Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I stay motivated working on my long-term project

durmonski.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 66 posts

Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project

#41

Post by Tade0 »

Out of the side projects that I know of which made it past the MVP stage most had one thing in common: they solved a problem that the person who came up with the idea had.

Sounds obvious, but I've seen a few projects fail because the developer couldn't relate to their users.

Side note: quite often this lack of motivation is simply a matter of impostor syndrome.

The other day I managed to break out of that by looking at a "how to" of something from a field foreign to me.

It was a step-by-step demonstration of how a certain drawing was created.

My first reaction was: "this is amazing - I wish I could create such awe-inspiring things".

Then I remembered that I've been programming since I was twelve and am fully capable of creating things that might be as impressive to people who are not in my field as that artwork was to me.

Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project

#42

Post by ZephyrBlu »

test6554 wrote: post #39
nicbou wrote: post #19

That was a tedious read. Most of the article is just filler text. There is a whole page of it before the point: give yourself 3 years. Why 3 years? Because Rome wasn't built in a day. That's pretty much all there is to it. The advice feels pretty circular. To stay motivated, do it for 3 years. If you can commit to something for 3 years, you already have the motivation. Regardless, I disagree with this advice. Give it…

I disagree with this advice. Give it a day tops. If you don't enjoy the process after a day and the goal is a month away, you won't get there.

Ya know, I disagree with this advice. Give it a couple of hours tops. If you don't enjoy the process after a couple of hours and the goal is a whole day away, you won't get there.

Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project

#43

Post by eloff »

nicbou wrote: post #19

That was a tedious read. Most of the article is just filler text. There is a whole page of it before the point: give yourself 3 years. Why 3 years? Because Rome wasn't built in a day. That's pretty much all there is to it. The advice feels pretty circular. To stay motivated, do it for 3 years. If you can commit to something for 3 years, you already have the motivation. Regardless, I disagree with this advice. Give it…

I thought there were some insightful things in there. For one the biggest problem with staying motivated over a long period of time is the lack of instant gratification. Humans aren't good with delayed gratification - hardly surprising or revolutionary, but right on the money.

The other thing I liked was the somewhat non obvious advice to stay focused on your goal and not be open to other opportunities. This sank a lot of my projects over the years. Hot, exciting new idea beats familiar, hairy, in progress idea. But if you keep chopping and changing you'll never finish anything. There is a risk you ignore a really much better opportunity, so you can't do this 100%, but you do really strongly need to bias towards finishing what you started.

Lastly when I started on the project of teaching myself to write software more than half my life ago now, I hated it. It was alien and difficult and boring. If I'd quit after a month I would have not found my passion, and I would have missed out on a pretty great career.

Also, I would say learning to enjoy the gym took a lot more than a month.

So don't give up so soon, but also three years is a long time if you really are not enjoying what you're doing. Maybe something in between, based on how you feel about it.

Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project

#44

Post by istorical »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #25
nicbou wrote: post #19

That was a tedious read. Most of the article is just filler text. There is a whole page of it before the point: give yourself 3 years. Why 3 years? Because Rome wasn't built in a day. That's pretty much all there is to it. The advice feels pretty circular. To stay motivated, do it for 3 years. If you can commit to something for 3 years, you already have the motivation. Regardless, I disagree with this advice. Give it…

Even from a business perspective, what you're working on today, if it's tech or software related, will be horribly out-dated in 3 years. Imagine how many "pivots" need to be made on a software product who's expected delivery is Fall 2023. That's what gave rise to the whole Lean Start-up movement - spend 3 months, get a working version out there, get some paying customers, start improving the software with new feature…

There are more ways to live life than with a lean startup model.

Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project

#45

Post by m3nu »

Set yourself intermediate goals, rather than aiming for a big payoff. On the way to $10k MRR: prototype, first user, first paying users, first 100 users, etc. Every milestone is enjoyable!

I also disagree with "doing what's fun". Hard problems aren't fun in the beginning, but once you achieve mastery, you will enjoy the task. Seen this for programming or in others for pottery. Once you get good at something you enjoy it more and have access to new options and a new perspective.

The last part is summarized from "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport. Still works.

Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project

#46

Post by ZephyrBlu »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #25
nicbou wrote: post #19

That was a tedious read. Most of the article is just filler text. There is a whole page of it before the point: give yourself 3 years. Why 3 years? Because Rome wasn't built in a day. That's pretty much all there is to it. The advice feels pretty circular. To stay motivated, do it for 3 years. If you can commit to something for 3 years, you already have the motivation. Regardless, I disagree with this advice. Give it…

Even from a business perspective, what you're working on today, if it's tech or software related, will be horribly out-dated in 3 years. Imagine how many "pivots" need to be made on a software product who's expected delivery is Fall 2023. That's what gave rise to the whole Lean Start-up movement - spend 3 months, get a working version out there, get some paying customers, start improving the software with new feature…

What I've realized about the Lean Startup methodology is that it only works for very specific businesses.

