side-projectstart-up-accountability-thread/

Feel free to ask follow up questions!

First, you need to solve the overwhelming feeling. I recommend 2 big things here:

1. Take a break - I think there's a good chance you're suffering from some amount of burnout. If you haven't taken a vacation in a while, do that. Here's a good related thread: "Is it good to take all your PTO at Google/FAANG companies or will you have issues getting a promotion?"
2. Prioritize - There's always a power law when it comes to tech work. Figure out which projects actually matter and focus on those (pretend the others don't exist). I talk about this incredibly in-depth in my productivity course here: [Course] Maximize Your Productivity As A Software Engineer

After that, follow the advice from the general promotion course to have that dialogue with your manager and create an expectations plan: https://www.jointaro.com/course/nail-your-promotion-as-a-software-engineer/talk-to-your-manager/