Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work?

44 pointsmoosecake56 comments

I've been having issues lately trying to motivate myself to do mundane, or at the very least "unappealing", work (namely, [high]school work). It's not that I'm lazy — actually I'm afraid I'm a workaholic sometimes — but that I always find myself giving priority to another project or hobby I enjoy doing and find more worthwhile.

I personally find I have one of two reactions to tasks I have to do: either I'm completely engrossed in my work and won't sleep, eat, etc. until it's finished, or it is the last thing I would ever possibly want to do with my time and I will do everything but that task, even if only to say that I was the one that wasted my time, not somebody else.

The main problem I have is the pervasive feeling in the back of my mind whenever I spend time doing something that I could be doing something else. But this other work still has to get done, so I procrastinate terribly, which accomplishes nothing but adding more stress to my life.

In accordance with one of pg's essays (http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html), I'm definitely a type "c" procrastinator, only I'm not sure it's a "good procrastination" because I'm afraid it's going to cause me to fail school.

I suppose what I'm really looking for is the answer to the question: How do I make otherwise un-motivating work intrinsically motivating? The only two responses I've gotten to this question when I ask people this is either a.) you're always going to have to do work you don't want to do, or b.) you have to do it because you need to get good grades / graduate high-school / etc. Neither of these answers help motivate me in the slightest — they just imply I'm going to be unhappy for the rest of my life if I keep doing this.

View on HN

[Edit: Sorry - this probably won't apply to the OP's specific problem, but it will apply to others facing un-motivating work (assuming they have an hourly rate that will allow them to do this)]

Answer: oDesk, eLance, etc...

Seriously, my life and productivity have improved dramatically since I started outsourcing the grunt work I used to dread doing. For me it's well worth it to pay someone else 1/2 or 1/3 of what I make per hour to do something I would just stress out over and procrastinate.

With my money I'm buying: 1) Time (a scarce resource) and 2) Will-power (an even scarcer resource).

For instance, I have a side project that requires a lot of web scraping. I found a great scraper guy in southeast asia that is a much better scraper than me and is happy to work for 1/10th of what I make per hour. It's a great trade off.

I can then use the time and will-power to do all sorts of more important things to me - exercise, intense learning, systems design, etc. Specifically, with my extra time lately, I've worked on marathon training, speed reading, learning short-hand, esoteric ruby concepts, practicing the ukulele, etc.

If you are getting stuck on something you don't want to do - outsource it. Even if a poorly skilled outsourcer makes it through my hiring process (rare, but can happen) and they churn out some crap - it is oddly motivating for me to go and fix the issue and get it right. For some reason I get a mental block sometimes when starting a project from scratch - but if I hire someone else to take a stab at it and they fail horribly, I'm like "Wo, that sucked, you really should have done it this way...." My motivation is then unblocked since I'm 'fixing' something, not 'creating from scratch'.

oDesk is basically a store where you can go and trade money for time and will-power. Seriously, how cool is that ;)

> Even if a poorly skilled outsourcer makes it through my hiring process (rare, but can happen) and they churn out some crap - it is oddly motivating for me to go and fix the issue and get it right.

This is KEY. There is something about editing and feedback that kicks in. It's the same "someone on the internet is WRONG" impulse that drives so many Hacker News posters.

I think it is related to the fundamental distinction between "multiple choice" vs. "fill in the blank" questions. Prompted recall is so much easier than unprompted recall.

I've had the same idea, but it always seems like creating a specification would be almost as much work as writing the software. I'd love to read more about your experiences and successful strategies. You should blog about it.

I'm not going to try to motivate you, because only you can motivate yourself. I'm just going to share my perspective that might shed some light on your issue.

I had the same problem in college until a fraternity brother who had graduated 2 years before told me something I had never thought of. He said, "You may never have a better opportunity to explore and learn new things. Once you settle down with a career and family, all your time will be spoken for. So try everything! How will you know who you are and what you're interested in unless you experiment?"

Some of the best advice I ever got, and since I was a sophomore at the time, I tried as much as I could for the next 2 1/2 years. I still majored in math and became a computer programmer, but I did a lot of stuff that I simply don't have time for today. And I miss a lot of it. Back then, I thought humanities was boring, but what I would give for a few days off to curl up with a good book.

Sometimes you can learn a lot about something you are interested in by doing something totally different. Reading literature might help you write code. Music may help you with math. Working at the mall or living in a fraternity house could help you learn how to run a business.