Usually these are software-enabled service businesses (I.e. the software is not the essential part of the business).

Standing up a pure SaaS business in 3 months just doesn't happen unless it's really straightforward and you already have it planned out.

Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project

#47

Post by austincheney »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #42
test6554 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this advice. Give it a day tops. If you don't enjoy the process after a day and the goal is a month away, you won't get there.

Ya know, I disagree with this advice. Give it a couple of hours tops. If you don't enjoy the process after a couple of hours and the goal is a whole day away, you won't get there.

Give it three minutes tops. If you cant focus it doesn’t matter that you might enjoy it.

/sarcasm :)

Whether to give it a month or three years depends on the ambition of the goal and the things learned in the process.

Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project

#48

Post by adventured »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #25
nicbou wrote: post #19

That was a tedious read. Most of the article is just filler text. There is a whole page of it before the point: give yourself 3 years. Why 3 years? Because Rome wasn't built in a day. That's pretty much all there is to it. The advice feels pretty circular. To stay motivated, do it for 3 years. If you can commit to something for 3 years, you already have the motivation. Regardless, I disagree with this advice. Give it…

Even from a business perspective, what you're working on today, if it's tech or software related, will be horribly out-dated in 3 years. Imagine how many "pivots" need to be made on a software product who's expected delivery is Fall 2023. That's what gave rise to the whole Lean Start-up movement - spend 3 months, get a working version out there, get some paying customers, start improving the software with new feature…

> Even from a business perspective, what you're working on today, if it's tech or software related, will be horribly out-dated in 3 years.

Here's how outdated in tech usually works across three years:

We gotta switch to NoSQL, it's the new new hot hot thing! It's going to save us money, it's going to make our service much faster, it's going to be easier to manage. It's revolutionary, everybody says so. Our competition is switching too.

Three years later: we're going to switch away from NoSQL, turns out we didn't actually need to use that. It caused more problems than it solved in our case.

Outdated in three years is mostly only true in a small echo chamber of the tech industry obsessed with chasing fads 24/7. It's an almost entirely self-imposed form of torture by that part of the industry. There are exceptions of course, cases where things legitimately get outdated in just three years, and they're rare.

Was the NoSQL fad that so many people chased necessary? Nope. Are there great use cases for NoSQL systems? Of course. The legitimate use cases aren't fraudulent, it's the fad that is, the mania, the hype (which always implodes, then the headlines come rolling in about switching back).

That's a microcosm of the three year fad hopping that you're talking about (and there are obviously a lot of examples of it, from big data to AI/ML, to the latest framework craze). A small segment of the tech industry is like a dog that never stops chasing fad cars.

Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project

#49

Post by Retric »

test6554 wrote: post #39
nicbou wrote: post #19

That was a tedious read. Most of the article is just filler text. There is a whole page of it before the point: give yourself 3 years. Why 3 years? Because Rome wasn't built in a day. That's pretty much all there is to it. The advice feels pretty circular. To stay motivated, do it for 3 years. If you can commit to something for 3 years, you already have the motivation. Regardless, I disagree with this advice. Give it…

I disagree with this advice. Give it a day tops. If you don't enjoy the process after a day and the goal is a month away, you won't get there.

The point is a little deeper than that. You might finish 10 to 20 different 3+ year projects which means almost nothing makes that cut. However, you can likely do 500+ one month projects. The second one is much closer to the number of interesting projects you might come up with in a lifetime and a month is long enough to see some real results on most things.

Spend 100+ hours learning to juggle over a month and you’re not doing tricks, but you’re going to be noticeably better at it. 3 years on the other hand is a long way from say mastering French, but it’s plenty to be useful on a trip. And that IMO is what separates two benchmarks, noticeable improvement is rarely worth much on it’s own.

Re: How I stay motivated working on my long-term project

#50

Post by steve_adams_86 »

Tade0 wrote: post #41

Out of the side projects that I know of which made it past the MVP stage most had one thing in common: they solved a problem that the person who came up with the idea had. Sounds obvious, but I've seen a few projects fail because the developer couldn't relate to their users. Side note: quite often this lack of motivation is simply a matter of impostor syndrome. The other day I managed to break out of that by looking…

This reminds me of something that happened to me the other day. We hired a developer to work with me, and he said he was excited to have a chance to work with a ‘brilliant engineer’ like me. I was at a loss for words and thought about it a lot for a couple days. I almost worried he’d be disappointed to find out how mediocre I am. I came to the same conclusion though, really - I feel like an imposter, and after 15 years or so I probably do seem competent to people with less experience.

I’m not a brilliant engineer but yeah, he will probably learn a bit working with me. A lot of us probably need to give ourselves more credit.

It’s hard not to think so much about how our work is only possible on the shoulders of giants. I don’t spend enough time thinking about what I can do, and too much thinking about what I can’t.

Post reply on HN