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Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?

cabada.mx

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Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?

#61

Post by lolikopter »

OK, some hard facts and some advice. If you have the possibility to build on the work of other people, like your farthers business, that is where you will have the best chance of making money. That is just a fact. Somebody (your farther) has already done some of the hard work for you.

Now if that does not appeal to you for some reason you can choose to do something else, but the chance of making money will be less, not zero, but less.

You can go down two roads if you want to do programming; work for somebody or start your own. The first option has the highest chance of landing you a decent paycheck. But don't go for the "Google's" of the world. They pay very well and that is why you will be competing with the best programmers on the planet. Hard fact: You are (probably) not that good. But hay none (with the very few exceptions) of us are, and you don't need to be to be successful. If you want little competition for a good position, find a company which employs programmers but with no "brand". And if you really want to have no competition; they have to make something dull! :) After your first job getting the next one will be much easier.

Finally starting something yourself you have to have tremendous drive. Like you would not believe. Something you hear from time to time about making a start-up is "Starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss." Not fun! I have made my own company and it is something you learn a lot from, mostly about yourself and you earn every penny the hard way and risk loosing it all.

But in the end you have to choose what is best for you. It is your life! As for support find people online or IRL who does the same thing as you. Start-up communities, hacker spaces or any other place where there are people who can inspire you.

Hope this helped and good luck. :)

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?

#63

Post by cynicaldevil »

I'm probably not as old as you; I turned 20 a couple of days ago, and I most certainly do not want to become an entrepreneur, but here's something about how I keep myself motivated:

Each day; at least once, I try to read/think about something which makes me feel totally worthless. It could be anything, about how there are people out there building really awesome stuff, conducting research in various STEM fields, or producing fantastic works of art, just anything good, really. Elon Musk's Mars mission would be a great example.

Realising this fact makes feel really, really guilty inside, and I know that I am not contributing enough to this world. That's all the motivation I need to get on with my work.

This stuff may sound a little cheesy, but it works for me :)

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?

#64

Post by davesque »

dsiegel2275 wrote: post #6

40 million lines of code is a lot of code to have written. Is this number exaggerated a bit? Exaggerated a lot? Just doing the math: to code that much in sixteen years (assuming a start of age 10) would require writing 6,800 LOC, every single day.

That was the first thing I noticed as well. That amount seems like a tall tale to me. I also don't like how one of the first things I have to read in this article is basically a bunch of bragging.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?

#65

Post by fizzbitch »

Your perspective and feelings are hugely influenced by the environment you are in. Anyone who has ever worked a horrible job or went to grad school can tell you that. In your case it seems that your parents are---consciously or not---really holding you back. If they are questioning your life choices every day, and if the topic of how you are going to make money is something that is continually discussed, then it's no wonder you feel the way you do! My advice is to get out of your house at any cost. Move to a different city, get a job you're not too happy with, it doesn't really matter, but get to a place where you're not being questioned and second-guessed every single day! Seriously, it will make a world of difference to get out of the environment you are in.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?

#66

Post by brianpgordon »

> There are two possible reasons I didn’t get a job: Either coding interviews don’t work, or I really suck at coding. (Which I doubt, I encourage you to visit my portfolio http://cabada.mx)

Or employers are looking for things other than raw coding skill?

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?

#67

Post by vlokshin »

I did a quick search through the comments on here that the OP (@mrcabada) has made. While this sort of snooping is rarely pleasant for the party being snooped, I hope this is helpful.

Mr. Cabada,

I believe the most impactful thing you can do is to stop blaming others and to start putting all of your energy into improving yourself.

Based on your writing, your site, and your LinkedIn, you are already doing a lot of improving yourself -- but you're also putting a lot of energy into blaming the rest of the world.

(1) An entire article that basically says "I'm awesome but the world isn't favoring me. Halp!" (2) comment: "I'm mexican, it's hard..." (3) comment: "fixed", a few times over, with no recognition of mistake and no thanks for pointing out the issue Life is hard. Privilege is a real thing that we should systematically correct with each generation.

That said, you're wasting brain cycles (yours and ours) when you blame others. It's just not a very efficient activity and it does very little to improve you. If anything, it can shift your attitude the wrong way for the long haul.

Listen to feedback -- beg for feedback. Begging for feedback is not saying "fixed" -- it's rewarding the behavior of someone giving you feedback (i.e. Thanks! this is helpful). Don't get defensive. Internalize it. Be smart enough to filter out what feedback is good and what's just fluff. Learn your faults. Fix your faults. Learn your strengths. Better your strengths.

Good luck! (jk, it's more in control than you think. luck will have very little do with it. Attitude will have everything to do with it)

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?

#68

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

First, if you're feeling discouraged by people telling you to "suck it up," just realize that some people don't know or remember what it's like to be in your position. Everyone's doing the best they can in the moment, even if that means telling someone with a broken leg to "walk it off." It also means some people confuse financial support with emotional support & encouragement. Money's merely a strategy for meeting our needs, but emotional support is literally something social creatures need. Nobody comes out of the womb with an actual physical need for money. I hope you can forgive anyone who fails to recognize that when giving you advice.

