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How I motivate myself to write

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

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Re: How I motivate myself to write

#51

Post by hermitsings »

nonbirithm wrote: post #21

I liked this article as a collection of tips for effective writing, but did not find much about the topic of motivation within it. The author appears to be internally driven to write from the outset, and the advice given assumes that you also have the volition to write yourself and want to improve. Is lack of interest a solvable problem? This is a question I continually revisit. In one of the comment threads for the…

How to motivate yourself to drive? You can't unless you know that it is required to go somewhere. Driving alone doesn't make sense (unless you just enjoy it). Same with writing. You have to "get it out" (intrinsic motivation) and you do it for some incentive (extrinsic motivation). Both are required. When intrinsic dies, extrinsic will pull. If extrinsic dies, intrinsic will pull.

This is something I came across last night: https://github.com/tsoding/faq#q-how-do-you-stay-motivated

P.S - I'm no expert. I spent like 10 mins writing, deleting, modifying, discarding and again writing this reply. The process was streamlining the thought process and edit it to have a most impact (tbh).

Re: How I motivate myself to write

#52

Post by pca006132 »

I have the motivation to write and did write some short articles about things that I learned, but I feel that those are too trivial and mentioned elsewhere on the web and too shy to publish them. I feel that publishing a blog with trivial articles looks dumb. Is this normal? Is there a way to overcome this?

Re: How I motivate myself to write

#53

Post by laserlight »

jasode wrote: post #44
laserlight wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is lack of interest a solvable problem? I would say yes, in large part. The solution is simple but not easy. The key is “Motivation follows action”. When you don't have motivation, act like how you would if you had it. Motivation will follow. People who are prone to procrastination may find it difficult to decide what to act on. Begin with the most trivial action that is almost silly to consider an action. After yo…

>I would say yes, in large part. The solution is simple but not easy. The key is “Motivation follows action”. Maybe I've always misunderstood that common saying but there are so many counterexamples that it doesn't seem to be true. E.g. I actually know how to cook and have already taken the "action" of home cooking many hundreds of times such as preparing spaghetti and baking cakes without any premade kits and yet --…

> Where "Motivation Follows Action" makes much more sense is the limited scenario of already being interested in a particular domain but you're just temporarily stuck.

Very good point. Perhaps it's a good tactic, but not a good strategy. I don't know what could make someone interested in a topic. One thing I can think of is discovering what aspects of experience one enjoys in the areas that they are already interested and transferring them to the new topic. Structuring the experience around the flow factors could be another one.

Re: How I motivate myself to write

#54

Post by hellectronic »

launchiterate wrote: post #46

I always find these sort of articles about the creative process remarkably useful because the principles are quite generally applicable. Write for yourself = Solve your own problem in startups :D Pick a writing schedule = Seinfeld does this. Writes jokes 4 hours a day every day for decades. Also known as time blocking.

"Don't break the chain!"

Re: How I motivate myself to write

#55

Post by fijiaarone »

nonbirithm wrote: post #21

I liked this article as a collection of tips for effective writing, but did not find much about the topic of motivation within it. The author appears to be internally driven to write from the outset, and the advice given assumes that you also have the volition to write yourself and want to improve. Is lack of interest a solvable problem? This is a question I continually revisit. In one of the comment threads for the…

I think there is a simple tip that can help anyone who does not feel motivated to be a writer:

Don't do it. Find something else you are motivated to do. If you feel like writing is something you should be doing -- or at least something you should want to do -- because somebody told you that, just get your advice from someone else.

Like me.

Re: How I motivate myself to write

#56

Post by fijiaarone »

jasode wrote: post #44
laserlight wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is lack of interest a solvable problem? I would say yes, in large part. The solution is simple but not easy. The key is “Motivation follows action”. When you don't have motivation, act like how you would if you had it. Motivation will follow. People who are prone to procrastination may find it difficult to decide what to act on. Begin with the most trivial action that is almost silly to consider an action. After yo…

>I would say yes, in large part. The solution is simple but not easy. The key is “Motivation follows action”. Maybe I've always misunderstood that common saying but there are so many counterexamples that it doesn't seem to be true. E.g. I actually know how to cook and have already taken the "action" of home cooking many hundreds of times such as preparing spaghetti and baking cakes without any premade kits and yet --…

Maybe a better phrasing would then be "Motivation does not precede action".