At this point in your life, you still don't know (for sure) what you'll love and be good at for the rest of your life. So keep doing those things that seem like they're boring and uninteresting. Many of them will be a waste of time, but there will certainly be a few pearls in there, too. Don't miss the opportunity of discovering them because you just want to stay in your comfort zone. Now is the best time to leave that comport zone and discover the other stuff. Eventually, you'll be glad you did.

Sometimes you have to pull off any dirty trick you can google on yourself.

Strapping myself to chair with trouser belt worked for me once when I had to do work for customer but my brain constantly zoned out away from drudgery and was raising my body from the chair and sending it to kitchen to look for something unspecified.

I run into this all the time and have two strategies.

1) Pair programming. If you can find someone to work with you on this, it's much easier to get rolling and to stay on task.

2) Overkill it. Approach the task as if it were Mount Everest. Assemble food, water, energy drinks. Go to a place like a library or conference room where no one can run into you. Disconnect the internet. Block out all sounds. Play Rocky on your headphones as you're unpacking.

Just approaching it as if it were a difficult task helps.

> Just approaching it as if it were a difficult task helps.

I have literally the exact opposite experience. I procrastinate horribly on difficult tasks (or just any task that I don't know exactly how to do.) I guess different people are wired differently. If the OP is wired like me, I'd advise him to try to do work as quickly as possible and not worry about quality. Just come home from school and finish everything before 5:00.

Okay - let's get the obvious out of the way: are you ADD/ADHD and, if so, have you been taking any recent meds? If not, let's talk about your diet: tons of carbs but lack of protein? How about sleep - getting enough of it? Lastly, when was your last vacation?

These are all major factors in feeling a sense of restlessness or being lackadaisical towards critical, yet mundane tasks. Sometimes burnout is the term for this whereas other times it is simple procrastination. So which is it?

"are you ADD/ADHD and, if so, have you been taking any recent meds?"

Don't think so. I'm not on any medication.

"If not, let's talk about your diet: tons of carbs but lack of protein? "

I guess so, but I don't feel that my diet is particularly unhealthy. So far today I had: an apple, oatmeal, avocado, carrots, some (whole-wheat) toast, a hard-boiled egg, a sweet potato, and a bag of steamed mixed vegetables w/ corn, asparagus, green beans etc, and just water to drink.

"How about sleep - getting enough of it?"

I usually get 6 – 8 hours (except at the beginning of the week when I'm typically feeling apathetic about school and stay up late working on a project or something), so yes, I think so.

"Sometimes burnout is the term for this whereas other times it is simple procrastination. So which is it?"

A combination of both, I think.

Okay - so those are the fundamentals and it seems as though you deem yourself healthy. From your diet, I would assume you are vegetarian - is that correct? I am a vegetarian and here's the main thing I have to watch out for: getting enough iron. If I don't get enough iron, I am sleepy, cranky, tired-feeling, and just have a general malaise. This leads to less focus and less "patience" to deal with the mundane. Is it possible you are either anemic, borderline anemic or whether you are iron-deficient?

Although iron deficiency may be a concern, a word of caution about taking too much (such as iron supplements if you (the general "you") are not a menstruating female): you can ingest too much iron. If you are low in iron, eat iron-rich foods (eggs, spinach, beans/lentils, fortified cereals), rather than take supplements.

Easy non-scientific way to check if you're low: pull down your lower eyelid and check the color of your skin of the uncovered lid. A pale red suggests you should be checked for anemia.

Sometimes when I'm feeling unmotivated or depressed, it helps to remind myself about some of the struggles that other people around the world are dealing with.

For example, I'm sure the average teenager in Afghanistan or the Democratic Republic of Congo would love to trade places with you. Did you know that 80% of humanity lives on less than $10/day? A shift in perspective might make your problems with school seem a bit more manageable.

You don't have to apply yourself in school, but try to remind yourself that it's an opportunity that relatively few people in this world have access to.

(As a side note, this highlights a failing of the school system itself -- they should probably put more emphasis on broadening your perspective. It's sad that so many people go through the school system without understanding why they are there in the first place.)

In high school I dealt with boring work by seeing how fast I could do it. After a while I'd usually be able to do it (if it wasn't, say, a term paper) at school, and not even sweat it at home. Not a good strategy if you're trying to be top of your class, but it did make me a good standardized test taker. Also my high school was not particularly challenging, so YMMV.

