Comment by tgb29 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tgb29 | Hacker News Reader

Our circumstances are different, but I'm going through a similar phase, and the last few weeks I've thought mostly on the idea of self-motivation. I'm asking myself what does this really mean and what makes it sustainable? Seeing that you're doing this too reassures me, and it shows me that you've also identified the issue.

The question I'm asking today is: how do I define my purpose in life?

It may be that your true goals in life are different than the ones you set when you were 20. You're not a stupid idiot by any means, and it seems like if wanted to coast the rest of your life you're setup to do so. Be proud of getting to this point because most never will. But if you're looking for deeper fulfillment, you'll need to either set new goals or redefine the purpose for the next phase of your life.

My hypothesis is that when I resolve my purpose, I'll have stronger incentives for self-motivation.

Defining purpose is hard and it's interwoven with your world view, thoughts on religion, death, etc., but you have to start somewhere.

The "purpose of life" question is maybe a bit too deep for me, but in general I agree with this kind of questions. It's like I do not have a challenge anymore because, for whatever reason, everything I'm doing seems to turn out well even without me putting much effort into it. I'm just lucky in this regard I think which caused me to lose my self motivation very deeply.

I can also observe this very often in other aspects of life: I find a new technology, buy stuff for it and when the stuff arrives at home to start playing around with it, I do not even open the package because in the end I'm thinking "not worth it to waste time on"... which actually ends up in really wasting time by just sitting on the couch and doing nothing. This exact same feeling I have when I have an idea for a new project but then I don't even start it.

It goes that far that even start to watch a new good movie, which was one of my biggest hobbies once, seems to be a too big barrier for me.

My life goals once were to have a family, a nice house and a healthy life. They are still there too, but somehow the "I need to do new things all the time" added up to the list, and this is contrary to the family and house goal. Maybe this confuses me, driving myself into two different directions at the same time?

The "start somewhere" is probably actually the question. Where?

I don't have a good answer, but if I were to restart the internal dialogue now, it would be: if I were to die tomorrow, would I be ok with this? I remind myself that every human is statistically insignificant, meaning, I could achieve the highest success and still be forgotten within a few years, decades, or centuries later: life has been around for billions of years, humans for a couple hundred thousand (still debatable). In short, my purpose could end tomorrow, or I can fulfill my purpose and never get recognized for it. If this is the case, why set goals and be ambitious?

What's been motivating me recently is the thought of all the people who ever cared about me. Would making all these people proud when I achieve my goals be enough to push me further?

I haven't figured out the personal part, but learning more about the potential of computers has been inspiring. To be able to understand and contribute to their advancement has made me excited.

Start a family with someone else who’s driven to do new things all the time?

Another hypothesis I had that all this way down started was the introduction of a smartphone into my life. It was 2012 and it correlates with my continous increase of laziness. I was 19 then. Could just be a coincidence. But maybe not...

Good point, I haven't looked at it this way. For me it was perhaps the discovery of Slashdot, and later, Hacker News? It's some much more pleasurable to read about other people doing work than to do the work yourself...

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