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Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?

#11

Post by partisan »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #3

I don't think trying to "motivate oneself" will bear a lot of fruit. Motivation is a combination of beliefs: belief that a thing will be beneficial, and that it's possible. That's at the macro level. On the micro level, structure helps a lot. Some of the more go-getter people you know are just on autopilot, but have done the work beforehand to hack their motivation, mostly by forming habits and setting themselves in…

Agreed. I started walking for an hour+ each day about 7 months ago. I've missed perhaps 15 or 20 days since then for various reasons. This morning, I felt down and didn't want to go walk. I don't even remember the moment when I decided to get up and walk. I just found myself outside and walking, on autopilot so to speak. Having a habit really makes motivation a secondary concern and has helped me overcome the lack of motivation that hits every so often.

Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?

#12

Post by allendoerfer »

insoluble wrote: post #6
allendoerfer wrote: post #2

By avoiding triggers, that demotivate you. I see myself as a stupid machine, which behaves like it does in certain situations. If you want change in the long term, you have to change the situation and preconditions instead of trying to reprogram the machine, that will follow. Exercise, eat healthy, sleep enough, see enough sunlight, do what you like. If you have a setback, try to find out, how it started and try to a…

> change the situation and preconditions instead of trying to reprogram the machine Kudos on recognising the prevalence of this phenomenon. When people are running in a reactionary mode, trying to reprogram the system is asking for failure. Just like with a black-box program, the input parameters need to be changed if you want the output to change. Your environment (including objects, TODO lists, people, emails, text…

Exactly. Also, if you are successful in altering your "extended you" your inner you will also change. E.g. if you want to become good at tests, you have to set the environment to be better at tests, once you have done that, you will become better at tests, but you will also be more likely to do more of these tests with your initial success behind you and feel more confident etc. making you actually better beyond the environment you created.

Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?

#13

Post by insoluble »

allendoerfer wrote: post #12
insoluble wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> change the situation and preconditions instead of trying to reprogram the machine Kudos on recognising the prevalence of this phenomenon. When people are running in a reactionary mode, trying to reprogram the system is asking for failure. Just like with a black-box program, the input parameters need to be changed if you want the output to change. Your environment (including objects, TODO lists, people, emails, text…

Exactly. Also, if you are successful in altering your "extended you" your inner you will also change. E.g. if you want to become good at tests, you have to set the environment to be better at tests, once you have done that, you will become better at tests, but you will also be more likely to do more of these tests with your initial success behind you and feel more confident etc. making you actually better beyond the…

> better beyond the environment you created

That sounds like an interesting approach to life: Improve your environment; watch yourself improve; then repeat. It's like a big optimisation problem slowly working its way toward the maximum. It's like a personal singularity.

Sometimes I spend so much time in my head that I forget to change my environment. It would be nice if our best thoughts could somehow be put into effect more quickly without necessarily interrupting other planned activities. I guess that's where self-control and sequential execution come in. At the same time, the original plans may have become invalid.

Sometimes after you change your environment, it's like you have to re-compile the kernel before you can run the program you were initially planning to run. The trick is in not losing state information during that recompiling process. Sometimes writing cookies (aka, notes) can help here. Conversely, some changes are so big (or time-consuming) that your whole plan needs to be re-wired.

They say that teaching is one of the best ways to learn. My experience seems to confirm this advice. Perhaps when you go and explain something to someone else, not only do you organise and solidify the understanding in your own mind, but since you pull something out of your brain and stick it to the extended you (and beyond), that knowledge can take on a life of its own in the outer world. Your very awareness that the knowledge has been transmitted to the outer world seems to have a strengthening effect in your "inner you". It's as if the outer "awareness" links back to hidden parts of the inner you, as were it virtual dendrites connecting your brain to the collective consciousness.

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