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Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
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Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#2By avoiding triggers, that demotivate you. I see myself as a stupid machine, which behaves like it does in certain situations. If you want change in the long term, you have to change the situation and preconditions instead of trying to reprogram the machine, that will follow. Exercise, eat healthy, sleep enough, see enough sunlight, do what you like. If you have a setback, try to find out, how it started and try to avoid that situation, don't try to master it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#3I don't think trying to "motivate oneself" will bear a lot of fruit. Motivation is a combination of beliefs: belief that a thing will be beneficial, and that it's possible.
That's at the macro level. On the micro level, structure helps a lot. Some of the more go-getter people you know are just on autopilot, but have done the work beforehand to hack their motivation, mostly by forming habits and setting themselves in social environs that reward achievement.
Motivation is a fickle, mercurial beast. Trying to run on it at all times won't work. Use motivation wisely, for short bursts of work that get/keep autopilot-you on track. Things like: going to sleep when you want to stay up, making a plan for issues you don't want to think about, setting habits to do things you don't like to do.
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#4One thing that works for me. I keep a legal pad for each project I'm working on. I write a to do list in pencil on a sheet. When a task is complete I cross it out with red pencil.
So I say to myself just pick something and do it. The reward is the gratification of crossing it out. If a sheet gets filled up, I transcribe the remaining items to a new page, which engages visual, verbal and kinesthetic learning modes and refreshes my perspective on where I'm at with the project.
There is most always a space to the right of my mouse for the current pad. The system breaks down when that space gets cluttered for whatever reason. But when it's there I jot down tasks that come up while I'm coding. I keep the pads organized in a flat file that is just big enough to hold papers.
It works for me. Also getting enough sleep, exercise and eating properly helps.
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#5It's a bootstrapping manouver, so it's kinda expensive and nonintuitive. First I try to find another body of work to slingshot around. Then the key is to keep structural integrity and life support systems on full. Then, as long as I'm pointed in the right direction, and don't run into any distractions (which fall away if I have enough inertia), I should be good for a little while.
The target is flow, the enthusiastic engagement in that activity I so desire to be motivated to do.
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#6By avoiding triggers, that demotivate you. I see myself as a stupid machine, which behaves like it does in certain situations. If you want change in the long term, you have to change the situation and preconditions instead of trying to reprogram the machine, that will follow. Exercise, eat healthy, sleep enough, see enough sunlight, do what you like. If you have a setback, try to find out, how it started and try to a…
> change the situation and preconditions instead of trying to reprogram the machine
Kudos on recognising the prevalence of this phenomenon. When people are running in a reactionary mode, trying to reprogram the system is asking for failure. Just like with a black-box program, the input parameters need to be changed if you want the output to change. Your environment (including objects, TODO lists, people, emails, texts, location, food, and drugs) constitutes the input parameters. The environment must be changed for the output to change. If you forget to change your environment after recognising a problem with the output, then you fail to make a lasting change in the system. Essentially, your environment is a part of the extended you that you can pretty easily "reprogram".
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#7I don't think trying to "motivate oneself" will bear a lot of fruit. Motivation is a combination of beliefs: belief that a thing will be beneficial, and that it's possible. That's at the macro level. On the micro level, structure helps a lot. Some of the more go-getter people you know are just on autopilot, but have done the work beforehand to hack their motivation, mostly by forming habits and setting themselves in…
+1 for the "autopilot" word which will be associated with motivation when i think the next time.
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#8Motivation means creation of incentives to do something. To be successful in that, you need very few things:
1. You should know what you are going to achieve. That is, you should have SMART goal (see Wikipedia article "SMART criteria"). Unclear of definition of the goal may become the biggest obstacle: you will always try to avoid the uncertainty by switching to other activities.
2. The benefits must seem to you realistic and the path to them short. For example, if you set the goal as "build 1 billion dollar business in 5 years", it will be SMART, but will look like a fairy tale to you. Building MVP in 3 months won't make you richer, but you'll be rewarded with positive feeling of creating something working and useful, something that will enable you to go further.
3. Not doing what you want (let's call it "A") must be painful. If life is good enough and you won't be harmed by just living it, you'll probably will not start, because there's no real reason for it. Some people are saying that you'll need to move out from your zone of comfort - they are close to what you really need to do: you need to move your zone of comfort, not yourself. Imagine, how good life will be when A is done. Think, how bad is your life while A is not done. Now you have real incentive! But don't do that until you've done 1 and 2.
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#9I don't think trying to "motivate oneself" will bear a lot of fruit. Motivation is a combination of beliefs: belief that a thing will be beneficial, and that it's possible. That's at the macro level. On the micro level, structure helps a lot. Some of the more go-getter people you know are just on autopilot, but have done the work beforehand to hack their motivation, mostly by forming habits and setting themselves in…
Holy moly +1 for this answer.
Forming habits and getting to the point of autopilot is how it happens for me. At some point you don't even notice it because you are so focused. It's just like getting up to go swim every morning. It's cold as hell and you don't feel like it, but you know that after 10 minutes in, you will feel great. And then you just get into the routine.
The last part by dropit_sphere is a particularly good thing to understand about oneself. Can't have it all the time and you gotta use it efficiently when you do.
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#10Just do it.