Ask HN: I'm in a rut. How did you get out of yours?

+1 on exercise, this helps me when I get down. Not only because I spend time outside and clear my head and feel better after, but also because it helps me meet people. I'm not very social to begin with and even more so when I'm in a rut and I've met a lot of people hiking or running and ended up having a good conversation which helped me.

For the very moment you're in: I think it may be wise to accept things won't change today, or this week, but they will change soon, and for that to happen, you need to slowly start zooming out.

Your misery is quite a common part of life for many here, I would say.

It takes a huge amount of energy and dedication to become (and to stay) really good or successful at something, and to make it worse, there's so much competition (in technology now anyways) — it often seems everyone's two steps ahead. It can be absolutely daunting and feel like an impossible thing to pick up any motivation to keep up. I fully get it. Most of us have been at this very spot, many times before.

On paper, the solution is simple. The main reason you work for someone else is because you need money. You need that money, because it affords you things in life you otherwise won't have. See Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory.

Once you start to have more than the bare minimum of financial resources needed, you could start playing with things that interest you, or improve on the quality of things you already have. Most of us work our asses off to make as much money as possible, and that as fast as possible, so that we get to make the best use of it in our actual lives while we still can. That's the official reason, anyway.

The odd thing is, you need to know what you want in life. Without knowing, nothing will be worth even a minute of your work once you leave the "hygiene" territory.

If you just follow common patterns in life (get a job, be a good worker, try to get a raise, save for a house, start a family), you will eventually start questioning why you're doing all of this.

To know what you want in life, is probably impossible to fully figure out without knowing what you don't want. Exploring a bit of negative space to find the limits of what you're happy with, can be a start to find a solution eventually.

In tech, we have the insane luxury (at least for now) of being very easily employable. Your "hygiene" is sorted. This should allow you to explore quite a bit more than others.

My biggest struggle with "getting excited about new things" is that I almost always tend to interpolate into a wildly assumed future outcome where the idea or thing I am interested in turns out to be a waste of time. But it isn't.

I spent two years trying to write a book. Every day I worried about this being the stupidest thing I've attempted, every day I wanted to give up for that very reason. I kept pushing on with zero motivation, just out of self-hatred almost, wanting to see myself fail and knowing it all along — and, then, I eventually ended up meeting with the senior editors of the largest publishing house in the country. A potential deal was on the table, and two weeks later, it fell through. The project was terminated then and there, and I had nothing to show for two years of trying to be someone else in life. I did, however, learn so much about the industry (and writing in general), even so much so that I now feel incredibly happy that I fully tried and experienced it, but have this warm understanding with myself that this isn't something I'd like to do. I'm happier for it.

And, while I have to keep an eye on baseline income, I continue to explore things that I feel could be interesting. Sometimes, it's one evening and then I lose interest, other times, it can take years.

The only thing that makes this possible, is accepting that part of life is to explore and figure out what you like and don't like. If you take away "money or exposure" as success criteria (at the start), and your goal is to see how far you can get with it, then life should hopefully start to feel a lot easier to push through. I think it's important to understand that it's okay to have a hundred failed, unfinished projects, because many people keep looking for that one thing that pulls them out of it, that one thing that will finally change everything.

It rarely exists. I think it's a long string of random things, and while you can theorize in your mind about those forever, you could also just go and do whatever you like. Keep the base income flowing, and use your time to be someone else for a little while.

1. The first thing that has really helped me out at work is sometime in the morning I message my boss something I am going to work on today, and at the end of the day send an update of how it went. That little bit of accountability gives me the motivation to do things where normally I'd think "I'll do it tomorrow", instead I end up doing something(s) every day.

2. If I'm having trouble getting myself to start on something: One thing I actually do when I need to make myself do something is in writing, break down the task into the first step, break that down into the first substep or prerequisite if needed, etc. until it's something I can do now, and writing things down as I work on them (sort of in an outline fashion). After a while I forget to update the list because I am finally deeply involved in working on the thing. But at the beginning the steps could be as small as "turn on computer."

3. I don't actually do this but it's probably a good idea. Pleasure prediction sheet. Take one of your thoughts (your post is a good source of thoughts you're currently thinking), like "I can't get excited about the tedious parts of my work, and I can't even get excited about _automating and eliminating_ the tedious parts of my work."

Make 3 columns. Put some things you would do, either tedious or working on the automation. Second column, put a percentage from 0-100% of predicting satisfaction for doing it. Try doing them, then put actual satisfaction from 0-100%. Some that you think might be high could be low, and some that you think will be low could actually be high. It helps test your original thought. It could be for other things, like working on your game, playing the game that's coming out. There is also a version with another column for who you're doing the activity with (if any). https://feelinggood.libsyn.com/074-five-simple-ways-to-boost...

> ADHD makes you incapable of settling into easy

> You have work to do but it's easy. You have a side project but you've figured out the hard parts and so it's just the implementation grind, which is easy.

Oh no. That describes me to a T.

Is there a differential diagnosis for this kind of behavior?

Sounds like classic depression and burnout to me.

Sounds trite but I've found running outdoors to be quite therapeutic. Your brain kinda half shuts-down the conscious thought parts and you just get on with physically moving. You don't need to be going fast or anything, but just being out for 20/30/more mins feels quite relaxing. I find that running around/exploring new parts of town or forest or coast or something especially relaxing - everything is new so you are soaking it up rather than getting lost in your thoughts. I have some fond memories of running around suburban silicon valley when on tedious business trips, not because the scenery was so wow, just that it was novel to run over to Moffet Fields or be in downtown SF and run into the Pacific Ocean etc.

Tl:Dr - try outdoor physical exercise.

Good luck. I hope you find what you are looking for