
Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself? - kevutu
I know i like tech stuff and i do great stuff when i&#x27;m motivated the problem is how do i keep this motivation going? what is it that you do to keep the motivation on.
======
edw519
My father dropped out of high school to help support his family. He served in
the military and started his own business. Except for Sundays, he worked his
ass off 12 hours every day of his life until he died.

My mother could have been anything, but never got the chance. Instead, she
raised us so that we could become what she never could.

My grandmother had nothing. When she was 13, she had to drop out of school to
care for 7 other children. She ate her first egg as an adult. She never
travelled more than 50 miles from home her entire life.

My grandfather was the smartest man I ever knew but never went to school a
single day in his life. Instead he did mind-numbing factory work and
stimulated himself with books, musical instruments, languages, and people
whenever he had energy after work. He died prematurely from industrial causes.

I, on the other hand, was born at the perfect time. I got to go to college and
now I'm a computer programmer immersed in thousands of opportunities of the
biggest technological change in human history. I am limited only by my own
imagination in building almost anything I want. And I make more money than any
of my ancestors every dreamed possible. I'm probably the first out of 100
generations of my family who actually gets to do what I want and love it.

It that doesn't motivate someone, I don't know what would.

~~~
netcraft
This really resonates with me. I've often said that its crazy how I have the
ability to literally create something from nothing, something worth
potentially millions if not billions of dollars, investing nothing more than
time. And I have access to almost all of the information I need to be able to
do it, for free. I can't think of any other profession where so much is
possible; I just wish I could have an idea of what to do with it. I don't have
an issue with being motivated - my problem is deciding what is worth putting
my mind to.

~~~
kevutu
"its crazy how I have the ability to literally create something from nothing,
something worth potentially millions if not billions of dollars" i get that
too, but it doesn't sustain me for long.Do you like meditate on this or remind
yourself constantly...how do you keep it in your mind.

------
Arjuna
In my personal experience, _motivation_ is secondary (but closely related) to
_passion_.

Generally, when one has an issue with motivation, then he or she may not have
discovered his or her true passion in life.

 _You have to find your passion._

If you do not find it, then it is likely that you will never be truly
motivated.

However, once you have found your passion, then you will find that it is
literally _game on_ in your life. You will wake up earlier, because you have
engaged passion in your life, which will bring motivation to your actions. You
will be bringing the thunder. You will be firing on all 12 cylinders. You will
not want to sleep more than is necessary, because you will know from deep
within you, that you want to bring what is inside of you to others, and to the
world.

Ask yourself:

1\. _" What am I truly passionate about?"_

2\. _" How can I deliver what I am passionate about to others?"_

Answer these questions, back the answers up with action, and you will see
motivation unfold in your life.

I wish you every success.

------
norswap
For me, a big change was to stop to beat myself so much about my failure to
work on the things I wanted to do. Now, I'm much more leisury about my
projects. I have very unproductive periods, and very productive periods, I
goes in cycles. It's normal.

The only thing is to persist. As Confucius said "It does not matter how slow
you go, as long as you do not stop."

------
j45
Finding and remembering why you're doing anything in any situation is
motivation.

How much we want to do anything, is relative to how energized, focused, and
passionate we feel about it, or more importantly, take time to regularly
reflect on.

Motivation, as classically defined doesn't fit techies that well because we
march to own drum so much. Those that fall for someone else's koolaid can end
up jaded and on the same search imho.

Motivation is like bathing.

If we don't bathe our body, we begin to smell and not feel fresh.

Similarly, our thoughts, feelings, and gut begin to smell from having not
enough energy placed on hitting the reset button and starting fresh with a
clear reminder.

What can do it? Remembering why. Also, things like meditation, exercise, going
for a walk, etc can be very powerful to clear your senses to deeply embed the
why. Over time it resonates more and more on it's own.

No one can learn about you for you, you have to dedicate time to it just like
the time you have to dedicate yourself to technology.

Motivation for me is remembering why I want to do things at a very deep level.
I like taking the 5 whys approach to get to a root trigger word or two.

Building discipline and work ethic are the two master skills that underlie any
goal I'll find or want to undertake, so it's what I try to optimize on.

So, instead of wanting some eureka moment, I build a practice of improving my
discipline and work ethic a little every day. I am part of a weekly group
where we set goals and check in with each other, creating obligations around
the things I want to be doing for others to force me to move.