Also, the answers you've gotten are pretty much true, and no amount of 'mind hacks' is going to change that. You won't be unhappy the rest of your life, though. High school is pretty much the peak of that stuff. Later you'll have a lot more flexibility to put yourself in a situation to avoid it (rule #1 for this: don't get into debt)

It sounds to me like you need a good hack. If you're truly the type "c" procrastinator PG talks about then let's visualize this. This means your intellect is running on a higher level than the mundane circumstances around you. Would Einstein flunk out of high school because his mind was in neutron land while sitting through a lecture on some obscure part of history? He might, but that would be bad form. I strongly believe you should at least get a high school diploma (or GED equivalent), because it's too simple.

If you're on this board then you are likely entrepreneurial. You need to be able to analyze and solve problems. At the end of the day your teachers (now they are customers) need you to produce either a certain test score, or paper. Find a way to give them what they want, even if you have to hack it so that you're not doing all the tedious work yourself and/or simply test out of subjects.

I split it up into tiny tasks on a physical paper so I can cross items out and feel accomplished.

As a college freshman, here's my view on high school work: just do it. It's the only way to get into college. That has to be your sole motivation, as for most intelligent people, high school work in itself is not interesting in the slightest (although I was lucky to take a Constitutional Law class senior year that I loved).

However, don't despair: college work IS interesting. Unlike high school, a college will let you take essentially whatever class you want. Interested in physics? Take a class on special relativity. Interested in philosophy? Take a class that applies the theories of the great philosophers to modern moral problems. Interested in spaceflight? Take intro to aerospace engineering. At a university, the possibilities are endless, especially freshman year when you don't have to worry in the slightest about your major.

So, to sum it up, this is my advice: high school work sucks, but college, at least from what I've found, is awesome. Not only are you encouraged to take classes in areas that interest you, the atmosphere and social life is also incomparably better than high school. Your motivation thus should be directly tied to college: if you do not do this paper tonight, you will not get a good grade in this class, and you will not be able to get into as good of a college, meaning you may not be able to take high-quality classes in the areas that really interest you. It may seem like negative motivation, but if you view college as something good for you (and not just good for your career), it really becomes positive motivation. Good luck.

I agree with what you say about high school and heading to college. However, I am about a year or so away from finishing my undergrad in CS, and I have to disagree with the idea that college work is entirely interesting. It is true that most of the classes that directly involve your major are found to be more interesting to the individual. The problem is that colleges will require you to take classes that are not always directly related to your major.

For example, I am currently taking an upper division political science class, but only because it was required. I have no real interest in this course, but my motivation to do the work is to never have to look at it again. I figure if I can do it, and I can do well, then I will never have to sit in this type of class again.

The other issue with college is professors. I have had interesting subjects with the most uninteresting professors. This definitely makes the subject matter more difficult to find interesting. The opposite, however, is great. If I have a subject that I can't stand, but a professor that is very excited and interested in the subject, it will usually get me really motivated to do the work.

Obviously, these are my opinions, so this will vary from person to person. My motivation for doing uninteresting work in college is to have one less obstacle between me and my future goals. I'm sure this motivation can be applied to many other situations.

Perhaps my opinion is colored by being a person interested in studying many fields. It is very true that if your interests lie entirely in your major, you will be forced to take classes outside of that.

Shit work is definitely less painful if you "just take care of it" and get it out of your consciousness faster. I think learning to let that "lesser of two evils" trade-off motivate you to action is something that will take many years and will always leave room for improvement...

It works for me to have higher goals. These days, 99% of my shit work can be easily categorized into long term goals and desires. This does not make them quite "transformed" into something intrinsically motivating like you are asking for but what it does at least is make them fairly easy to "just take care of." It takes the sting out or something.

People that tell you "you're always going to have to do work you don't want to do" are correct but what you might not realize is that this does not have to be a significant part of your day like in high school, so this "unhappy for the rest of my life" is a red herring. You are not going to be as unhappy when you can align your coursework more easily with your interests. College is way better than high school. Post-college is even better once you find a money situation that works for you.

Which leads to some more immediate advice: see what it will take to apply to college early. I got out of high school after junior year by taking my last remaining credits at a local college over the summer. My school was not set up for this, I had to do some serious convincing to administrators and parents. Almost a full year of work avoided. And no, I did not need a 4.0 GPA.

