Ask HN: How do you stay disciplined in the long run?

1. Established a daily routine which I do without fail

2. I used and still use a timer app that includes a streak calendar

3. I established the "normal" practice length, a stretch goal, and a "token effort"

Once the routine and habit is established, it was easier to keep it going. The "token effort" is the trivial amount of time one practices just to keep the effort going. The stretch goal is there to acknowledge you did more than expected, but also to regulate not going overboard one day to the point where you do not want to continue for the next.

There are some psychological nuances into this.

All the research, what I am going to do, etc. feeds into the practice. The practice itself changes over time.

I have been doing this seven years now, starting with sitting meditation all the way through rebooting my martial arts training involving rebuilding every aspect of how I move my body.

My initial practice all those years ago was a 5 minute practice, 10 minute stretch goal, and a 1 minute token practice. Funny thing about the token practice is that 1 min seemed even ridiculous to me, but on those days where it got hard to get started, 1 min was still just easy enough (so I thought) to try. Sometimes, 1 min passes and I find myself going on for the next minute.

There was at one point, I was doing around 1 - 3 hours of practice every day, until life changed again and I did not have as much time for that anymore.

Say: oh wow, I'm motivated by this thing on HN. How exciting! Let me make a note about what I think is cool about this, take a while to reflect on whether it's worth kicking other things out of my life to do, then decide if I will.

I've started doing that in the last year or so. I stopped renewing about a dozen domains that had half-finished apps behind them, and decided I wouldn't do anything for a while. Then I kept saying no to more startup ideas.

The one thing I kept doing was this songwriting course. I more-or-less finished it, and found myself writing a song a week. Then I started trying to arrange and produce full songs with lyrics, which I'd done either half of (producing, and writing) separately. That took a while. Now I finished one of those!

It just kept coming back, every time I tried to say it wasn't important. If the thing you want to do isn't like that, then go do something nice for yourself instead, like seeing friends, or buying a record.

- Do what you like and what you can tie into an overall larger meaning. I made goals that sounded great on paper, but when confronted with factual reality couldn't be prioritized. So now I set goals to deal with some aspect of myself I want to change (e.g. tackle impostor syndrome, fear of becoming lazy/fat, etc.). Then when I feel like I want to give up, I just ask myself whether it's worth it, because I performed a cost/benefit analysis at the time I started and it was worth it then. Usually it is worth it to push through.

- Build an environment that helps you stay on track. I cancelled my home internet when I realized I watched too much YouTube. Now if I want to watch YouTube at home, I have to download videos via youtube-dl and watch them offline. When I want to walk for a while, I leave my wallet and metro card at home.

- Forgive yourself. It's okay to make mistakes, or slip a day or two. Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up. In fact, IMHO we don't learn to fail enough and so we don't actually know our true limitations and don't learn to push our true boundaries.

I'm not an expert in Stimulant therapy, only familiar with some relatives "using" Adderall.