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Hack your motivation

bemmu.com

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Re: Hack your motivation

#41

Post by TheLegace »

minimax wrote: post #39
ridicter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exactly the same for me. Just out of muscle memory, my reptilian brain starts typing Reddit or Hacker News into the URL field in my browser when I'm not paying attention. If I start my day wandering down the hacker news/reddit rabbit hole, I never really get out. So when I wake up in the morning, literally before I do anything else on my computer, I turn on Self Control ( http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/…

We really are the same. I keep a journal in org-mode and in my .emacs I have cron-like periodic function that switches to my journal in the middle of the night so that it's the first thing I see when I unlock my computer in the morning. Something like: (run-at-time "23:59" 86400 (lambda () switch-to-buffer "journal.org")))

I'm trying to learn the vim version so I can try and put my life together.

But that is so amazingly cool. I bet I could do that in vim as well.

Re: Hack your motivation

#42

Post by ridicter »

minimax wrote: post #39
ridicter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exactly the same for me. Just out of muscle memory, my reptilian brain starts typing Reddit or Hacker News into the URL field in my browser when I'm not paying attention. If I start my day wandering down the hacker news/reddit rabbit hole, I never really get out. So when I wake up in the morning, literally before I do anything else on my computer, I turn on Self Control ( http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/…

We really are the same. I keep a journal in org-mode and in my .emacs I have cron-like periodic function that switches to my journal in the middle of the night so that it's the first thing I see when I unlock my computer in the morning. Something like: (run-at-time "23:59" 86400 (lambda () switch-to-buffer "journal.org")))

That's an awesome idea. Anything that pares down the number of decisions I have to make to jumpstart my day...

I only picked up emacs about a month ago, investing heavily in customizing it. It has seriously helped so much with my focus since it takes out all the distractions/opportunities for context switching.

Re: Hack your motivation

#43

Post by bippi »

I think this is all well and good, there are always things we procrastinate.

However, I think if you need to run your life like this... maybe look at what you're doing, as a whole. I don't think you should have to hack your motivation, or anything else, to get it to work.

Re: Hack your motivation

#44

Post by greendata »

s1mple wrote: post #40
segmondy wrote: post #22

Lack of sustained motivation has been the bane of my existence. The only true obstacle to everything I've ever wanted in life. The article is cool, but not enough, when I'm not motivated, I will not do anything in those articles, I will do other things that I shouldn't be doing. Does the hack call for just work for 30 seconds. I won't. I'm unmotivated, that's the problem. The question that is quite the un-scratchable…

segmondy, I've struggled with exactly what you describe, the worst were the afternoons. I'm sure you know the feeling. I would finish lunch, and instead of being pumped up and ready to go on whatever it was, I would just stare at the screen and my mental performance/motivation would drop big time. It got so bad that I turned to Adderall XR (concentrated amphetamine salts prescribed by my doctor for what I explained a…

Tim Ferris?

Re: Hack your motivation

#45

Post by elements »

cgag wrote: post #26

http://lesswrong.com/lw/9wr/my_algorithm_for_beating_procras... i found this article and discussion useful

Thanks for posting that. I had got about 80% of the way towards a similar model myself, but to see one laid out and formalized like that was very helpful.

Re: Hack your motivation

#46

Post by graeme »

wslh wrote: post #14

I think the core of the motivation issue is the NOW vs longer term achievements, so my suggestion is to push longer term achievements to the "now court". How? Well, think in byproducts of your current work: are you working on an algorithm that is complex? write an article explaining it after you understand it. Did you find an unknown development library that was very useful to your work, share it! So I see small bran…

What are some byproduct examples? I'm interested in doing more of this.
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