How I stay motivated working on my long-term project
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How I stay motivated working on my long-term project
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Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project
#2I'm not sure I agree with this advice in its current form, since the "adjust" phase of the three-year rule is arguably the most important. My current self would be unrecognizable to myself three years ago.
I'm still learning how to be productive long-term. I started gaining a lot of momentum when I shifted my thinking from short-term impulsiveness:
Wow, I just discovered X! I will read everything there is to know about X today!
In three months, I want to be someone who is familiar enough with X to recognize when it might be useful, and pull out that knowledge as needed.Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project
#3Great advice, thank you for sharing!
I'll comment too that it also applies to things that can't be measured with number of users/readers/dollars in bank/etc. I'm not a naturally outgoing person and making new friends can feel like _work_. But if a relationship is something that you've decided to value, then (to paraphrase the article) the only way to make it happen is to commit, prioritize, and respond to feedback. That applies to friends, spouse, kids, etc.
Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project
#4I think the key thing is discrete deliverables that don't have too long of a gap between them. This allows you to feel there is progress, but also put the project on ice and resume because the next task isn't some huge insurmountable thing but another small piece.
Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project
#5> A lot of times writing, to me, feels like sitting alone and talking to myself. I write stuff, I publish them, and nothing really happens. The lack of feedback – good or bad – makes me doubt the work I do.
This is one place where having a co-founder/collaborator/co-worker is valuable: built-in feedback mechanism.
Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project
#6I like the idea of being realistic with a timeline and start with a 3 year goal. I think the most important part of getting quick feedback for me is setting up my environment for tiny iterations (for a web dev side project), but the balance is tricky between getting more efficient and endless "yak shaving"!!
I would love to do some electronics design but I find it much harder to have smaller sessions, it takes me a least an hour or two to get into a flow where I have my mental model of the complete circuit, mechanical layout, etc.
I also want to balance being a good parent with side projects as well! Currently my kids are too small to participate in engineering, but you can bet that I am totally going to build a robot with them some day :)
Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project
#7> A lot of times writing, to me, feels like sitting alone and talking to myself. I write stuff, I publish them, and nothing really happens. The lack of feedback – good or bad – makes me doubt the work I do. This is one place where having a co-founder/collaborator/co-worker is valuable: built-in feedback mechanism.
I also found having a mentor is helpful. The mentor can give advice and help work through next steps with you and hold you accountable to things you say you'll do.
Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project
#8> A lot of times writing, to me, feels like sitting alone and talking to myself. I write stuff, I publish them, and nothing really happens. The lack of feedback – good or bad – makes me doubt the work I do. This is one place where having a co-founder/collaborator/co-worker is valuable: built-in feedback mechanism.
I also found having a mentor is helpful. The mentor can give advice and help work through next steps with you and hold you accountable to things you say you'll do.
Key is having them hold you accountable. Schedule a fixed bi-weekly or monthly time with them, and set deadlines (given to them) for the next meeting. This helps push you to meet them.
Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project
#9> A lot of times writing, to me, feels like sitting alone and talking to myself. I write stuff, I publish them, and nothing really happens. The lack of feedback – good or bad – makes me doubt the work I do. This is one place where having a co-founder/collaborator/co-worker is valuable: built-in feedback mechanism.
For the past month, I've written my thoughts into a daily journal. I then send that to a group that read it every day and respond. Had 15 a month ago but some were toxic. I'm now down to 5 people. I understand they don't understand possibly even most of what I write, but knowing they'll read it motivates me to express my thoughts--whatever they are at the time.
But yes to your point about the co-founder, they'll understand everything you're talking about.
Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project
#10> Ask any successful person. Ask any experienced person. They’ll all tell you the same thing – It takes time to create something valuable. Something worth doing.
Over time I've ended up not really understanding this advice, but only because of something I accomplished in the past.
One day I just felt like writing something. I hadn't written since elementary school and had never published a piece of writing online before. But one day I just felt like writing something. The idea just would not leave my mind and I failed to get any sleep, instead spending all of my conscious time writing.
Within a week I was more or less finished. It was a short story numbering only a few dozen pages at most. But save for some minor editing it was complete.
And I decided that since I finished something, it was a success. And I also liked what I wrote, legitimately. I don't think it was that great in the context of people with experience, but it was mine, and that was enough for me to declare it a success. To me, I thought it was valuable. To me, I thought it was worth doing.
So if it's true that you must spend a lot of time to make something valuable, then in my view one of two things is true:
1. What I accomplished in only a week was not valuable to me or anyone else and was not worth doing, and I'm just deluding myself.
2. The advice was untrue and you can still create things of value without spending a lot of time - it just depends on what the scale is.
And if there is no way to create something valuable without spending a lot of time on it, then I don't understand why Ludum Dare and NaNoWriMo still exist, unless people believe the things they accomplish during those events are valueless, which doesn't sound right to me.
Since then I have never really felt like writing. I will either sit down and not think of anything for hours, or at most write whatever comes to my mind in a stream of consciousness and then proceed to not look at or edit it ever again. I think this is what people call being trapped by their past successes. I expect to be able to accomplish again what I actually did accomplish a single time in the past, which is not realistic. Not everything I do will turn out as well as that one time. But the fact remains that I called what I accomplished a success despite not spending much time on it at all, and on top of that it was the first thing I had seriously written in over a decade, and I seem to be unable to reconcile that with the practicalities of developing a skill properly.