Ask HN: Demotivated, broke, but no crisis. How to light a fire under my butt? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Demotivated, broke, but no crisis. How to light a fire under my butt?

11 pointsexpbeginnerrole8 comments

I feel like I'm in a somewhat odd predicament with motivation here. Like a lot of people today, I've been on the job search most of this year due to not having a job. But this current trend for me started a few years ago, well before Covid hit.

My career started by working contract after contract for a few years, then jobs dried up around 5 years ago. No longer able to support myself I moved in back with one of my parents. Meanwhile I continued to search for jobs including full-time ones. Considering all this, though, I think I am stuck in a job search "trance". Even though I barely have enough money for myself, with only small contract gigs (and ineligible for unemployment insurance) I am living comfortably with my family. I have no obligation to pay rent because the place is so cheap. My parents only care that I run errands for them. Job searching doesn't get brought up often unless I mention something about it.

My parents don't come from a lot of money- far from it. I grew up in a low-income household and paid my way through college with loans and Pell grands. My parents just managed to do a good job saving enough for retirement after their steady careers. So that's what I'm dealing with.

As for me, I continue working on different projects to keep my work skills relevant. I participate in networking events and get mock interviews. But seems like I'm not pushing myself hard enough. The comfort of a free roof over my head is working against me without me realizing it for so long.

Being supported by my parents and my lukewarm opportunities appear to go hand in hand. So how do I boost this motivation when I have this warm, comfortable safety net? Seems like I have to really go cold turkey and live like a bum on the street or inside my car, but is that too drastic? Being homeless might actually look worse to employers as well.

You are in a wonderful situation. You are being a great son, enjoying good time with your parents. Don't throw that away. First of all, be thankful that you are comfortable and not manically driven for more.

How do you think living like a bum would improve your life? Let's say you do that. You will get a job but will it be the right job? Or are you now more concerned with just getting any job so you can pay the bills?

Look at it this way, you can right now be in the exactly same situation, except you are in a non-ideal job, living alone, in a small place with little future prospects, with the same level of motivation.

So see your situation as a strength, not a weakness. How's your health? Are you at good healthy weight? Are you exercising regularly? You have the time to take care of yourself. If your health isn't optimal, that's a worthy goal to focus on.

In terms of work, if it's a question of making money, why not keeping going for the contracts? You have the flexibility of being a great freelancer. Pick an area, get skilled and just take on contract work. This is your leverage. I hate to say it, but just do it. It seems you have the luxury of being picky and so you are. Take a contract or job that isn't ideal but in the ballpark of what you want. What's the worst that will happen? You'll end up back where you are now.

In the end, you don't need to be barely living in order to push yourself. We all love the stories of the rags to riches in life but that's kind of the aberration rather than the norm.

I assumed you are a man so apologies if not!

You're so blessed to have a supportive environment - it actually sounds perfect for where you are right now, doing what you're doing - working on projects to develop skills, networking, cultivating a rich soil. You're already walking in the right direction, patient and persistent.

There must be a better way than choosing to go homeless, to light a fire in your search for motivation and meaning. I understand that feeling though.

I think the essence is that you want to get out of your comfort zone, open yourself up to risks and opportunities, to make tangible progress and feel more alive. That "trance" is your daily habits and thought processes - I'm sure there are many ways you can consciously disrupt and break out of the "rut", to encourage yourself to seek new experiences.

Create the crisis, assuming you're drug and drink free, and the only thing missing is motivation. In 2013 I was three months in to a new house I purchased when I got into a horrible clusterpuck at work, and ended up having to walk out. Not pretty. What I thought was going to be my saving grace never materialized. So I was then a) jobless, b) with a mortgage, and c) royally screwed. I became severely depressed and suicidal. What kicked me out of the rut was that I finally realized (nick of time?) that I WAS in a crisis. If you're broke without motivation, then you need to put yourself into a crisis, survival mindset. Move out of your parents house and on to a sofa. Get rid of your car. Cancel Netflix and everything else you care about. Do something that will make a significant impact on your ability to pay the bills and take care of yourself. It won't work for everyone, it's extreme, but once I realized there was a crisis, and the significant impact was homelessness, I got to work fixing my situation.