P.S. Don't get pregnant or get anyone pregnant for at least 15 years :-)

My guess is that there are a few underlying issues that could be causing this, and it's probably important not to "diagnose" this incorrectly. It sounds like you have thought about this for a while. Have you tried anything already to help with this, and how did it go?

Also, the two responses you mention are obviously well-intentioned but not necessarily correct. "b)" is totally false and even "a)" can be dealt with.

There might be others in your life who think your biggest problem right now is your school issue. I'm guessing your biggest concern is really that last sentence of your post. There's no need to assume you're screwed for the rest of your life based on your experience with high school work. The rest of your life will not all be high school work; it will consist of things that are fundamentally different in nature. They will, ideally, be meaningful and rewarding, rather than artificial, arbitrary, and useless. You can be optimistic about the future.

I think you said in another post that your parents don't want you to leave high school. Others suggested starting college (probably a community college) early; that's a good idea, or better than staying in high school, anyway. For some people, that change is enough, but some people don't like either high school or college, and that's fine, too.

Find something you actually want. There is almost a 100% chance you will need a high school degree to get it, but knowing specifically what it is will help greatly.

Google up Hoagies.com (Hoagies Gifted Page). You might find some helpful info there.

If your parents are at all sympathetic, you could ask if you can start taking community college classes while in high school. Some folks drop out of high school to pursue college. You might find supporting info on Hoagies to present to your parents.

After taking graduate level classes, I had a really, really hard time focusing on classes for my Bachelor's degree. (One thing that helped: Breaking the work up so I wasn't bored to tears for too long a stretch at any one time.) Due in part to divorce and financial problems and other issues, my degree remains unfinished. I have an Associates and two different certificates (wildly different, in fact), one of which was paid for by my employer. (Yes it helps to get paid to pay attention to this stuff and finish the class.)

As an adult, I'm mostly not required to take classes that bore me to tears. It's possible I'll wind up an entrepreneur simply because I am not all that enthused about going back to undergrad classes after doing graduate level work and most employers won't let me advance much without the sheepskin. Being an adult does give you some choices that being a minor doesn't.

Look for ways to make the assignment relevant to your interests. Sometimes it's as simple as choosing a topic you like for an English essay. If you're not interested in your math homework, try poking around those topics on Wikipedia. Being able to click through to subjects that seem interesting might peek your interest in the original subject. Sometimes, seeking out more work can make the assignment "easier" because you're more interested in it.

If you're referring to really mindless work, then I solve that by listening to something I like when I do it. (Such as music or a podcast.) For example, I'm a researcher, and sometimes I just have to do some mindless data entry. It's my data and no one else is going to do it for me. I get through it by listening to things I like while doing it.

Have you thought about getting your GED? Maybe the reason why you're unmotivated by schoolwork is that it is useless to you.

What types of activities do you find difficult to do? Cleaning toilets, doing math problems, writing reports?

One technique that I use is stolen from PJE (http://dirtsimple.org/2006/01/smelling-fear-feeling-future.h...), The "Mmmmm" test.

Generally you're doing these things to get something else that you find worthwhile. If you can visualize this goal deeply enough to change your emotional state, like Homer Simpson fantasizing about donuts, then you can associate it with the thought of doing the drudgery as well. It takes time and effort to retrain yourself to do this, though.

Yeah, the GED is the way to go, if you want to get into college. That's how I did it. The GED is so retarded, you're pretty much guaranteed to score in the top percentiles. College are required to treat these high GED scores as equivalent to an A average (per subject).

Your state might have a regulation forbidding taking the GED to graduate ahead of your classmates. I got my GED in a different state when I was 17.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Dominique_Bauby

This man wrote a fucking BOOK by BLINKING HIS LEFT EYE.

After reading his story, you might find it easier to do your homework.

Despite his condition, he wrote the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by blinking when the correct letter was reached by a person slowly reciting the alphabet over and over again.

Man, how did they not work up a system like morse code? That's horrible. Mad props for the patience, though.

Being clever would have taken time away from the goal of writing a book. It's arguable that the book would have been done sooner had they both taken the time to learn Morse Code (or Huffman Coding), but they quickly found a workable solution and got on with it.

They did one clever thing, though:

To make dictation more efficient, Bauby's interlocutor, Claude Mendibil, read from a special alphabet which consisted of the letters ordered in accordance with their frequency in the French language.