I'm a 33 year old programmer & my story's like yours, except I became addicted to researching before coding. Instead of motivation to monetize what I produce, I'm trying to learn how to actually produce. The "support" I got growing up embedded a deep fear of failure in me to the point that merely thinking about working alone on something paralyzes me. I've been unemployed for 2-3 years now & so I also have anxiety around simply applying for jobs.

I don't know if any of this applies to you, but I'm hoping it'll help.

Here's what I've learned through just the past year of struggling to recover from my addiction:

- I tend to take other people's advice more easily when I hear it in the form of stories about other people's experiences, though I used to think that if I talked about myself, I'd just be viewed as selfish/narcissistic. I'm still working on that bit of self-consciousness, so this first point's kind of a disclaimer for the rest, which will mostly be things about myself I consider relevant or citing things you've said about yourself.

- Nobody asks for support who doesn't need it in some way. You've said you grew up without it from your parents/community, don't have any peers, and you're asking for help here. I hope you'll keep working to develop a support system for yourself.

- I lived most of my life in a small town in Louisiana where the local values are very different from my own. It's really hard living in a place where the message "you don't belong here" is heard time & again, even if it's followed by something like "you belong in Silicon Valley or some place like that." I had to get out to separate myself from those messages (including any coming from my parents) so I could learn to think differently. I have to catch myself thinking in old ways & immediately follow it with telling myself something different.

- My parents have no idea what I need or have any business telling me how to live. It doesn't matter who's supporting me. I've thought for a long time that financial independence doesn't have to come before interacting with my parents like an independent adult. The problem was I quickly reverted back to acting like a dependent child when they tried to play the role of parent (and vice-versa) instead of any of us behaving like independent adults. Being assertive with them has been key to me regaining some sense of autonomy in my life, but it's been really hard. It means I have to set boundaries with them and not negotiate on them. An example: I told my mom I would no longer respond to her text messages as she gets upset when they're too long for her taste. The reason they're too long is her phone's font size is huge because she's choosing to not use her glasses. Instead of getting into a fight with her over what constitutes a reasonable text length, I just said "Ok. If this is how you'll be responding when I'm trying to communicate over text, then I'll stop communicating with you via text until you're able to take emotional responsibility for the decisions that make texting with me hard for you." (The book "Nonviolent Communication" has been AMAZING for me learning this!)

- I desperately need collaboration right now. It's not that I can't get into a productive mindset where my old ways of thinking don't plague me at every turn, but it's way more difficult to stay in that headspace when I'm not connecting with people. I don't know how to get it & wish I could give you a suggestion for this, but I'm in the same boat as you right now. (As I type this, it's occurring to me that maybe I don't need to connect with people over what I'm working on, as long as I'm connecting with them, but I'm not sure that's actually the case & don't feel like I'm in a position in my life where I can risk being wrong about that.)

- 20+ years of interacting with text on screens more than faces has led to a huge emotional disconnect in myself. I've only just started learning how to recognize more emotions than the basics of glad/sad/mad/afraid. Teenage years are when we're supposed to learn how to emotionally self-regulate, but I missed out on a good bit of that. Taking time away from information (computers, the internet, looking things up in books, puzzles, strategy games, brainstorming, asking people questions, and more) was required for me to get to a point that I was able to admit that I was traumatized as a kid & part of that trauma stemmed from how I interacted with my parents (neglect, emotional/verbal abuse). When I literally said to myself out loud "Ok. Let's assume the opposite. I was traumatized." I was immediately overcome with fear, anxiety, and sadness within seconds. That was the first step for me to start learning how to emotionally connect with myself & only then did I start learning how to emotionally connect with others. Maybe you've experienced some kind of trauma or maybe not. The point is that before I could truly emotionally connect with others, that block had to be removed. Maybe you don't have that problem, but if you do, I'd suggest finding the block & working to remove it because things become much easier then.

- Another side effect of not interacting with people: I didn't learn the value of human connection. It's difficult to describe, but there's a physical feeling that comes with solid connection. My chest feels light and warm when I'm able to connect. Connecting starts with me accepting and empathizing with people, which, again..."Nonviolent Communication" is my guide for that.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?

#70

Post by noobermin »

A lot of people are telling you what you should do. Heck, you even asked what you should do. The truth that I too struggle to grapple with is that a lot of your push forward has to be internal and not based on what others say. There are up days and down days and you can have a host of sources to blame for down days, sure. We all do. But sometimes you have to just get up and start again.

I agree with aasarava's comment regarding entrepreneurship, but something that hasn't been mentioned here is that even if you make something people are "willing to pay for", who's to say someone else isn't making it better than you? Or earlier than you? There is no deterministic formula, everything has a degree of chance and doing what HN comments and their reading recommendations say only sharpen that chance. You do need to take their input, but failure is inevitable. Naysayers and their discouragement are inevitable. Bad shit is inevitable.

So you will face bad days, but finally, you have to make the decision to go forward. Or, you have to make the decision to change course. This is the answer to your main question, you have to keep yourself motivated, even if nobody supports you. You should decide deep down whether something is worth suffering for or not, but that decision has to be internal, as your motivations have to be. I'm not saying you should be completely delusional and deny feedback from reality, but even if you are doing the right things, you will fail and you have to hold yourself up through that.

That's how "success" works. You keep trying through failure and eventually, you'll monte-carlo onto the right spot.

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