It seems perfectly reasonable to me that you can try something as a hobby, and if after honest effort, you're not interested in it and you'd rather do something else, by all means do so.

But you're not actually interested in doing something until after you do it. You might be daydreaming about the idea of having done something because you saw someone else do it on TV or whatever, but until you've done it -- and tried to love it -- you can't really say you're interested in it.

For two reasons:

1. You haven't tried it, so you don't know if you actually like it

2. By sheer definition, if you aren't willing to try something, you're not interested in doing it.

If you'd rather eat pre-processed or pre-packaged food and save your time for pursuing your true passion of playing Tiddywinks or developing Javascript user interfaces, by all means do so.

Just be sure to take care of your heath and make sure your true passion isn't sitting in the basement trolling people on the internet.

Re: How I motivate myself to write

#57

Post by fijiaarone »

strken wrote: post #30
nonbirithm wrote: post #21

I liked this article as a collection of tips for effective writing, but did not find much about the topic of motivation within it. The author appears to be internally driven to write from the outset, and the advice given assumes that you also have the volition to write yourself and want to improve. Is lack of interest a solvable problem? This is a question I continually revisit. In one of the comment threads for the…

I don't think there's a binary of writers/non-writers. I think there's an energy threshold, above which people with an inclination to write would start doing so. If you took the average person, put them at a desk in a locked room with pen and paper, and left them there, they'd eventually write or draw something out of sheer boredom.

I don't think that's fair. Some people might do pushups or sing or fold origami or shoot spitballs instead.

Re: How I motivate myself to write

#58

Post by fijiaarone »

stewbrew wrote: post #35
kwhitefoot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to have written something. I have things I would like to say, or rather to have said. But I have little interest in the business of writing. At intervals I make a desultory attempt to set up a blog but then I fail to actually fill it with anything interesting, not because I have nothing to say but because I can't summon up the effort required to say it.

Writing can also a tool for thinking and for finding flaws in your ideas. It sounds strange to me that you would like something to have said but don't really want to spend the time to make your argument. That said, podcasts could also be a way to explore ideas without having to write them down.

Exactly, if writing is difficult or unnatural to you, oratory is a reasonable alternative.

Try talking instead of writing. It can be a podcast, youtube, or on a soap box in Hyde Park.

Re: How I motivate myself to write

#59

Post by fijiaarone »

rsj_hn wrote: post #17
maroonblazer wrote: post #13

Regarding item 4 "Copy Writing Styles You Like": Ben Franklin, in his autobiography, describes an exercise he subjected himself to which consisted of, roughly: 1. Read an article or piece of writing you like. 2. Wait a few days for the specifics of the article to fade from your memory, but not so long that you forget the main arguments. 3. Rewrite the article without looking at the original 4. Compare what you wrote…

The autobiography is wonderful, and brilliant, but understand it is not so truthful. The type of aphorism you cited is typical of his output. It most likely never happened, but it should have happened. This is like Franklin's great public persona of temperance even though he was a notorious drunk. Franklin was a scoundrel, an inveterate liar, skirt-chaser, always obese, and extremely lazy. A man of great intelligence…

I guess that's a good argument for writing, even if you don't want to.

He who tells the best story gathers the greatest audience and gets the credit -- and reward.

And good writing will be around a million years after MySpace and YouTube are long gone. Benjamin Franklin will be remembered and more highly regarded than Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk -- in their own lifetimes.

Re: How I motivate myself to write

#60

Post by fijiaarone »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #11
anyfactor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My go to is MS notepad. I will write everything in paragraphs in notepad then copy paste it in. Nothing is more fast and convenient than the classic Notepad. If only I could find something that is as fast as notepad, as convenient as notepad, as easy to work with as notepad but with Vim key bindings. That would be fantastic. Tried Gvim but that is no notepad.

...perhaps vim or neovim?

Neovim would be cool if every other plugin didn't break every other week. Updates or no.
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