If the work that has to be done has a deadline, and you find yourself procrastinating right up until the deadline, whereby you work frantically on the boring work for far too little time but still manage to get it done - I wouldn't worry so much yet. In fact, if you can gauge your ability to get things done at the last minute, and you've sussed that you only work well under extreme pressure, you can enjoy your procrastinating and schedule in the real work for the last minute. I don't advocate this for a life strategy but it sure got me through undergraduate maths supervisions.

1) Do the easiest/most fun part of whatever boring task there is to do first. Most things are not as boring or as excruciating as they seem to be, once you're actually doing them. Objects in motion...

2) Only do the bare minimum work necessary to get passing grades in high school, unless you plan to attend college. No one cares what grades you got in HS. Anything you're genuinely interested in you can learn much more deeply on your own.

3) Learning self-discipline is extremely valuable, even if you rarely invoke it. This boring work could be a blessing, if you can use it to teach yourself discipline.

2 and 3 are at odds. Do the bare minimum, but learn self-discipline? Self discipline is a muscle. Don't exercise it and it atrophies.

I didn't claim they weren't contradictory. I don't think they are though. He could work to become very disciplined in doing the bare minimum consistently and efficiently.

High School is not hard. I just did enough to pass and get into my school of choice (standardized tests usually matter more here). I basically made a game of how little I could do and still get by...this is somewhat stupid and is really only advised if you are naturally smart...whatever that means.

There will always be people that say you HAVE to this or that. In my experience this is hardly ever the case...as long as you're willing to work as hard as you possibly can when you really really actually need to.

We are the same exact person. I'm in my last year of college and I'm doing intro classes just to satisfy requirements. I hate it beyond belief, since I feel like it's a complete waste of time when I could be working on my startup. When I have to do homework or study, I spend hours doing anything but my hw (for example, I post way more on HN when I have homework to do). When I'm working on my startup, I do little else (girlfriend time stays the same though haha).

"I have to do it. There is no way I can avoid doing it without unappealing consequences. I will do it now and then move on, do the interesting stuff."

"they just imply I'm going to be unhappy for the rest of my life if I keep doing this."

Keep doing what? Finishing high school? That's going to make you unhappy for the rest of your life?

The fact of the matter is that you lack discipline. Life will always have mundane or unpleasant tasks that need doing. It's called responsibility and most of the time it takes discipline to buckle down and get things done.

moosecake, You need to ask yourself what motivates you. Why do you find some stuff more worthwhile than other stuff? When you work on something that is not worthwhile, can you find the bits that can be worthwhile to you?

In my case, even the most mundane work has something to teach me. If it's not by doing it myself is by doing it with other people (I like to see how other people solve problems). So here is an idea, get together with friends and work on the stuff you find unappealing. That way, you'll throw two birds with one stone. You'll learn to work better as a team, and you'll get the unappealing work out of the way. Also, I find it better to finish the boring work first thing, and then move on to the cool work (that way the cool work seems like a prize). Good luck, and don't forget to have fun, you are still a kid above everything else.

This is similar to what grosales said but a bit more drawn out with some fancy psychology thrown in: ------------------------------------------------------------

I have struggled with a similar problem and know how debilitating it can be. What I mostly offer here is a few questions to ask in hopes of getting honest answers for yourself. These tend to turn into much deeper issues than they seem at the surface. Not that deep issues are bad, but just take longer to work through. To encourage the full reading of this comment, I have broken into three parts. I should also note that I am not a certified psychologist, but will pretend to be one if the price is right.

PART 1 of 3

------------------------------------------------------------

I think the key is in what you said here: "The main problem I have is the pervasive feeling in the back of my mind whenever I spend time doing something that I could be doing something else." When you say, "I could be doing something else", I imagine its just not anything else. Instead it's something that internally drives you to become "completely engrossed in my work and won't sleep, eat, etc. until it's finished".

What is it about this other stuff that seems so appealing? Because it can be different for everyone, let's just say it's "stuff that makes me feel X". For me, this was "stuff that makes me feel creative/unique". I found that anytime I was doing "stuff that makes me feel creative/unique" I became "completely engrossed in my work and won't sleep, eat, etc. until it's finished".

