How I stay motivated working on my long-term project

That was a tedious read. Most of the article is just filler text. There is a whole page of it before the point: give yourself 3 years. Why 3 years? Because Rome wasn't built in a day. That's pretty much all there is to it.

The advice feels pretty circular. To stay motivated, do it for 3 years. If you can commit to something for 3 years, you already have the motivation.

Regardless, I disagree with this advice. Give it a month, tops. If you don't enjoy the process after a month and the goal is 3 years away, you won't get there.

From my experience, I stick to doing things because of the rewards along the way. After a month of playing an instrument, learning a language or trying a hobby, I will likely produce something that makes me want to keep going. It won't take 3 years.

>When I lack immediate feedback, I begin to doubt myself/my abilities.

He believes being conditioned by social media led him to that point, more specifically immediate-satisfaction instant-result culture.

That is not entirely true in my experience. Feedback is supposed to determine strategy, not your self worth as a person. He has been programmed, by the instant result culture or whatever, into emotionally charged reactions, not an objective response.

I have been working out and I hit a plateau, I should stop this is fruitless > I hit a plateau, I need to try a new workout routine. Not “I will workout for 3 years until I make any judgement.”

I have been blogging for months and nobody cares, I should stop > I have been blogging for months without any results, my current course of action needs adjustment. Not “I will blog for 3 years regardless.”

Reacting - Old habits/conditioning make you react to a situation

Responding - Taking in the situation and moving forward with calculated action.

The 3 year rule replaces his current reaction with another one, when he should be working on responding to situations instead. It takes you further, but will not take you further than if you were to correct that faulty outlook altogether.

I think the key thing is discrete deliverables that don't have too long of a gap between them. This allows you to feel there is progress, but also put the project on ice and resume because the next task isn't some huge insurmountable thing but another small piece.

> Ask any successful person. Ask any experienced person. They’ll all tell you the same thing – It takes time to create something valuable. Something worth doing.

Over time I've ended up not really understanding this advice, but only because of something I accomplished in the past.

One day I just felt like writing something. I hadn't written since elementary school and had never published a piece of writing online before. But one day I just felt like writing something. The idea just would not leave my mind and I failed to get any sleep, instead spending all of my conscious time writing.

Within a week I was more or less finished. It was a short story numbering only a few dozen pages at most. But save for some minor editing it was complete.

And I decided that since I finished something, it was a success. And I also liked what I wrote, legitimately. I don't think it was that great in the context of people with experience, but it was mine, and that was enough for me to declare it a success. To me, I thought it was valuable. To me, I thought it was worth doing.

So if it's true that you must spend a lot of time to make something valuable, then in my view one of two things is true:

1. What I accomplished in only a week was not valuable to me or anyone else and was not worth doing, and I'm just deluding myself.

2. The advice was untrue and you can still create things of value without spending a lot of time - it just depends on what the scale is.

And if there is no way to create something valuable without spending a lot of time on it, then I don't understand why Ludum Dare and NaNoWriMo still exist, unless people believe the things they accomplish during those events are valueless, which doesn't sound right to me.

Since then I have never really felt like writing. I will either sit down and not think of anything for hours, or at most write whatever comes to my mind in a stream of consciousness and then proceed to not look at or edit it ever again. I think this is what people call being trapped by their past successes. I expect to be able to accomplish again what I actually did accomplish a single time in the past, which is not realistic. Not everything I do will turn out as well as that one time. But the fact remains that I called what I accomplished a success despite not spending much time on it at all, and on top of that it was the first thing I had seriously written in over a decade, and I seem to be unable to reconcile that with the practicalities of developing a skill properly.

Out of the side projects that I know of which made it past the MVP stage most had one thing in common: they solved a problem that the person who came up with the idea had.

Sounds obvious, but I've seen a few projects fail because the developer couldn't relate to their users.

Side note: quite often this lack of motivation is simply a matter of impostor syndrome.

The other day I managed to break out of that by looking at a "how to" of something from a field foreign to me.

It was a step-by-step demonstration of how a certain drawing was created.

My first reaction was: "this is amazing - I wish I could create such awe-inspiring things".

