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

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

#71
> but I can't continue doing this if I want to get the A-levels I need to enter a half-decent university.

Not sure where you're from, but in Canada you don't need all A's to get into a half-decent university. However, if you want to get into a top university, you'll need good grades and more (e.g. extracurricular activities).

I'm sure any university you will get into will be just fine. During your time at uni, you get out what you put in. Don't stress about getting into your dream university. You'll do fine wherever as long you like what you do and you get involved with stuff happening around you. Grades are just a means to an end, don't focus on them too much.

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

#72
"Are there any ways by which I could motivate myself to study more?"

You told us, the answer is no.

You already dedicate your time to programming, because you need it. I also needed it when I was your age.

In my case I started programming while also studying engineering in Europe. I made a company with the code I accumulated over this time, with the knowledge of programming being really useful to manage other people(and identifying who is really good or not at it and so on).

People consider me rich now(there is always someone else with more money, but I have more than what my family needs), but I went through very hard times before it(my family wanted me to get a good job instead of risking so much).

If you force yourself to study more, you will regret it.

My advice:

Focus on learning to study more efficiently, the idea is to use the time you already use to study faster and get better grades while also giving time to programming.

Learn from the masters, read the Audiobook "The Now habit", learn aabout mindmaps and mnemonics, and always go for the best.

Use software for remembering stuff.

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

#76
Being 16-18 and studying for your A-levels can be a horrible time - it was for me. Relationships with your friends start to change as you grow up at different rates (I don't know whether this applies to you), interests change, and you have so little energy it feels like an effort to get out of bed before noon. Some things that worked for me were hanging out with some different, more studious people, and learning the course material from books in the order I chose rather than following the course (I missed a lot of classes, but I would't recommend that). Make a game out of getting the grades that will be your ticket out of there! On a serious note, if you think you might be depressed, talk to someone (a doctor or counsellor) about it.

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

#77
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can abstract the advice you're commenting on to "if you don't feel motivated to do what you're doing, do something else", which seems okay. It's quite possible that continuing to do things you are not enthusiastic about doing may be a bad idea. I see your point that it's not a very actionable bit of real advice. Pragmatically, if you told my 16 year old to pack a bag and leave, I'd want to smack you :D

Sixteen is old enough - especially when he can always return. Being away from everything for a few months really puts things into perspective - why are you doing what you're doing, why you were so afraid of some things, whether you're on the right path, and more.

Old enough for your kid, maybe :D Not old enough for mine, in my state, to not be legally responsible for them, as far as I know (I suppose I could be mistaken, though).

I can agree that distance creates perspective. All I am saying is that if my 16 year old daughter told me she was going to set out for some random spot for a month, I'd probably nix the idea and not feel like I was being unreasonable.

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

#78
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…

> Want to be a rock star? Spend years learning to play an instrument, playing in dive bars and making demo tapes. Get a break then play the same 4 hit songs for 20 years.

Wait, what? Is this supposed to be inspirational? Suffering for "success" to find yourself "playing the same 4 hit songs for 20 years"? It feels like this actually undermines the rest of your argument, so I'm kind of confused what you were going for here.

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

#79
The problem with education is that it always has a different take on a subject to what personally fascinates you about the subject. Subjects that might have floated your boat personally for many years will be taught differently to what you expect, killing your interest in a subject.

There is an adage about teaching - if you cannot do then teach, if you cannot teach then teach Geography. If we take Geography as an example, you might think of geography as being about places on a map, be able to name all U.S. state capitals and know where Dhaka is and Dakar isn't. Then, in a geography class, you might find that knowing where anywhere is does not matter in the least. 'How flood plains are formed', 'how a volcano works' will be what is taught, without any mention at all of physical places.

The geography example is an example of how expectations of a subject can be wrong at the basic school level, you can live with a mis-match of expectations in geography syllabus, however, go to university and it is another kettle of fish. You might think politics would be a useful thing to study, be passionate about the subject and be knowledgeable about current affairs. Again, none of that would matter.

Computer science is another area of concern. You might be good at programming and be up to date with whatever is on HN. Yet, at university you might get taught languages and methodologies that are a world away. There might actually be reasons why the university teach what they teach that are not readily apparent. The military might have some link up that means that stuff that matters to designing jet fighters gets taught. Clearly none of it - 'ADA' - for instance - might have no relevance in the real world.

Returning to your subject of maths, in the real world you are doing pretty well if you have problems that require secondary school stuff - trigonometry, calculating prices with tax, differential equations. Actually you could probably go a long way on getting a man on the moon with secondary school maths, yet there is a whole world of maths beyond that. Triple integrations, anyone? Even if you do find a real world use - electronics with Gauss's theorem - there aren't many uses for that real world use. It is all too convenient for maths to be taught in such a way that it is abstract and not practical, e.g. teaching a program to do it for you, or working on a large dataset in a computationally efficient way. Even reading the data in is not something that would be taught. It is a bit like how you can do a degree in electronics and never touch a soldering iron or know how to fix a fuse.

So my suggestion is to not head off to university so hastily. Work somewhere for a little while then go to university because you know why you are going. You can actually learn useful stuff at university rather than go there to just get a bit of paper.

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

#80
post #78
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…

> Want to be a rock star? Spend years learning to play an instrument, playing in dive bars and making demo tapes. Get a break then play the same 4 hit songs for 20 years. Wait, what? Is this supposed to be inspirational? Suffering for "success" to find yourself "playing the same 4 hit songs for 20 years"? It feels like this actually undermines the rest of your argument, so I'm kind of confused what you were going for…

Well, do you want to play new songs or be a rock star? "Being" a rock star isn't all about jamming new tunes.

Understanding what your goals are actually about, instead of idealizing them is just as important to figure out where to best put your efforts. Even after you "make it", it doesn't mean there's still isn't drudgery involved.

A little meta, but HN sometimes almost veers into the "get rich quick" thinking, where somebody works for a month or two to assemble a picture sharing app or something, then expects to sell for a billion and wear unbuttoned oxford shirts and angel invest from their beachfront house in Hawaii for the rest of their life.

There's hard work in everything and even when you "make it", there's still hard work involved.

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