"Discipline is remembering what you want" - David Campbell, Founder of Saks Fifth Avenue. So if you want to motivate yourself, then remember what you want. Then if you find you are not doing what is necessary, it means that you have to confront the fact that you may not actually want what you are telling yourself you want.
Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
21–30 of 38 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#22I race bikes and train like crazy.
I wrote about it before here: https://medium.com/@kensodev/how-bike-racing-is-making-me-a-...
Racing bikes (and training for it) creates so much structure in life. What you eat, how you sleep, when you recover. Even though I work most of the time from home, it gives a clear order to the day.
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#23"Discipline is remembering what you want" - David Campbell, Founder of Saks Fifth Avenue. So if you want to motivate yourself, then remember what you want. Then if you find you are not doing what is necessary, it means that you have to confront the fact that you may not actually want what you are telling yourself you want.
Alternatively, it may mean confronting the fact that you've never really sat down to examine your values and find out what it is that you truly want in the first place. :)
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#24In general I stay motivated by reaching a base level of healthiness - physical, work, and social. The motivation comes naturally if I've met those needs. I'm not a superhuman kettlebell-swinging crossfit soylent paleo junkie by any means, but I walk to work every day and bike a good amount using my city's bike-share. And I've started (over the course of 2 years, it's so tough!) to eat less-unhealthy food. Being happy…
Also: sleep. If you find yourself staying up late at night trying to focus and instead reading Wikipedia articles about the Hapsburgs, stop. Get yourself on a sleep schedule. Download RainyMood[1] and Freedom[2] if it helps you. [1] https://rainymood.com/ [2] https://freedom.to
A similar app I've used is SimplyRain [0].
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#25It's very simple for me I just think that one day I'll be dead and that I just wasted my life and the only option to change that is to create something that has value to me and that motivates me. But the more I think about it ... I guess it's fear, it's the fear of a meaningless life. Eat, shit, fuck, breath, die ? No thanks
This is a popular stance especially among entrepreneurs. "We're here for such a short period of time, might as well do something meaningful."
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#26DHH once gave a talk at Startup School. Watching that talk invariably pumps me up and leaves me motivated for hours. (Specifically, it gets me motivated to work on personal projects that make money online.) In general, reading about anyone's success is like a shot of motivation directly into my veins.
That's quite interesting to hear. A lot of what DHH and Jason Fried preach about making money fast, having a profitable small business, etc goes directly in the face of venture-backed startup memes e.g., "grow like mad and figure out how to make money at scale". I actually prefer their approach myself. It's nice to see the two worlds collide.
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#27It's very simple for me I just think that one day I'll be dead and that I just wasted my life and the only option to change that is to create something that has value to me and that motivates me. But the more I think about it ... I guess it's fear, it's the fear of a meaningless life. Eat, shit, fuck, breath, die ? No thanks
This is a popular stance especially among entrepreneurs. "We're here for such a short period of time, might as well do something meaningful."
And a very powerful one.
I'm actually a lazy fuck but that thought makes me run circles.
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#28Eric Baker has some good insights http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2015/01/how-to-be-motivated/ I struggle to get motivated as well.
That was a great read. Here's my summary:
Note: For convenience it's also available with slightly more detail (and formatting!) in my notes repo on GitHub at [1].
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- Sometimes people don't feel motivated if they focus too much on the rewards involved rather than the task itself
- Instead of focusing on the reward, how can we motivate ourselves to care about the task at hand? 3 ways: Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose.
- The progress principle: the most powerful motivator is making progress in meaningful work (even just the perception of doing so)
- From The Progress Principle: "People’s inner work lives seemed to lift or drag depending on whether or not their projects moved forward, even by small increments. Small wins often had a surprisingly strong positive effect, and small losses a surprisingly strong negative one."
- If it's hard to see progress, focus on small accomplishments instead of big goals. What is intrinsically motivating to you?
- In a study by Barry Schwartz on West Point grads, intrinsically motivated students performed better and were more satisfied than extrinsically motivated and those with hybrid intrinsic/extrinsic motivation
- From Drive by Dan Pink: "So there is this kind of interesting zen-like thing. The route to these rewards is not to be cognitive of the rewards."
- Extra motivation from Neil deGrasse Tyson: "The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation."
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[1]: https://github.com/tedmiston/notes/blob/master/articles/How%...
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#29My motivation at my age: Make my primary job my second job and make enough money in my startup so that it becomes my primary job.
How do I stay motivated to keep at it with my startup? Aside from enjoying doing what I do, developing web apps, I write down the potential profit involved that I could be making every month. Those are the numbers I want to be making that I'm currently not making and that is what keeps me motivated.
Money isn't everything.. that is certainly true! But making enough money to pay off my mortage, my credit card debt, my bills, and still have enough left over to donate to a cause and have some peace of mind is the underlying motivator.
Re: Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?
#30My motivation at my age: Make my primary job my second job and make enough money in my startup so that it becomes my primary job. How do I stay motivated to keep at it with my startup? Aside from enjoying doing what I do, developing web apps, I write down the potential profit involved that I could be making every month. Those are the numbers I want to be making that I'm currently not making and that is what keeps me…
Hey Matt. What is your startup, if you don't mind me asking, of course.