Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

nonrandomstring

I use emotion.

It beats every kind of "system" and "rational" framework.

Think of the people you love. Think of how your project will help them in some small way, even if that is just making you a happier, wealthier person who can give more to them.

Think of the people you dislike, whose values you detest, who will gain and triumph in some way by your failure.

Picture a fantasy vision of a better world, where your contribution, however small, brings value to many.

If none of that stirs anything in you, and gives you a burst of energy to redouble your efforts, then two unfortunate things may be the case:

You may be incapable of emotion. About 5% of us are, in which case ignore all of the above and find a system. Stop looking for ways to "motivate yourself" because "motive" is connected to "emotion" (same root).

What you're doing may not be at all worthwhile. That isn't a reason to give up. The road to a project that's genuinely fulfilling and is "emotionally self-powered" passes through many mediocre and failed "learning" projects along the way. Completing it many be all you need to do to move on.

This seemed like pretty wise advice, so I checked your profile and see that you're no stranger to getting projects completed!

I think a nice pairing to the "emotion" angle here, and along similar lines, is thinking about "meaning". What does it mean to you, deep down, to get this project finished? What need does it fulfil for you? Is it independence? Is it a burning need to create something, irrespective of the outcome? Is it the enjoyment from sharing what you've built? Is it financial freedom?

It boils down to having a clear idea of the why behind something you're working on. If you know why you're doing something, and you're really clear about it, I think that can really help motivation over the long haul.

Not everything needs a clear "why", but it can help.

Edit: on a bit of tangent related to thinking about the "why"; as a technologist/developer, when I first get involved in a technical project and a company asks for a specific technical solution, I find it really helpful to ask "why" and to keep asking that until I break through the layers and get to the root need that the business is trying to fulfil.

Many technology projects can go off track due to a lack of clarity about what actual business need those projects are trying to address. Often this is due to a bit of a disconnect between commercial/business people and technical teams, so it can be really useful to make sure that the business intent is communicated clearly before getting lost in the technical implementation details.

> What does it mean to you, deep down

Absolutely. Hard to find out sometimes. As a bit of an amateur psychologist, I'd say the "deep down" part presents the challenge. We're mostly too busy cutting code to do the "inner work". And as you say, the "Why?" doesn't always come first. Sometimes we are involved in projects and business as a way to work things through and discover something. What starts out as "I don't want to be poor like my parents" ends up as "I could do something about preventable disease X and save many lives". That's why I think that the ethics behind the hacking is more important than we realise and there's no such thing as "technological determinism".

Interesting! As fundamentally goal-orientated creatures, I tend to think that there is always a why. The question is just whether you are clear yourself on what that why actually is.

So on that basis, maybe the why does always come first? You may just not be intellectually aware of what that why is? BTW I guess I'm taking quite a broad definition of "why". The "why" could be, because you learned early on that behaviour X makes you feel safe, due to some childhood trauma - but this is a deeply embedded instinct rather than a conscious process of decision making. And things like that can be very difficult to pin down.

I suppose you could discuss this point at a number of different levels...

Definitely agree that the "why" can change over time. I've 100% seen this happen with my own motivations!

The "why" most certainly comes first, but we have a funny tendency to move the "why" around. Someone may choose to become a welder because he wants to get paid, then to move out of his parents' house, then to get married.

There's a type of "API-ization" of all existence. 15 people can do the exact same thing with nearly opposite objectives and all be a "team" (such as what we see large-scale in politics) or have the exact same "why" with 15 ways to do it and be "disunified" (i.e., the Linux community).

The secret to staying motivated, which nonrandomstring pointed to, is finding a way to bundle all those fluctuating "why's" together toward 1 purpose. It makes you manic and obsessive, but determined and implacable on a death march to a glorious prize. My discouragement was likely because I needed sleep and wasn't de-stressing correctly, then applying it wrongly to what I love doing.

I may be leaning into my rationalist philosophy here, but I like to believe that everything is driven by values first: intangible, hard/impossible-to-measure aspects of existence that create the spark that eventually provokes the body to do things.

What you're saying about finding an emotional outlet is absolutely true. I spend so much time building, and probably need to spend more time advertising it! Things like HN are great places to express my passion (i.e., state assertions of fact in as few words as possible), and there are likely more niches once I slowly build out my dev ambitions later.

Similarly, one of the things I often do is imagine the finished result. I habitually pretend I am demonstrating the software to friends (or rivals!) I walk them through it, and explain it in my imagination, imagining their positive reactions. It also helps me get clear on the look and feel of the software and what it actually means on a high level.

Visualisation is so powerful. Especially late at night, close to sleep. I've had that come into dreams - when deeply immersed in a project or problem - suddenly quite intrusive, vivid dreams of using some almost alien software or device, waking up and OMG. That's it! 10 seconds to write it down before my kid comes in and jumps on the bed.

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