1–10 of 100 posts
At this moment of my writing, I just don't want to work. I come across this problem a lot recently.
I don't have the urge to work, and it feels too difficult to focus.
I know that once I start, I will be productive. But I don't have a recipe to start. If my mood changes, I work. If not, I dont' know what to do.
I recently read that no matter what, you just work. I tried and failed to just work.
Any advice?
For example:
Problem: There was too much street light at night to sleep coming through my window, so I bought black out blinds. Then I didn't have enough light to wake up in the morning and always felt sluggish.
Solution: I created an arduino sensor to detect morning light (depending on time of year) and then using a motor on the blind cord, it opens my blinds gradually so I have a nice natural wake up.
And it's powered by solar. I literally never need an alarm clock again. (All thought I still set one, good developers always have a plan b)
You can only tackle motivation issues when you're not feeling bad.
My trick is to imagine the end-result of what I am currently working on, it pushes me to get the reward of seeing it finished.
Of course it works only if I expect to be proud of the result.
You have to be that manager yourself — breaking the app or product down into small components and working out what should get done first.
Build a list in a form you’re familiar with — even if it’s a form you don’t like such as Jira. Break it down into large chunks and smaller assignments. Then start on the small stuff, ticking them off on by one.
When you see tasks being completed and the list moving, it builds a sense of momentum and it gets easier to keep going day after day.
If you don't know what you're going to work on or haven't decided what to build yet, then stop what you're doing and work this out first.
Sometimes the size of the project you’re working on — or looking to work on — can be daunting. At the day job, you have a manager to break down the work for you and pass it around the team in bite-sized chunks. You have to be that manager yourself — breaking the app or product down into small components and working out what should get done first. Build a list in a form you’re familiar with — even if it’s a form you d…
The first think you might need to fix is your sleep, second is your environment and your eating habits / patterns. You can only tackle motivation issues when you're not feeling bad. My trick is to imagine the end-result of what I am currently working on, it pushes me to get the reward of seeing it finished. Of course it works only if I expect to be proud of the result.
The first think you might need to fix is your sleep, second is your environment and your eating habits / patterns. You can only tackle motivation issues when you're not feeling bad. My trick is to imagine the end-result of what I am currently working on, it pushes me to get the reward of seeing it finished. Of course it works only if I expect to be proud of the result.
I have never thought about eating habits' effect on motivation. Any resource I can read to educate myself?
Insulin level in blood is more impactful than we usually think.
- Use focus app block every website which can distract me
- Leave a "low hanging fruit". I can start the day with a very small and simple task and have some success in a couple of minutes. Getting into it is easier that way
The basics of it is red, green, refactor.
Before you write the code, write the test. Autogenerate the code from the test until it compiles. It will be red (fail) because there's no code. This is how you test the test.
Then do the absolute simplest thing to make the test green (pass). Make it really hacky. Once it passes, refactor (clean up your code).
The positives of this is you don't even have to be in flow. It takes seconds to do a red, seconds to go to green, seconds to refactor. You can be interrupted at any time and not lose your train of thought. If you're writing some tough code, there's also some other techniques you can do, like write several tests for behavior and triangulate the code from that.
That is, if you can’t focus, that’s usually (to me) a sign that the “work” available is currently too nebulous to focus on, and you need instead to focus on turning it into more concrete, atomic, actionable items, which you can then focus on doing.