Then I remembered that I've been programming since I was twelve and am fully capable of creating things that might be as impressive to people who are not in my field as that artwork was to me.

I like the idea of being realistic with a timeline and start with a 3 year goal. I think the most important part of getting quick feedback for me is setting up my environment for tiny iterations (for a web dev side project), but the balance is tricky between getting more efficient and endless "yak shaving"!!

I would love to do some electronics design but I find it much harder to have smaller sessions, it takes me a least an hour or two to get into a flow where I have my mental model of the complete circuit, mechanical layout, etc.

I also want to balance being a good parent with side projects as well! Currently my kids are too small to participate in engineering, but you can bet that I am totally going to build a robot with them some day :)

I started working on a long-term project 1.5 years ago. It's in cryptocurrency. People in crypto would call it a shitcoin project. Up until now, it's a solo project. I'm the only person working on it. Not much outside interest. But I learn some things along the way.

When you think about the expected or probable ROI, you'd likely give up. These projects or ideas will likely fail. You have less than 1% chance of success. You're trying to calculate the extreme tail risk. It's not worth the time to think about it. The process is demoralizing.

One trait that I found useful for these long-term ideas: curiosity. If you're curious about something, you can do it for a long time. You still do it even when you know it would likely fail. During the process, you can learn things that are not exactly applicable for your idea. But they are useful for your learning.

Another aspect to think about is to find the failure criteria. You can decide when your long-term idea is invalid. When you see X happens, you know X would invalidate your idea. X is the correct idea, your idea is incorrect. At that point, you can stop.

An example: I have a hypothesis that battery electric cars may not be the future. I work on alternative ideas. A failure criteria for my idea: When battery electric cars have more than 50% market share. This example illustrates the unpopularity of working on long-term ideas. People would call you stupid. You'll likely fail. Curiosity is the only thing that keeps you going.

So the author says "stick to it for 3 years".

But that doesn't answer the question at all. The question becomes, how do you stay motivated for those 3 years?

The answer, for me and people I know, is that you have to break it down into small pieces (month-sized, then week-sized, then day-sized) and find happiness in the progress. In the small daily wins.

If you think you'll only be happy once you succeed (3+ years later) you'll never make it. It's trite but it's true, that you've got to find happiness in the journey, not just the destination.

Because if you don't, then you'll absolutely give up and fall back to the things that do give you instant happiness today, whether that's social media or spending time with your spouse or kids. And if you choose your family over a long-term project because the project isn't producing happiness... then that might be the right choice for you! :)

> A lot of times writing, to me, feels like sitting alone and talking to myself. I write stuff, I publish them, and nothing really happens. The lack of feedback – good or bad – makes me doubt the work I do.

This is one place where having a co-founder/collaborator/co-worker is valuable: built-in feedback mechanism.

I think it really just boils down to doing something you like and believing in your decision to do it.

For example if you're looking at a new tech stack and after some weeks or months of developing something with it. If it's not everything you thought it would be, or you're no longer 100% on board, no amount of motivation is going to keep you moving forward to build your app. It'll feel like absolute dread every time you think about opening your code editor.

I've been consistently blogging for 5+ years (at least 1 weekly post) and I still find it super enjoyable. It doesn't feel like I need motivation because it's doing something I genuinely believe in and want to do.

I'm not sure I agree with this advice in its current form, since the "adjust" phase of the three-year rule is arguably the most important. My current self would be unrecognizable to myself three years ago.

I'm still learning how to be productive long-term. I started gaining a lot of momentum when I shifted my thinking from short-term impulsiveness:

  Wow, I just discovered X!  I will read everything there is to know about X today!

To long-term sustainability:

  In three months, I want to be someone who is familiar enough with X to recognize when it might be useful, and pull out that knowledge as needed.

> But there is something else entirely that’s keeping you inside Facebook and Twitter like a crackhead inside a drugstore – immediate feedback. Sadly, this same thing, is also the reason you abandon your long-term projects.

Perhaps it's just my disposition, but I find that new ideas are more interesting than old ideas, even when I get quick "feedback". The longer a project takes the older and less exciting my original ideas get and the more I come up with new, exciting ideas.

Building self discipline / temperance + accountability have helped me a lot.