SUMMARY - Some tasks/activities/stuff can organically motivate you because it makes you feel a certain way

PART 2 of 3

------------------------------------------------------------

Now, there are some tasks that were towards the middle of the spectrum ("stuff that kind of relates to X or gives me some feeling of X every once in a while"). But then, and this is the dangerous part, there were tasks that were the opposite of X. So let's say Y = -X and call it "work that makes me feel like Y". Y work was terrible. Y work made me question whether I should be in the industry and even made me feel depressed. So, in order to avoid these bad feelings, I would "procrastinate terribly [which in turn] accomplishes nothing but adding more stress to my life".

This is where you start to go nuts. You feel like its lose/lose (hate my life when doing it / stressed out when I don't). Sounds like this is the point you may be at. But as I eluded to before, the avoidance of these feelings makes sense. Logically, if something feels bad, we will either put an end to it or try to not let it happen in the first place. But let's dive into these feelings a little bit more. If you are not sure what kind of feelings this Y work can cause. Just ask yourself this question:

"What would happen to me if I had a job where I did nothing but Y work"?

Obviously, its much more effective if you fill in the Y. Again, as an example, for me the question was: "what would happen if I had a job where I did nothing but fix other people's bugs, uncreative maintenance work and writing a bunch of documentation?" My answer was (and this is where is gets very 'psychological'): "I would feel like I am not contributing anything special to the organization. Then I would feel I wasn't unique. Then I might be lost in the crowd, forgotten or abandoned". Everyone answers will be different, but in most cases it fits a model of "I would initially feel _________, but that might lead to ___________, which just feels REALLY scary for some reason". The second 'blank' is usually one of the basic fears: unworthiness, abandonment, loss of safety, ill health, etc. I found that being able to honestly and accurately complete that sentence exposed many subtle, but clearly driving forces in my everyday and long term decision making.

SUMMARY - Answer the question: "What would happen to me if I had a job where I did nothing but Y work"?

PART 3 of 3

------------------------------------------------------------

Once you see that some work "makes you feel Y", and that Y feelings suck, its easy to understand why procrastination might happen. But because some of these tasks seem necessary (I'm afraid it's going to cause me to fail school), you try to find a way to do them. So let's address your specific question: "How do I make otherwise un-motivating work intrinsically motivating".

I would say you could accomplish this to two degrees:

* first degree - somehow believe that doing Y work will NOT result in something that seems terrible (answer to SUMMARY question above)

* second degree - figure out how Y work can let you feel traces or bits of X

Imagine, abstractly, that the first or second degree is possible. Do you think you would procrastinate less? I imagine you would because you would not be avoiding what seems like the realization of something terrible.

Now, these two suggestions don't seem very actionable (i.e., 'okay now what?'). Things you can actually do or take action on usually results in a change of behaviors and patterns. Unfortunately, behaviors and patterns become so specific to a given person that to give a general diagnoses would be a waste of your time. Thus, you have to find the change that works for you. I will continue to provide a personal example, but be sure to read the summary at the end as it will give you a more specific question to be asking yourself and others.

My major catalyst turned out to be a "positive vs. negative framing" situation. I framed all of my Y work as "negative." Anytime I would be assigned something in the Y work category I would have quick and subtle thoughts run through my mind, "Great... now I have to put up with this crap again. This work is so meaningless and doesn't even make sense. What I really want to work on is X. But this Y work is holding me back... how dare you Y work!".

Framing my current or future situation in this negative way didn't allow me to provide myself with any "intrinsic motivation". Instead my motivation was thinking about all of the cool X work I could be doing. By simply identifying the framing of my thinking, catching myself in the "quick and subtle" negative thought process and a bit of self-coaching, my stress level (and thus happiness) shifted dramatically! Doing these tasks became much easier. The reason this happened was because I was able to stop my "quick and subtle negative thoughts" and tell myself things more along the lines of "okay, so it looks like we were assigned some Y work. Is Y work really that bad? It is going to kill me. Probably not. In fact, I can't believe they are paying me to do Y work. Oh look it's sunny outside!". Again, this was a behavior or pattern that was specific to me. Yours may not be the same, but your outcome should be.