You should not cold turkey yourself - that is reliance on anxiety and discomfort to create a life, and that's the kind of thing you can achieve in a 20-minute daily interval by following a strenuous workout plan, not by depriving yourself of all material comforts.

Instead take this as a soft go-ahead to study something extremely deeply and intensively, knowing that you have a support structure. It can be anything, and if you start flagging, do the same to the next topic that strikes your fancy. In depth study, even just asking a lot of questions, naturally puts you in contact with other curious people, which creates the network for your future self. The results of study do eventually find their way into commerce, although the path is often tangled. It is never quite as simple as "I will learn to build this and then a product will appear". Keep a journal and record what you're doing and use that to reflect and start putting together the piecces. It is the non-reflective self that will end up with the greater regrets later.

The safety net is not the problem. There are people with more money than you with the same "problem".

Tell me, what would you do different if you were absolutely certain that you would get hired by one of the next 100 companies you interview for?

That’s not being drastic, but I would simply read David Goggins Can’t Hurt Me. Your mind is accustomed to a life of leisure therefore to make progress you should get into the daily ritual of doing things you’d hate to do such as running 3 miles in the morning, etc.

The other potential answer here is maybe you don’t really want it as bad as you say? Often what we think we want and what we really want aren’t the same ;)

Last but not least your procrastination is likely due to you having too many goals or too high goals. Try having 1 daily top priority if you do that the day is a success, most people don’t have one. After you get your top focus done then 60 second tasks if you do them longer that’s just bonus. I think these are much better productivity habits.

There’s a great book on focus written by Gary Keller called One Thing.

i've been there. here. :-D

the last time i strolled into this, i was reading (listening to audiobooks) and heard the word 'ennui' (ahn-wee).

i was like, i've heard that word, but....shit, this description of it...this is me! like, exactly!

so that was cool. another +1 for reading.

i'd been in that state before, but didn't know what it was called, didn't know other folks had felt it, etc.

and then I stumbled upon the word 'ikigai' -- again (japanese for 'reason for being').

and that was kind of interesting.

it reminded me of the few times when i'd felt like, 'Fuck - _this_ is the shit!'

and those were often times when i was doing some project -- typically a side software project that would inevitably do absolutely nothing -- but sometimes other offline stuff, like volunteering or bike blogging or some other hippie do-gooder shit.

and i remembered reading about how the puritanical american psychotic mentality of beig dedicated to overwork and 'achievement' was part of what is making the world a terrible and worse place to live for most people.

fortunately i have at least one friend who thinks about things other than money, so i could talk to him about trying to do important work instead of just work.

and i remembered a lesson i learned when i was actually full-on depressed as opposed to just bored/not motivated -- start doing more of the things that you like, and less of the things that you don't like.

one of my recent insights is that, "I should do something mid-life crisis-y". and there are a few reasons for that, but one of them is, whenever you are learning something new, there's a pretty good chance that it's going to make you feel good, just because it hits something inside of us.

and another aspect of it is that, when you do some of those new things, inevitably it seems like at least one of them is like, "Holy fuck - i can't believe nobody managed to covince me to actually try this earlier". and now there's a new world that is open to you.

like, riding a bike. if you haven't ridden a bike 10 or 20 miles, just buzzing around town, etc., and you actually live in a city/town where you're not likely to be murdered by a terrorist just for riding your bike, then that might be something you should look at.

audiobooks, b/c doomscrolling is poison.

i think chilling for 3/6/12 months is cool. i've actually been straight burned out before -- not depressed, not ennui, burned out. and all it took was 6-12 months of doing jack shit, then i was fine. but if it was 5.99 months? would not have been enough. most of the stuff i read on burnout didn't really capture it. i know one of the nordic countries started an official 'burnout office' within the government.

i suggest a bunch of googling on ennui to start.

then watch some good Mubis.

then go vote.

and then read/watch some Chomsky.

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