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I hate working hard

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Re: I hate working hard

#11
First recognize that your abilities, motivations, likes/dislikes are extremely malleable. It is not productive to view your abilities as primarily innate, something you are powerless to influence.

* Building up your motivation, resilience, abilities is like building up muscles - it takes practice and work, pushing just beyond your previous limit each time.

* Understand better why you dislike working. Clearly you are able to do simple demos and experiments, that's actually a good place to start.

* Consider your diet as well. Do you find yourself often in a low-energy state? Look into what helps your energy level. Sleep is a factor as well.

It is hard to say what specific strategies will help you out - you need to do your homework to come up with your own plan. There are decent psychology books in this area - I recommend going for the ones actually written by reputable psychologists rather than self-help gurus.

Here a few snippets of advice I've cribbed from a psychology blog (sorry I've lost the link):

"Do the hardest work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. Most great performers, Ericsson and others have found, delay gratification and take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before they do anything else. That's when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.

"Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.

"Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses. The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much feedback, too continuously can create cognitive overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.

"Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning. It's also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.

"Ritualize practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher Roy Baumeister has found, none of us have very much of it. The best way to insure you'll take on difficult tasks is to build rituals — specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.

Re: I hate working hard

#12
post #11

First recognize that your abilities, motivations, likes/dislikes are extremely malleable. It is not productive to view your abilities as primarily innate, something you are powerless to influence. * Building up your motivation, resilience, abilities is like building up muscles - it takes practice and work, pushing just beyond your previous limit each time. * Understand better why you dislike working. Clearly you are…

Nice. I think this is the blog.

http://www.eyesonsales.com/content/article/the_6_keys_to_bei...

Re: I hate working hard

#13
post #8

You're describing me until about age 30. 1. You need to realize that if something was easy or obvious, it would already exist. The only things worth doing are things that appear impossible. 2. Don't try to keep it all in your head at once. Get good at making a plan or a list of steps, following them (almost blindly), and correcting course every few steps. Taking a big problem apart and bringing small steps to complet…

Where were you before you turned 30, what did you do that you did or did not like? And what happened to trigger the change in your thirtieth year?

Re: I hate working hard

#14
It sounds to me like you are telling yourself a story: "I severely dislike working" that quite possibly is covering for other issues.

Such as: "I am not naturally good at everything, and this is contrary to my self image" or "I am not really interested in my chosen field, but feel like I need to stick with it" or maybe "I am depressed."

I'd suggest talking to people who know you, if you know people who can be honest with you and who you trust. Or maybe even try something like http://www.7cupsoftea.com/ which provides neutral people to listen to your problems.

Re: I hate working hard

#15
post #10
post #6

Sounds like you're toiling in the wrong career field. Is there something that you have been or are particularly good at or enjoy doing?

I enjoy listening to music, I enjoy gaming and I enjoy the end result of my projects and experiments, but as I've noticed, not the way. Apart from that, I'm a pretty stereotypical started programming on the TI-84 and did nothing but gaming nerd. I haven't really ever done anything else, except for a 1 year job at a grocery store. I simply took this path of the programmer as something that instantly "made sense". But…

I used to think I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write novels and wonderful fictional worlds. The idea of crafting stories that people would eventually enjoy was very exciting to me. I tried and tried for years, but I could never write more than a few pages a week. I finished about 5 very short stories and started countless other shorts and novels. Eventually I realized that I didn't actually like writing. The actual act of putting words on the screen was never fun after the first page and a half.

So, I admitted to myself that I didn't like writing and no longer thought of myself as a writer. I know it's cliche, but it was like a very heavy weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. I didn't have to feel guilty anymore for not wanting to do the thing I thought I was meant to do. I was able to focus on the things that I actually enjoy the process of.

I was a little sad at first, and sometimes that feeling of "I want to write an amazing space opera!" pops back into my mind for a second. But mostly, it feels good to not feel guilty anymore.

If you don't like the process of making the thing you want to eventually make, just quit.

It might be a weird phase, but I'd say give quitting a try and see if you come back to programming. Once you quit programming, you might be able to better recognize the things you actually love doing, not just the things you want to have done.

Re: I hate working hard

#16
Hard work is the coolest thing in the world, and money shows that you are capable of actually accomplishing things. Another great thing about money is that you can put it towards nearly infinite good uses.

Now work hard and make money.

Re: I hate working hard

#17

It sounds to me like you are telling yourself a story: "I severely dislike working" that quite possibly is covering for other issues. Such as: "I am not naturally good at everything, and this is contrary to my self image" or "I am not really interested in my chosen field, but feel like I need to stick with it" or maybe "I am depressed." I'd suggest talking to people who know you, if you know people who can be honest…

that's an awesome service. Is it always only text based?

Re: I hate working hard

#19
post #17

It sounds to me like you are telling yourself a story: "I severely dislike working" that quite possibly is covering for other issues. Such as: "I am not naturally good at everything, and this is contrary to my self image" or "I am not really interested in my chosen field, but feel like I need to stick with it" or maybe "I am depressed." I'd suggest talking to people who know you, if you know people who can be honest…

that's an awesome service. Is it always only text based?

The last time I tried it (which was a while ago), there was voice support, but looking at it now it seems to only have SMS.

Re: I hate working hard

#20
Maybe you find work hard because you are not doing it right or don't have the right mindset? A self-help book written by a computer science professor might be helpful. Go to amazon.com and read some reviews on Cal Newport's "So Good They Can't Ignore You" and see if it's right for you. Also check out his blogs, especially this post

http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/12/28/how-i-used-deliberate-...

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