Ask HN: Solo developer, what's your recipe to start working?

If you want to force yourself to work, the only way is to ramp up meaningful punishment for not working. Being fired doesn't serve as such because it's not felt daily, it comes all at once. You need a daily dose of reward/pain to form/alter habits. You can setup some reward for being diligent too, it's even better to have both.

I say this but, of course, in your place I'd focus on the disease, not the symptom. Maybe search for a more motivating work environment or job position. Maybe do some therapy to investigate your lethargy (if it's intermittent instead of constant, there must be something to it). Maybe just stop working, if you're privileged enough to afford it.

My advice, which is probably not great for your health, is to lean into it and accept that coding is more of an art than a job. Let yourself get into a flow, and when you do, stay there as long as possible even if it means messing up your sleep. Then start working on reducing the time between these flow states.

If you're too tired or unmotivated to start, or get into the flow, you might also want to ask yourself if you're really doing what you want to be doing. If the work doesn't matter, of course you don't want to do it. So either pick different work, or figure out how to force yourself to get it done, knowing that there's nothing "wrong" with you -- you just don't want to work on boring things.

That said, it's totally possible to go in the other direction. You've got an awesome project that you want to work on, but fear of success is hamstringing you from starting. This is the worst, most insipid form of procrastination and it really just sucks. The best thing you can do is recognize it, but it's really a life long problem for some. Exercise and routine help, but I think a lot of creative types find that to be a bit of a boring shtick... if that's the case you could consider talking to a psychiatrist about an ADHD diagnosis... there are pills for that after all, but they come with their own tradeoffs.

Oh, and if you haven't yet, download something like SelfControl.app and block every site that you reflexively enter into your URL bar. Another trick that works for me is leaving my work unfinished at night, but knowing what I need to do to finish it, so I have something to jump into immediately the next day.

If you don’t feel like working then just commit yourself to the smallest thing possible. Commit yourself to something really small such as opening up your IDE just take a quick one minute look at a class you wrote.

If your not inspired then leave it.

You’ll maybe even call it a day then, but often your brain will kick in at at least start mulling it over in the background.

And sometimes you will get absorbed and carry on well after the one minute has passed.

Just commit to something small and see what happens.

> Don't diagnose people in 10 sentences

Literally every single response here is doing that.

The advice is fine, even if it would be bad for you personally.

My wife always says "It's work. Do it."