The above could be a blog post in some way as I've been self employed for over
a decade and have had to work on these routines to be my own best support.

Thoughts and input most welcome :)

------
majc2
I use the Napoleon Hill method of having a definite chief aim - Bruce Lee is
probably one of the most famous users of it.
[http://imgur.com/r/GetMotivated/CvaN5QB](http://imgur.com/r/GetMotivated/CvaN5QB)

The method boils down to writing something down to yourself outlining what you
want to achieve, how you're going to achieve it, and when you're going to
achieve it by. Then you keep reading the aim and it helps to motivate you.

~~~
swayvil
That sounds very much like a "ritual magic" technique. Beyond the document you
might include visual, olfactory, etc cues. Pictures and incense etc that
create positive goal-achievement-associated feelings and ideas. Maybe a
physical metaphor of progress too (...as this candle burns lower so I approach
my goal...). Ritual magic enthusiasts (like Aleister Crowley for example)
would say that you are actually imposing your will upon the stuff of reality
in this controlled way, or something like that. Fascinating stuff.

------
yesimahuman
For me, the motivation comes by having other people use and respond to the
software I create. This means getting out of my developer bubble and doing
some marketing. When people are engaging with your creations in a positive
way, it's hard to not be motivated.

I think this applies to any software product that is written with the
intention of having someone else use it, open source or otherwise.

~~~
kevutu
This gives me a short burst of motivation but is don't seem to get around to
actual completion of a project and seeing it in use.

~~~
yesimahuman
Well, what if you started generating revenue, and customers were sharing your
stuff all over the world? What could be more motivating than that?

~~~
qu4z-2
Knowing I've made something of quality. For me, that's more important than
people using/paying for my stuff.

------
jzf
I imagine how my son (5 years old) sees me through his eyes, and I think about
how my life is a large predictor of his life, and then I ask if I am being the
kind of man I want my son to be.

------
dreeves
My startup is all about solving this problem!
[http://beeminder.com](http://beeminder.com)

It's specifically for lifehacking data nerds (so probably most people here on
HN) and the idea is to combine a quantified self tool with a commitment
contract. Specifically, you pledge (actual money) that you'll keep all your
datapoints on a "yellow brick road" to your goal and if you don't, we charge
you.

We integrate with various gadgets and apps like RescueTime and Trello and
GitHub (also fitness things like Fitbit but I guess this thread is more about
productivity-related motivation) so, for example, you can force yourself to
waste less time on Facebook or commit to GitHub more often, or enforce a
steady rate of moving Trello cards to the Done pile.

~~~
subb
Don't you think it's a bit evil to make a profit out of people's lack of self-
motivation? I would prefer to give the money to a good cause...

~~~
dreeves
Here's how we look at it: We force you to toe the line at least for a while so
that when/if you do fall off your yellow brick road then the motivation
Beeminder provided up until that point still seems worth it. Everything we've
worked on in building Beeminder has been with the objective of making people
succeed and we'd have to be very myopic for it to be otherwise.

More on this:
[http://blog.beeminder.com/perverse](http://blog.beeminder.com/perverse)

Or just think of it this way: You're paying a fee for Beeminder's service and
that fee is waived if you never happen to need Beeminder's kick in the pants.

If you really want a charity option though, some of our competitors offer
that:
[http://blog.beeminder.com/competitors](http://blog.beeminder.com/competitors)
At least one (StickK) offers an _anti_ -charity option, but I really don't
think that's a good idea:
[http://blog.beeminder.com/anticharity](http://blog.beeminder.com/anticharity)

~~~
ctb_mg
It seems the model is driven by negative reinforcement rather than positive
reinforcement. Charity or no charity, I'd prefer a model that rewards staying
on track rather than punishing lack of motivation.

When you're talking about motivation, I feel that getting someone to do
something to avoid negative consequences will result in low quality work and a
begrudging state of mind.

