
Ask HN: How to induce productive mania? - throwawaytoday2
When I first started programming, I fell in love.  Over a period of roughly 3 months, I maintained what can only be described as a productive mania.  I had a very positive mood, elevated energy levels, intrinsic motivation, and an overwhelming, driving, sense of happiness.<p>I would spend hours, and hours, pouring over documentation, absorbing everything I could.  I applied what I learned in projects that were relevant to me.  Every day I was EXCITED to wake up, and learn more.<p>That was 5 years ago, and I still look back on that time and wonder HOW?  HOW did my own body, naturally, without drugs, go into a state of HYPER productivity and HYPER positive mood?  Is it not possible to induce that state again somehow?  If I was capable of it once, why can&#x27;t I control it?
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ldehaan
When I get like this I can write code and design systems as easily as
breathing, but only for short stints, and once I go to bed and get a full
nights sleep I'm done for a couple days.

It's like hyper vigilance but all I see is the computer, it's awesome
(probably unhealthy), but I can't turn it on and off. There are triggers that
usually work though.

If I stay up playing past 10pm it almost always turns on, and all of a sudden
it's 4am and I've got standup in a couple hours, but I got a shit load
completed.

I used to be able to take a lot of uppers, like smoking and drinking too much
coffee/red bull, and that would stretch it out, but I can't do that anymore
because I want to live past 40.

So now I get the effects over shorter periods of time, and really only when I
stay up late.

I also find that when I'm really exhausted from lack of sleep, it actually
kicks in faster, but when I do that, I just end up sleeping all weekend
because I invariably end up working on something until 4am every day.

I'm still trying to figure out how to attain that extreme level of focus at
will but it feels like it would require me to stop focusing on
computers/electronics to try to figure it out, and that simply won't do.

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throwawaytoday2
You mention something interesting:

"... and really only when I stay up late"

My "productive mania" that I mention in this thread, was predominantly late at
night. I've always been something of a night owl, and at the time in my life
where I began programming, I was able to stay up very late, and sleep in late.

Sometimes I wonder if productive mania is attainable only when you're
functioning day-to-day, in your 'ideal' sleep cycle.

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kluck
Why I can not control what you mean:

1\. Not much free time to code besides job, family and life.

2\. Not possible while coding at work. That stuff is just too random and
boring to be exciting.

So I suppose to induce "productive mania" you could:

1\. Get big chunks of free time.

2\. Do stuff you are excited about. Do them because You want to and not
because of some other goal (like getting money, attention, rewards etc.).

I manage to get that for very small scripts that I program in order to get
some small things done for me personally. Those things (I hesitate to call
them tasks or projects) are always done quick, work like a charm and do
exactly what I need. It gives me a good feeling.

~~~
throwawaytoday2
You touch on something important.

"Do them because you want to, and not because of some other goal like money
attention, rewards, etc."

This is an important preliminary step, toward productive mania, I believe.
It's not clear though how to induce this. Are we really in control of what we
find intrinsically motivating?

Let's say I have a programming project I'm working on. I'm excited about it,
but only moderately so. I have a goal of turning it into a business, and
making a moderate passive income from it. How can I turn this decent energy
and motivation, into something explosive?

It would seem that I need to muster some intrinsic motivation, some desire to
work on the project just for the sake of working on it, not for completing it,
or making a business from it. I'm not sure how to accomplish that, or if it's
even really possible when you're doing something that isn't entirely novel and
new.

It's easy when something is new - You're intrinsically motivated to pursue it
because it's, novel and exciting. But when you've done something before, it's
less simple to find that intrinsic motivation.

~~~
kluck
My conclusion about motiviaton in general, after investigating this matter for
a couple of years (not scientifically but nonetheless):

Intrinsic Motivation can not be created artifically.

Its funny, because I just recently found a little "trick" that somehow
motivates me a little. I found this after I made a lot of lists of things,
that I really like to do and during the course of it I realized that all of
these things are really just fun and could never be turned into a job or
towards creating a side-business (like watching movies, listening to music,
hiking etc.). So most of the software projects, no matter how fun they are at
first, include some unexciting parts and turn into work. The trick: I say to
myself, when I have done boring task X, I will be allowed to do real fun stuff
Y. I then try to imagine myself doing fun stuff Y and pretty fast I get into a
good productive mood. (Sorry for the long introduction)

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logn
Try building something instead of learning something.

Also while programming I find I can stay productive if I always leave my
project workspace where there's a bug or half-implemented feature I can start
the next day.

~~~
throwawaytoday2
I think this is good advice, and you're hitting on one aspect of my
aforementioned 'productive mania'. When I started programming, I almost
immediately went into building projects I was interested in, would use
personally, and friends would use. That probably hard a big impact on why I
was SO driven, SO productive, and SO energetic.

I try and work on projects like that nowadays, but I can't hit that extreme
level of productivity and excitement. It seems that another aspect of that
mind state, was that the 'newness' of programming coupled with the success I
was having at it BUILDING something, brought heightened mental activity.

I just wish I could tap into that nowadays. Unfortunately, it seems like the
brain comes alive most, in a novel environment.

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andkon
If you're working on something hard, and you're working on something you care
about, and you're pushing the limits of what you're capable of (but stopping
short of being overwhelmed completely), you can do this.

But most of the time, several of those factors aren't ones you can control.
The reality is that we have to work on mundane shit that we don't care about
pretty frequently. Learning how to do that is much harder than learning how to
be maniacally into something insanely cool.

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fooshint
There was a book written to answer this exact question by psychologist Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi. It's titled "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience"

~~~
throwawaytoday2
Excellent, just bought it on my kindle. Thanks for the reference.

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giuscri
You're hyper-productive when you feel you're working towards the goal of
making your future better

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throwawaytoday2
I think that's a pre-requisite yes, but there's more to it for sure. I have a
project I'm working on right now, and I get decent motivation and energy since
it's a goal of mine, and it will make my future better... But I still struggle
some days to even get started. And I have nowhere near the energy, creativity,
and endurance, that I had when I started programming.

It would seem then that the "manic" and "hyper" part of the productivity, may
be contingent on the novelty of the pursuit, as well as a handful of other
factors?

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crispytx
Coffee, Energy Drinks

