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Ask HN: How do you develop internal motivation?
41–50 of 80 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you develop internal motivation?
#42Incorporate an aspect of "play".
Cooking -- what's the craziest/funnest thing I can make with ingredients at home.
Studying -- allow myself to go down rabbit holes and explore them thoroughly
Coding -- build something fun, even though there might be urgent work on my plate.
Also allow myself to do nothing. This is much harder, because doing something still feels productive.
Do these activities as a way to recharge and refresh. If I find myself doing these too frequently, it's time to reflect and perhaps make a larger change.
Re: Ask HN: How do you develop internal motivation?
#43A PhD has basically zero value (probably net negative) unless you want to go in to academia for the rest of your life and retire as the head of department at an Iowa community college, so double check you really want to do that and have that kind of life?
You need to double check your mental/emotional and physical health. Are you getting sleep? What are your serum vitamin D levels? Do you wake up and run a 5k every morning? Have you travelled to a new or slightly dangerous place on the opposite side of the world in the last 6-12 months to reset your beliefs about the world? - These are the type of questions you need to be asking. When you have this stuff figured out and you feel alive, motivation will not be an issue.
Re: Ask HN: How do you develop internal motivation?
#44[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How do you develop internal motivation?
#45Health - meaning exercise, sleep, and nutrition is key.
The next most important- direction. If you can't get excited about where you're going, you sure as hell won't get there quick.
Re: Ask HN: How do you develop internal motivation?
#46If you are particularly content in doing nothing, you may have schizoid personality disorder.
I understand why people is downvoting this, as we shouldn't be doing armchair diagnostics based on so little information, but it's worth mentioning that there are technical terms for diminished motivation disorders, which are indeed common for schizoid personality disorder. Search for abulia or anhedonia if you are interested in learning more about it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you develop internal motivation?
#47A PhD has basically zero value (probably net negative) unless you want to go in to academia for the rest of your life and retire as the head of department at an Iowa community college, so double check you really want to do that and have that kind of life? You need to double check your mental/emotional and physical health. Are you getting sleep? What are your serum vitamin D levels? Do you wake up and run a 5k every m…
I think this is true of most PhD programs, but I think that in certain fields—lab-centric sciences, for example—doing a PhD isn't a complete waste.
There maybe better alternatives (maybe a Master's or a community bio lab or something), but when you need access to a lab and resources to do research, the university provides some value.
Then again, is it $150k worth of value? Probably not
Re: Ask HN: How do you develop internal motivation?
#48- Basic: Get enough sleep and exercise (just a 30min walk each day is good enough)
- Basic: To not get tired during the day I have a good breakfast (I have overnight (steel cut) oats with fruit)
- Intermediate: Understand the root of your procrastination. Procrastination = low-self esteem in the moment and/or making a task bigger than it needs to be. For example you approach a task and you doubt your abilities straightaway (e.g. write a paper) and you may even not see the task at hand can be divided into chunks based on what you know you can do (e.g. topic sentences for each planned paragraph in a section OR topic sentence for each section in a paper) and/or practice/learn to get better (e.g. put some sample data into a vis library)
- Advanced: Identify and handle self-esteem issues. An app called 'Woebot' I find really useful in helping recognise cognitive distortions that lead to being too hard on yourself
Finally, if all the above are down, but you still need a kick. Kick yourself. I have moments where I feel a bit doubt-y for no good reason and just do what I need to do. I feel 15min of focused work (i.e. no distractions) will get you into the zone. If not take a break and break your pattern of thinking in the moment—don't get sucked into where procrastination takes you.
Re: Ask HN: How do you develop internal motivation?
#49You just gotta find something you love. If you're passionate about what you're studying, you'll look forward to doing it. Internal motivation basically = being passionate about something. Everyone's passionate about something.
I disagree with this. Passion is the outcome of ability and achievement not the cause. If you wait to be passionate about what you need to do you'll be waiting a long time. You need to do the hard work and then the passion follows, not the other way around.
Re: Ask HN: How do you develop internal motivation?
#50I don't think you're lazy. It sounds like you're probably just avoiding frustration.
I think we're creatures of habit. If you create a habit you will naturally have the desire to keep doing the thing, even if it doesn't give you pleasure right away. If on top of that you add a little curiosity and a bit of desire to keep getting better you will quickly feel the need to do something with regularity.
In fact I'd argue most things worth doing will be quite unsatisfactory for a time until you start feeling pleasure. A musical instrument? Programming? Painting? Writing? Sports? A new language? Cooking? Yeah you will be crap at all those until you aren't.
The trick to getting started is having the willpower and the tolerance to frustration to keep doing the thing through the initial hardships.
I struggled a lot with recognizing frustration in myself when I was younger which made learning to tolerate it even more difficult. Once you start feeling frustrated you have to remind yourself that everything is ok and that you will figure it out. You will never be immune to frustration, but by exposing yourself to frustration gradually your tolerance will get better.