~~~
dreeves
This is good criticism, and I bet you'll like [http://lift.do](http://lift.do)

But here's our response to that:
[http://blog.beeminder.com/lift](http://blog.beeminder.com/lift)

~~~
wef234
CUDOs for providing such good summaries of your competitors! Such a public
service really makes me want to signup for a B-sting!

------
lettergram
I have three things that motivate me:

1) I keep a photo on my desk as well as the back ground on my computer:
[http://austingwalters.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/11/skyline...](http://austingwalters.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/11/skyline-2.0.jpg)

It is an image I took at the Taste of Chicago. There was a crowd of roughly
10,000 people and directly above them there is a group of buildings, seemingly
rising from the crowd. The picture always reminds me that humanity is the
creature that can build ANYTHING. So, I find that motivational because I want
to be one of the people to build something like a skyscraper making me worthy
of calling myself human.

2) I read inspirational books, to me The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) and Time
Enough for Love (Robert Heinlein) are always inspirational because they
project characters that are considered "ideal" or at least worthy of aspiring
to be. I also read a fair amount of history books and biographies about
inspirational people, if find it helps me to maintain focus when I am
attempting to be competitive (in work ethic) with the great people throughout
history or characters with similar traits.

3) I go for walks and think. Nothing is better than pure and utter
relaxation/boredom to stimulate your creativity and motivation. For example
the average person can only do high quality mental processing (learning or
creative thinking) about 4 hours a day and if you want to increase the that 4
hours to a longer period you must extend the relaxation time as well. In other
words, its good to do stuff you enjoy and its good to be lazy for a while, it
gets you motivated to do other things.

------
ibudiallo
First you have to remind yourself it is ok to be bored. Second you should find
people that share the same interest. I wrote about it recently, and I rather
sound like a self promoter then repeat my self:

[http://idiallo.com/blog/2013/05/staying-motivated-when-
thing...](http://idiallo.com/blog/2013/05/staying-motivated-when-things-are-
not-that-exciting)

------
evilstreak
I find that my motivation is self sustaining as long as I get started. When
I'm feeling demotivated it usually manifests as putting off getting started.
"I'll start after I've read Twitter". "I'll just read these articles from
Hacker News". "It's almost lunch times, so I'll get started after I've eaten
something". And then it's the end of the day, I've done nothing, and I feel
really crap about it.

Every time the trick is to just get myself started. Work out a way to reduce
the commitment in getting started. Never tell yourself you'll settle down to
10 hours straight work after you read that article, send this tweet, or reply
to that email. Instead break down your todo list into tiny chunks, and just do
the first thing. Or use something like Pomodoro and just sit down to do 25
minutes work.

------
mackwic
Motivation is something personal, you have to find what motivates yourself.
There is books on that, but I can't advise you as I never used them.

As I see it, the key for doing things is to begin, then to focus. Can't focus
? Do another. Just _keep doing_. Motivation is not really something that helps
you when you are doing, it's something that helps you to begin and to end.

But is motivation the only way to begin and end things ? Obviously not. Duty,
deadlines, promises, anything that make you morally engaged in an action. So,
go set some goals ! Make it as a timeline with deadlines, make it as a flat
TODO, make it as a scrumy ([http://scrumy.com](http://scrumy.com) is a great
service), try, fail, repeat until you win.

There is no way to find the good one until you tried it. So keep doing things,
be amazing. ;-)

