

Ask HN: What Motivates You? - EricR23

Some of us here seem very motivated (or is it stubborn? :-). What keeps you going at working on that big project and not giving up?
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mikecane
Spite. Spite is a great motivator. "I'll show them," so you keep at it. (Why
do I feel I need to put _this_ footnote in: That you know and understand WTF
you're doing and not be blindly delusional. Spite is reasonable, rational
opposition; not having your head up your ass.)

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hoodoof
Yes, make em pay for kicking your ass in high school.

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mindcrime
Well, that's a question with no easy answer. I mean, sure, I want to be
wealthy, in terms of pure, raw, green $$$$. But I don't necessarily want $$$
for it's own sake. I don't need a super fancy house, super fancy car, etc.
(although I'm not necessarily saying I wouldn't indulge a bit if I make it
big), but what I really want is more freedom... basically, enough money to
constitute "FU money" so that I'm not beholden to a tyrannical dipshit manager
in some inane, soulless mega-corp with a kafkaesque bureaucracy and Dilbert
style PHBs. I'd also like more freedom to travel and explore, and $$$ helps
with those things.

But perhaps an even bigger reason is simply my need to prove something, both
to myself and to the world. Growing up fairly poor in a rural part of the
South, and being the shy, awkward, geeky kid through most of my school years,
I felt a touch of resentment for the guys with the fancy cars, the pretty
girls, blah, etc. Not to mention the rich people in the fancy house who lived
around where I lived, but who were in a different world in a sense. I - even
after all these years - still feel a need to prove that I'm just as good as
they are, and just as capable of achieving whatever I set out to do.

And I'm still pissed off about not getting voted "most likely to succeed" in
my high-school senior class. :-)

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EricR23
Cool, sounds a lot like my answer. Money doesn't really push me all that
much-- yet. I'm still in college so that might have something to do with it.
Right now it's more intrinsic for me.

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p4bl0
At the risk of sounding BarneyStinsonian my answer would simply be "'cause
it's awesome!".

Seriously, if you really like what you do motivation comes by itself. If each
time you think of something related to it you go "yeah, awesome". If each time
you improve it (by polishing the idea in your mind or over email/irc with your
partners, or by adding a feature, or by fixing that bug) words like "awesome"
come to your mind, then the motivation is auto-generated. But I truely believe
this can only be acheived —at least if you're honest with yourself— if the
thing we're talking about is the top idea[1] in your mind.

[1] <http://paulgraham.com/top.html>

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EricR23
Awesome! :)

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gliese1337
The joy of solving a problem that nobody has solved before. Of course it's big
and hard; if it weren't big and hard, somebody would've done it already! That,
combined with setting smaller, shorter-term sub-goals, so I can get a little
bit of satisfaction as often as possible to overcome the occasional
frustration.

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cstrouse
For me it's the pressure of my peers that will flame and bash me in public on
the social networks that keeps me plugging away.

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pasbesoin
Good health. The better I feel, the easier it is to get things done.

(A lot of "rationalization" is, I've found over time, only so much hand
waving.)

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hoodoof
Sweet sweet cash. Green baby.

