Ask HN: How do you develop internal motivation?

I get this too, and I think it has a lot to do with where your imagination tends to go.

If you often imagine negative outcomes, such as the negative judgement that you might receive if you served 2-minute noodles at a dinner party, then your sole motivation will be to avoid these sorts of outcomes. Life becomes about hazard detection. The anxiety that comes with this can obscure your 'true' interests to the point where you are not even sure what they are anymore.

Where does your mind turn when there is no sense of threat? If you bring yourself to imagine positive outcomes, then so long as they are realistic and accompanied by a strategy, then it is natural to be motivated to realise them. Failure to create a compelling future could just be considered a failure of the imagination.

I'd really recommend the book "Psychocybernetics" by Maxwell Maltz for more on this sort of stuff.

Here's how I handle lack of motivation mechanically:

- I spend time asking why, and allow myself to answer that question before rushing into an action

- I allow myself to answer "I'm tired, I want to do nothing"

These two help me work on goals and rhythm. Goals are where you intentionally want to go, the why. But if you don't have useful habits, you won't get there. That's rhythm.

Ignore goals, and you might work a lot, but have no control in where you're going. That might lead to feelings of helplessness. Ignore rhythm, and you might not learn to do the work. Instead of actually working towards where you want to go, you might juggle goals, and dream about the future.

What has been helpful for me is the group of friends I usually hang out with. They are all highly intelligent achievers and as a result, there is always this peer pressure on me to do better. We are close like brothers and are supportive of each other though. That turns the pressure into a positive nurturing force.

By reading Stephen Pressfield’s “The War of Art” and realizing that I can decide to motivate myself anytime, anywhere if I want to achieve something.

This is one thing that I've struggled with during the pandemic - I realized how much I relied on friends/classmates/colleagues to motivate and challenge me. It's just not the same over Zoom unfortunately.