What advice you would give to someone in their 20s who often find themselves at loss of motivation or drive.
Or make a simple webpage to show off your recent vacation that has a gallery widget that works exactly the way you envisioned that you made yourself, then show it to your friends and family and let them go "ooh, that's neat!".
Or that one manual, boring process you have to do over and over again for...whatever, that takes so much time and bores you to tears. Why not try to figure out a way to write a small python or bash script to automate it?
Keep doing little things that seem neat, and eventually you'll gain the confidence to tackle big things that seem neat, and eventually you'll be ready to tackle business needs that are a bit less fun but have a much greater effect on people.
I didn't learn how to program by tackling business problems right away. I learned how to program by making tiny text-driven games just for me to play with, then later I got into web development by trying to make my own personal website, then I got into mobile development by trying to get a Flash game of mine onto my phone (in J2ME on the N-Gage! and later Objective-C on an iPhone), etc. Currenty I'm going through a book on Unity and making a guy move around a maze and shoot at boxes. When I program in my off time, I'm playing, not really learning. But as a happy side effect, I'm learning at the same time.
I suggest to organise your life in a way that you have additional mechanisms to grind through those moments when you loose motivation. Here are some examples. I'm not saying they always work, or they are for everyone. I'm just throwing out some examples in order to communicate a general idea.
- If you want to loose weight, remove food from your house, so you cannot simply snack to quell boredom.
- If you want to learn subject XYZ, join a school/university/course/bootcamp teaching XYZ with a firm schedule, regular homework, exams that you can fail and other students
- If you want to learn subject XYZ, teach it to others (in a generalised sense) in public. The fear of looking like an idiot in front of others is a good motivator.
- Create social obligations with others for doing XYZ, so that the fear of violating those obligation, with the concomitant expected loss in social standing is additional motivation.
- Control frivolous spending by engaging in a contract such a as a mortgage that forces you to save regularly, so as to avoid the substantial disadvantages of defaulting on a mortgage.
- An extreme case is having children, for with children the well-being of what you value most in life now strongly depends on yourself being productive.
What they all have in common is that your desired behaviour XYZ suddenly no longer only depends on your subjective and mercurial moods regarding XYZ, but are now tied together with other goals G1, G2, ... Gn of yours. The probability that you loose interest in all of XYZ, G1, G2, ... Gn at the same time is substantially lower than with just XYZ alone.
In other words, make several of your life goals align and mutually reinforce each other.
https://learnrubythehardway.org/book/advice.html
I think the standout piece of advice in that is to use code as a secret weapon in another profession.
No regrets though. My mantra is that if you're not striving to automate yourself out of your own job these days, then you're holding something back, and not truly contributing your most valuable work.
* All of your reputation within an organization can vanish following the wrong change in management (especially executive management) or organizational structure. A new manager may take for granted all the great things you automated if he/she never saw the prior pain and inefficiency. That new manager may then look at you, see someone who doesn't have a clearly defined role anymore, and fail to understand the long-term value. You can only sell yourself for so long; if you can't pull another magic rabbit out of your ass for the new management, and quickly, then you'll be gone.
* Once you've automated yourself out of your own job, naturally people will notice and you'll start getting invited to work on other problems throughout the organization. In domain professions, which are often occupied by folks who have been doing things the same way for decades, this can be hugely intimidating and even threatening for others. I've been aware of this throughout my work and have always sought participation and consensus from those who might be affected by my work, but some minds are easier to win than others. Combine a few of these bad apples with the above change in management, and poof.
I did try to move up, but I talked to all the wrong people who couldn't see the value in my skills.
I ended up getting an entry-level programming gig somewhere else.
Shouldn't you be, though? Shouldn't your most valuable work be reserved for you?
It's an attitude that comes with risk, but not without personal reward. If I'd held back in my publishing career, then I'd still be an editor somewhere, just waiting to get laid off anyway. Instead I'm here on HN. I get to be in the vanguard of what comes next. I have direction and forward momentum in my endeavors. IMO ultimately that's a far more rewarding and valuable place to be, and worth the trouble.
