51–60 of 135 posts
I have stints of high motivation and stints of low motivation.
The trick is to be productive without being passionate about programming. "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life" is a toxic mentality, and it's okay for work to just be work (sometimes or even all the time!).
I need to invent systems, to be creative, to solve complex problems. This is what drives me.
I guess you can say this is one application of Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning", which I recommend you read if you haven't -- or re-reading if it's been a long while!
I still need the community to be interested in making these language more usable.
But more generally, interesting side-projects are a good “saw sharpening” exercise. I’ve found that most of the valuable skills I’ve learned in life came from projects I was passionate about, and in turn those skills have benefited my career. Another side effect of these passion projects is that they leave me feeling energized and inspired, which has a spillover effect into my “work work”.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps I should clarify in that I don't worry about what's cool right now, but do in continuing education in what's new-ish and a solid solution. Having fundamental understandings of your domain is very helpful in spotting what's good and what's marketing flash-in-the-pan. > That being said, the further down the stack you go, the more stability there is in technology. IME, it's about where you go and not what level…
And then after you get laid off from the vanishing few remaining companies using old tech and can’t find another job, you’ll be complaining about “ageism” on HN. If the market is paying higher than market salaries for the buzzword compliant “digital transformation consultant”, that’s what I will learn.
As we speak, banks are migrating from systems written in cobol/fortran to systems written in java. I just got quite a few recruiters contacting me for open java jobs. Sure, frontend code was in angular and they offered training for it, but for some even angular might be considered to be "ancient" because they're living in a react bubble (not saying that you are).
I also find it useful to keep a journal. Recent research shows procrastination to be an emotional management problem.[1] If you can work through the reasons why you're feeling unmotivated, you'll be to turn things around.
[1]https://www.fastcompany.com/90357248/procrastination-is-an-e...