~~~
kevutu
Duty, deadlines, promises, anything that make me morally engaged does not
actually get me to do good work as this drives me to procrastinate and do
stuff at the absolute last minute.

~~~
mackwic
So, put the last minute right now !

------
RTigger
I like to set external-facing deadlines. I'll do things like tell my
department I'm going to do a presentation on technology X in two weeks, and
then start learning about it. If I don't get it done, I have to tell 20 other
developers why I have to cancel the meeting they've all accepted.

This is part of the motivation of team and peer-accountability in some of the
agile methods like Scrum / XP / Pair Programming. If you feel personally
responsible to someone else, you're likely to follow through. A good way to do
this with personal projects is to find a partner - I work with a designer on a
lot of my personal projects, and telling him that I'm going to get X done
helps, as well as seeing the time and progress he's invested in the project.

------
__--__
Motivation, passion and inspiration are mostly figments of the mind. It's the
dopamine hit you get when you learn something for the first time or when you
come up with (what you think is) an inspired idea. Just like a hit of cocaine,
the high doesn't last forever. What you want to do is establish routines and
habits. When the excitement, passion and motivation wears off, what's left is
the routine.

"Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work." \-
Attributed to Chuck Close, echoed by countless writers and artists.

------
swayvil
My level of conscious figures highly. That which I find sufficiently
satisfying depends on my level of consciousness.

When my consciousness level is low I am satisfied to mope around aimlessly,
watch stupid tv and sleep a lot.

When my consciousness level is high I demand higher joys like cool projects,
am happy and motivated and my shit is together.

I keep my consciousness level high by taking care of my body and meditating a
lot. You see how it can be an upward spiral.

However sometimes I fall into laziness, life upsets my wagon, etc. So there's
the "get back on the horse" thing.

------
mattm
There's no such thing as motivation. Most likely you are just giving into
distractions. These distractions are there to test you as to how much you
actually want to finish the thing you are working on. It comes as a result of
looking towards the future too much instead of just focusing on what you are
doing now.

I'm putting together a course related to this if you're interested -
[http://www.programmingspiritually.com/](http://www.programmingspiritually.com/)

------
gdubs
I think it's helpful to do something on a project every day, no matter how
minor. If I'm feeling unmotivated that could be as simple as renaming some
files I've been meaning to rename, or fixing the simplest of warnings in my
project. Usually by the time I've done that, I'm in the project and rolling
into the next thing. Conversely, it's important to take a day or two off after
more vigorous stretches of productivity.

------
beat
It's not about being motivated. It's about working when the work itself isn't
intrinsically motivating. I think that's what pg calls the schlep.

I deal with schleps by making them a part of larger, non-schlep goals. And if
the schlep is really resistant to attitude adjustment, I'll wrap the larger
goal in a more formalized project plan, so I can clearly see the schlep's role
in the more valuable/interesting/motivating work.

------
m_ke
Not to get off topic but I have a much harder time focusing on a single
task/project. The motivation is there but I'm all over the place. There's so
much to learn and I seem to start a new project every other day, but they just
never get finished because I end up stumbling on a new thing that I want to
learn/make.

------
alockj
I stumbled across a site on here called
[http://getinspired365.com](http://getinspired365.com) that dishes out daily
inspiring/motivating quotes and videos. I find it a good way to start my day
but my friend who uses it dips in and out as and when his motivation levels
drop..

~~~
kevutu
thanks, it looks good i'll try it

~~~
alockj
No worries, hope you find it useful! My friend reckons it's helped him no
end..

------
threepipeproblm
Sometimes the harder you try to force yourself do things, the harder it
becomes to do them. I lost a lot of time in the past trying to make myself
more regimented, clearer about goals, etc. and it just made me resist (ironic
process theory).

------
GBKS
I think of what my long-term goals are, then how the task at hand fits in the
path to reach those goals. This makes it much easier to work through the
boring stuff, since the motivation is drawn from the big, personal life goals.

------
djent
I find the only way I'm able to work on anything to my full potential is to
force myself to look at it without any distractions. At any time, I can rattle
off three or four things that I should be working on.

------
TheAnimus
Adequate sleep, ensuring I get up with daylight. Okay so they aren't
motivations per say, but without them I suffer, my creativity suffers and my
ability to actually do work suffers greatly.

~~~
kevutu
what time do you wake up?, how many hours do you sleep? any strategies for
waking up?

~~~
TheAnimus
>any strategies for waking up?

Light.

These things are personal, but it is something that helps me. I used to use a
standard SAD alarm clock by Phillips, but have since put some Hue light bulbs
in my room. I have blackout curtains and the bulbs I have programmed to turn
on via a little process on my server, I've been experimenting with ripples and
which frequencies to use best, but haven't got nearly enough data yet.

I generally try to always wake up at 7am. The hours of sleep depend on
exercise and how tired I felt in the morning (never think at 11pm oh I feel
fine!).

Diet mixed with that helps, generally I won't eat after 8pm, unless I'm
staying up late!

------
polskibus
It's the difficulty level of the challenge that matters. It can't be too easy,
it can't be too hard. Read the flow book if you need to understand the road to
happiness.

------
rockyj
That one day, I will be able to do some great work while living in the US /
Europe / Australia / Canada and provide good quality of life and education to
my kids.

------
biinui
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the
work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless
sea.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

------
gadders
Get a wife and kids that rely on you. You'll quickly find you'd swab toilets
if it would keep food in the mouths of people you love.

------
sreitshamer
I quit my job to work on my own stuff. Lack of income is an excellent
motivator, for me anyway.

------
_neil
Genuine interest and the ability to blacklist hackernews via /etc/hosts

------
A__MJ
Caffeine and Metallica (...and Justice For All > other albums)

------
gprasanth
do great stuff