It's not dishonest in my situation and industry. Traditional publishers are failing. It's not a secret. These organizations are largely run by veterans who like the "smell of paper" 1990s way of doing business. "Reserving my most valuable work for myself" would've been sucking up to those people without exception, keeping my jobs, climbing that burning ladder, and continuing to make myself a passive accessory to that overall decline. I made different choices.
Damn, that's some truth. What I've learned in the last few years is that I take a lot for granted because I've been working in this field since the early 90s. There are tons of businesses that would benefit from someone who knows how to use Excel really well.
2. You have to take care of yourself. Regulating your caffeine, alcohol, sugar, etc. intake is important. You don't have to hit the gym 2 hours a day, but taking a short walk or something else, really helps. If you are always tired/sick you are never going to be at your best, and you'll eventually waste more time than you are actually being productive.
3. Understand what motivates you. You can't get into something for the wrong reasons. I program, because I like programming. If you start something, because it's a means to an end (like I want to program, so I can make a lot of money), ultimately, you aren't going to do well.
I'd recommend that you make the time to hit the gym at least three times a week and lift (it really only takes 45 minutes per session). The goal is not to get ripped; it's to get healthy and balanced. Beyond the physical improvements, it makes a huge difference in confidence, motivation, and concentration. We're still physical beings after all.
Below are the results. The road was hard.
I experienced a similar bump when transitioning from high school to university and then right before my bachelor's degree.
I was looking for something. Had no idea what it was. Everyone else seemed to be doing fine. It was very frustrating and demotivational.
I cleared the first bump by meeting a great group that accepted me and challenged my wit every waking minute with them. It helped me turn my brain on not only for school, but I also started working.
Even though I still had no sense of direction and constantly training my brain on the world around brought about a period of numbness and depression, I was very focused on any task I either had to do or wanted to learn.
The second bump was university where I was already working/studying 50/50. Had to choose work or school and I chose both. It worked out.
Put aside the fact it was the wrong masters or even the wrong university, I pulled it off just to prove a point to myself.
I've started aiming very high in math, optimization, complexity. I was bad at all of them, but my reasoning behind that was "master this and you will be beyond fabulous".
Studying on my own helped a ton. The books that don't make sense in course start making sense, because there is no one else but you to interpret them.
Now at 33 I am finally getting constant influx of challenges and new problems to play with. And I am ready, because I chose not to shut my brain off earlier.
I may not be the "happy" type, but as long as I can use my mind and get constantly challenged, I don't feel the desperation I used to.
One last thing. I had abysmally low self-esteem. I still struggle, because I have a lot of more intelligent and/or accomplished people around me.
Though that's better than the other way around, because it keeps you on your toes and eventually you can learn how not to underestimate and degrade yourself. I learned that I cannot compare to everyone, but I can try to get as close as possible by working hard.
Advice to my past self: 1 constantly think about everything 2 try to get to the bottom of it 3 study on your own 4 if your spec sucks, switch masters early 5 try lots of different courses 6 aim higher, even if you cannot make it 7 be skeptical, but learn to assess your value better 8 don't think small, e. g. only in terms of your country
Quit thinking you need to have motivation!
And for me that describes a difference in how I feel about software development than I did about practicing law or any of the other career paths I tried. In software, I found something that I enjoy even when it's difficult.
What I do with that information, I don't really know. On the one hand, I feel like I hit the jackpot. I get paid to make stuff on computers work. I did this before for free, but now I get to do it using better tools where the possibilities are incredibly vast and the money is pretty good.
I don't really know what to say to people who haven't found what they're looking for yet. I went through three careers before I found one I really enjoyed, but I don't know that I should recommend that path, right? There's an interesting Freakonomics podcast episode about minor baseball players who, by every conceivable metric, should give up on their dreams. http://freakonomics.com/podcast/new-freakonomics-radio-podca... But that's a really hard thing to say to someone.
At the end of the day, I agree with your point that you don't need motivation, but geez, if you find it, it sure is pretty great. The question is, what are we willing to give up in order to find it? It's not an easy question.