The Hacker Lifecycle

Is this excitement and burnout cycle innate to who you are or part of how you are now? What advantages does this cycle have? What does it say about you that you're uncomfortable admitting? Is this behavior leading to progress against your goals and values? If the cycle is innate, how can it be harnessed, trained and controlled? Can you cycle on a weekly instead of a yearly basis?

I'd posit that to make a real dent in financial independence you'll have to learn to work through the boredom phase, or choose bigger problems at the start.

I relate to a lot of what youre saying. The hardest thing for me personally is choosing only one thing for prolonged, multiple year, commitments of time.

What the author's describing almost sounds like an equivalent to this with regard to inspiration- if you're in a creative state where you're constantly hacking away at something, it helps to step away from it all for a few weeks/months/whatever to let your creativity and inspiration rejuvenate.

Also, sometimes people get burned out without realizing it- this helps that too. For an unrelated example, sometimes I'll get really into some video game and obsess over it for several weeks. I'll get into the habit of playing it for a certain amount of time every day. At some point, I burn out on it and it's not as fun anymore, but it seems like it takes me a long time to realize that. I keep doing it because that's the thing that I do, but there's a lag where I'm not getting as much out of it and just keep doing it from inertia and habit. People's work habits can be very similar and I think there's a parallel with this article.

That said, it depends on what you want. If you do a bit of freelance consulting work and sell it right, you can be pretty financially independent without a big commitment. If you want to start a "real" business, it requires a lot of commitment and a pretty high tolerance for abuse (although maybe that's just me!) I guess I compress your cycle more--I do something until I feel myself getting overloaded, then I take a break and come back later. But after a couple days, I'm usually ready to get back to it--it helps to really enjoy and believe in what you do.

So again, you've got to make the decision yourself, but fwiw, you might try to compress each cycle--maintaining momentum is important too.

Human beings appear to be naturally cyclical beings who live in a cyclical universe. So it makes sense, and it's very healthy to realize it and plan accordingly. The phenomenon seems particularly pronounced in creative, innovative people who have some measure of control over their daily activities.

Wouldn't an obvious way to break the cycle be instead of starting a completely new project on the next phase 1 to go back and spend time improving one of these previous income generating projects ?

  > The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over
  > and over again and expecting different results.

Motivation fluctuates and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with picking up a new video game. In fact, I think there's something healing about narrative that is especially relevant to creative people. We need to get into a novel or TV serial or '90s JRPG every now and then.

Burnout is something else entirely that I hope you don't experience. It's severe and it sucks. There's a state at which you get too depressed to work and it can last for months. You get sick a lot, feel weak, can't focus or get anything done. It doesn't sound like you've been there, and I hope you never get there. Burnout usually isn't caused by long working hours or even by project failures alone; it usually involves long hours and negative conditions (especially subordination).