I'm completely demotivated to work; what can I do? • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm completely demotivated to work; what can I do?

#131

Post by timmm » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 10:20 PM UTC

negamax wrote: post #40

What do you seek? Minimizing pain, maximizing pleasure. That's what we all are programmed to seek. You find that and associate it with the studies. E.g.s Maximizing pleasure: + Do you want to work in another country/place. Your studies can get you there. + Want to have interesting conversation with people. Study. + Want to understand and have a say about a topic. Study. Minimizing Pain: - Don't set yourself for failu…

> Minimizing pain, maximizing pleasure.

Too reductivist, so do I eat the ice cream sundae and get pleasure right now? To the detriment of my long term health or do I eat the kale forfeiting short term pleasure and gaining long term pleasure?

Your model has no predictive power.

Re: I'm completely demotivated to work; what can I do?

#132

Post by timmm » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 10:24 PM UTC

rando289 wrote: post #42

Endeavor to make these things a habit. Every day or 5 days a week etc. Write down some realistic things you want to do today that you might avoid. Do this as early in the day as possible. Before you make a decision which will avoid doing one of those things you wrote down, stop, think about it for 60+ seconds. Usually these decisions are done just like instincts without thinking: "hit next episode on netflix", "read…

Sorry but little tricks and magic bullets like this do nothing in the long term to alleviate the issue. Primarily because you won't stick to the habit.

OP you will have to decide whether doing work and being productive is something you want for yourself, you will not be able to fein an answer for any substantial amount of time. Your answer is also subject to change.

My guess is if you completely gave in to your de-motivated mentality you would quickly realize how bankrupt it is and be driven back to working.

Re: I'm completely demotivated to work; what can I do?

#133

Post by lallysingh » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 6:23 AM UTC

It's not the material, it's not you. It's the rest of your life. You have to find a way to recharge.

I didn't do that for too long, and my grades dropped. My GPA dropped by 50%. I finally took a semester off. I traveled. I got out of the grind and away from family and work and actually tried to explore life a bit.

When you're young and out of high school, you're mostly trying to figure out who you are independent of your parents and upbringing. Sometimes being out of your folks' house for a while and not figuring that out leaves you empty. .

After that, I made recharging a normal part of my week. I gave myself a small music budget (a new album a month, that can't be top-40), looked into other activities (martial arts, motorcycling), and made a point to study different sub-topics of computer science at different times.

The same classes that were boring me out, I read their textbooks on the train to work.

Re: I'm completely demotivated to work; what can I do?

#134

Post by rudasn » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 9:40 AM UTC

lgieron wrote: post #87

greggman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel incredibly blessed that I never had to do any of this. I enjoyed computer programming. I learned to do all the stuff because it was fun. Learned to read and write files, learned to sort, learned to write languages, etc etc. All of it was almost always in pursuit of some goal. I want to create ABC I needed to learn about DEF. etc.. Very little of it was just learning for the sake of learning. I can't remember e…

Do you code for a living? If so, I think your experience ("no boring task ever") is pretty unique.

I'm in a similar situation. I got into writing code because the things I thought were cool required writing code to have; websites, irc bots, web apps, etc.

I have been learning new things about code (and in the process software engineering) for about 10 years and I find it more exciting than ever. I do have a a lot of boring tasks to complete but I often play around with them a bit, finding new ways to do an age old task and then it's cool again.

On a related note, I see qualified people my age working jobs they don't really enjoy for peanuts and it really sucks. I consider my self very lucky for having a full-time hobby that is rewarding and can pay the bills.

Re: I'm completely demotivated to work; what can I do?

#135

Post by linuxlizard » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 2:33 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #44

I'm going to say something that's a little tough but it's meant as advice coming from years of mistakes before I finally got my head on the right way: Part of growing up is learning to prioritize what you need to do, even if it isn't fun, over what you like to do. This is how the real world works, and it's what you'll spend the rest of your life doing. Learning to do it when you're young, when mistakes are smaller, w…

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