My two cents. I prefer analogy with sport. Say you choose running and pick 10k distance. What might be the goal? 50min, 40min, 30min? Say you pick 50min, if you are out of shape and did not do sport in your life - it will take you 6-9 months. You will have to train 3 times a week, probably you won't hire a couch, your body won't be ready, hence you will make many mistakes and will have quite high chances to injure your self and quit. What I want to emphasize - to succeed you have to start loving the process and blend the process into your lifestyle.

I see very clearly how the goal oriented approach fails for loosing weight while the only effective thing to do is eat less.

Not sure I can agree to this. Not everything that you commit to for 3 years will turn out a success.

The quoted Matt D'avela video featured 2 Austrailian podcasters who committed to 5 years. They just released their 800th episode, and the average view count is in the hundreds: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDailyTalkShow

I'd rather follow Noah Kagan. I forgot the source but I think he said you should place much more effort into deciding _what_ to work on.

In our hustle culture this is underrated. It's mostly deciding on what, and related to that: timing.

Set yourself intermediate goals, rather than aiming for a big payoff. On the way to $10k MRR: prototype, first user, first paying users, first 100 users, etc. Every milestone is enjoyable!

I also disagree with "doing what's fun". Hard problems aren't fun in the beginning, but once you achieve mastery, you will enjoy the task. Seen this for programming or in others for pottery. Once you get good at something you enjoy it more and have access to new options and a new perspective.

The last part is summarized from "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport. Still works.

Great advice, thank you for sharing!

I'll comment too that it also applies to things that can't be measured with number of users/readers/dollars in bank/etc. I'm not a naturally outgoing person and making new friends can feel like _work_. But if a relationship is something that you've decided to value, then (to paraphrase the article) the only way to make it happen is to commit, prioritize, and respond to feedback. That applies to friends, spouse, kids, etc.

An alternative interpretation of the point could be that one can stay motivated by framing one's projects in a way that allows one to get feedback often, but I understand this is easier to say than to do. Nonetheless, it's something that I'll definitely look into.

A lot of filler in the article, but the basic premise is something I've often done when wanting to accomplish something significant. View it on a 3 year time horizon from the outset.

Its not an appropriate technique for everything you tackle, but for certain things it's great.

I disagree with you on certain things.

I read you blog on "Lack of Feedback: The Main Reason You Quit".

Only certain things need feedback, not all things. If you are building an app which you want to sell in that case it need not have all features, only essentials first, see if it works and extend it.

Blogs, articles, posts or even sometimes app, if you ask for feedback, when you get it, you might start to work on the feedback rather than completing the things you planned, some feedbacks can be negative, it can get under your skin and can be depressing or uninspiring. So sometimes to do a lot, don't put that comment box on every post, just have a common feedback or put your email somewhere in "aboutme".

Lack of feedback is sometimes good.

Commitment, Say no and adjust doesn't match up.

I am doing a side project for 3 years, it's a bit of analysis work and a web project. No word to anyone on that subject. To get more time to work on my project, I moved closer to my office to save time on travelling but rents bit high, not changing my work even if other offers are good, why ? Fine with work life balance at current work, which I might not get in another company ( previous experience ). I am a moviebuff, stopped watching so many movies and TV series, now I just read spoilers and learn oh that's the story. I know movies will be available online now always, I can watch it anytime I want later.

I sort of believe, the concepts, the ideas which you get in the head, if you have time you should work on them or should put efforts actually, sometimes, till you action that idea another one might not come or that idea could be trigger for something else(like a seed).

Ads are there to get more people to visit, if you are product based.

www.bobbydreamer.com

Is my site, consistently i get 41 users per month(guessing those are all bots).

I just pretend, my site is like a ninja, no one knows it exists but it does.

Persistence is the key.

There are lot of people who do 100 days of coding challenge like 100 posts, Today I Learned, I cannot definitely keep up with them. That's fine. I just know, I have to do atleast one thing in my side project per day. On a very tiresome workday, I will just update comments.

Keep reading your to-do list and check things off. Write things in paper rather than a app. Later one day, your scribbles will look funny.

Keep pushing yourself.

so... the secret to keep up with year-long projects is.... to keep them up for three years. Thanks cap'n!