SUMMARY - find out what behaviors or patterns are holding you back from achieving the "first or second degree" and change them

TIME TO START

------------------------------------------------------------

So, in summary, look into what about the Y work really makes you avoid it. Then, determine if what you are avoiding is as bad as it seems. It is at this point that honesty really pays off (Personally, I could have easily answered this question with more "quick and subtle negative thoughts", but that would defeat the purpose). Finally if it doesn't seem worth avoiding, change your pattern or your behavior to something that serves you better. To provide some encouragement, I have been able to achieve the "second degree" with my job. I literally went from despising it to enjoy it! It seems impossible, but it's true. I could really have just responded with the comment "Oh hey, that sucks. You should do more positive framing". But my guess is that would not have helped you that much. Instead, the change needs to be specific to you.

It's easy to just shove these kind of things to the side, but situations like this can cause a great deal of stress and unhappiness. I am sorry that you are currently experiencing it. But, my advice would be instead of taking a large risk: switching jobs, switching careers, dropping out of school, etc., try taking a small risk: asking yourself if what you are avoiding is worth the stress of avoidance.

My friends used to come over my place. We used to sit together, discuss what/how to do it, have drinks and complete it. So we essentially converted "Boring task completion time" into "Socializing and fun time".

Wise words handed down to me: SUCK IT UP and take care of it.

Yea HS busy work can be idiotic. Yea, you could be using the time for something more interesting/better/cooler/profitable. The simple fact is that the work needs to be done.

If you must find motivation, use the fact that if it's not done, you won't be able to work on the other more interesting things. There are some tasks that you must do but will never feel motivated to do. Find a way to do finish these things as fast as is viable, then go work on the interesting stuff.

I listen to Voodoo People by Prodigy on repeat. That was the only way I was able to write my papers in high school.

Music for me as well. For years at work I put on the headphones & Frontline Assembly and channeled the hate into productive work. Although lately it has been a Masters of Flamenco Guitar CD.

I seem to have the same personality as the OP but I've found it to be less of a problem as I get older.

Have a look at the book "Procrastination - Why you do it, what to do about it now" by Jane Burka and Lenora Yuen.

fogbugz... Being able to guess how long it will take, and then meet your own deadline is strangely fun in itself.

If you have trouble getting started on your work, just make a few subcases, and estimate them as well.

As quizbiz said, crossing the todo's off your list makes it feel like you're accomplishing something :)

I listen to repetitive, energetic music. Metal, techno, acid jazz, etc.

That, and caffeine.

Coffee, if you need to power through a few hours of boring and tedious stuff. Works better if you are not a regular coffee drinker.

> The only two responses I've gotten to this question when I ask people this is either a.) you're always going to have to do work you don't want to do, or b.) you have to do it because you need to get good grades / graduate high-school / etc.

High school:

1. Some learning.

2. A credential.

3. Some socializing and extracurricular.

4. A "rite of passage" in Western society.

That's why people do high school. They don't normally phrase it like that, they say, "Well, everyone's doing it, it's normal, and it sucks, but you have to do it" - but the reason why is for some mix of learning, credentialing, "other benefits" (normal socializing, team sports, student council, whatever), and finally, the "rite of passage" aspect.

So this isn't exactly what you asked, but there are options besides high school which will be more motivating, interesting, and beneficial in the long term - if you're talented and disciplined enough to get by without the structure. If you do so, the first goal you ought to consider setting for yourself will be replacing the learning, credentialing, and socializing/other benefits (more on the rite of passage in a moment).

Learning - there's some skills in high school that you probably wouldn't be bothered to teach yourself outside of it. Look up your curriculum, and make sure you get decent enough at math, get introduced to the branches of science, read a little history, and make sure you have decent reading/writing skills. It's not hard to learn at a much faster rate than you do in high school. That's easy to replace.

Next is the credentialing aspect. You can forgo high school entirely if you're doing very interesting things with your time - no one will care if you've built a company, or organized charity events, or published articles in the newspaper, or anything really interesting. You can say, "Yes, I was working on [journalism/coding/sales/whatever] and thought that was more important than high school", and that'll work if you're outside the traditional track. But if you want to go to college and be salaried later, not having a H.S. degree could be a problem.

But it's a fixable problem - go to an adult learning center or alternative high school. Tell them you're emancipated from your parents, independent, working for yourself, and don't have time for normal high school. Ask how they can help. Doing it this way, you can get a real, genuine high school degree (sometimes with a very high GPA actually). After that, it's all on your standardized testing and other requirements to get into university. Maybe the highest level unis look into which HS you went to, but most state schools just plug your GPA into their formula and off you go.

Finally, the socializing/extracurricular aspect. This is also easy to replace. Take up some extracurriculars. A martial arts, some kind of science society, some kind of nature-based organization, a hiking group, a cycling group, maybe a couple of them. It's important you're in face to fact contact with people and developing your interests, so don't neglect that part if you move on.

Finally - the rite of passage. My advice here might be a touch controversial - forgot bowing, kneeling, scraping, and "paying your dues" via rites of passage. Seriously. If the benefits from an activity outside of the fact that "that's just how it's done" doesn't appeal to you, then try to find a way to get what you want without going through the wasted motions. Everyone successful throughout history had to depart from convention. But you will get hostility, and expect that. I found this quote by Bertrand Russel recently, and it was quite insightful to me:

"Conventional people are roused to fury by departures from convention, largely because they regard such departures as a criticism of themselves."

So how do I know all this stuff? I dropped out of a private high school to self teach myself business and computers, and went and "scummed" around the local university just absorbing it. Later I re-enrolled in HS, this time in a gifted and talented program. Also very boring, also dropped out, got an adult high school degree (an actual degree, not just a GED), and with decent standardized testing scores, got a full ride scholarship to a decent college. Dropped out after 3 semesters there to start a company, which was successful, and I've since traveled all over the world doing all sorts of interesting things. I don't regret my decisions for a minute - high school? Hah, seriously, what a waste of time. I'm expecting my first child soon, and going to give him or her options to start doing interesting things outside of the mainstream starting around age 12, with just enough tutoring/parent teaching to get overviews of the important knowledge and enrollment in extracurriculars for the socializing and personal growth.

High school is fundamentally un-motivating, because it wasn't built for you. It's for people who want to be led down a reasonably certain and secure path and life. Stick with it if you don't have a better option, but if you do, go for it. With the growth of communication and freely accessible knowledge online, going outside the convention is more possible than ever. You will take hostility and abuse from people who don't understand you though, so be prepared for that. Everyone makes their own judgment calls, but it was definitely worth it for me in the end.

> I've been having issues lately trying to motivate myself to do mundane, or at the very least "unappealing", work (namely, [high]school work). It's not that I'm lazy — actually I'm afraid I'm a workaholic sometimes — but that I always find myself giving priority to another project or hobby I enjoy doing and find more worthwhile. I personally find I have one of two reactions to tasks I have to do: either I'm completely engrossed in my work and won't sleep, eat, etc. until it's finished, or it is the last thing I would ever possibly want to do with my time and I will do everything but that task

Amen, brother. Same here.

Here are some things I've done about this, with some success:

1. "Pair" on it, even if it's not programming. Just doing the job with someone else often makes it a lot easier. Maybe it's theoretically not as efficient a use of time, but, bottom line, the unpleasant task gets done.

2. Find a way to not do it. That is, instead of procrastinating, cancel the task. This approach calls for creativity: you might redefine your goal so the icky task isn't necessary, or you might pay someone to do it (this is how my kitchen stays so clean), or you might abandon the larger goal that's driving the boring task (e.g. drop out of college), or who knows.

3. If the problem is simply lack of momentum rather than true revulsion toward the task, the 5M method ramps up momentum without too much pain. http://false-epiphany.com/2009/04/incompletion-causes-and-so... I usually find that it takes me about two to three days to ramp up momentum so I'm merrily humming along and don't need to play any more mind games with myself. Kinda slow, but it does work. A variation: Wait until the deadline, and rush; or do a rush job right now, with a fairly short time limit, after which you have a hard commitment to go do something fun with someone, somewhere else.

4. Pause and theorize about the task. Why does it arise? What social/physical/mathematical givens and relationships explain its existence? Why these tools? What other tools could do it? What change in the broader world could make it obsolete, or change the way it's done? What is the absolute minimum you could do and still get the benefits? What is the most efficient way to do it? Optimizing is "bad", but it's also fun, and it gets your mind immersed in the task. Devise the most efficient method you can for doing it, and test your method/skill by measuring your results.

5. Just fucking do it. Sometimes ya gotta suck it in and deal with it. For inspiration, read what Paul Graham says about determination. http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html Take pride in your will of iron, and taste the sweet fruit at the end of a forced march, when your sweat has dried and the Sun hangs low in the sky. However, if your whole life is sucking in and dealing with, it's time to make a systemic change. Don't turn into G. Gordon Liddy or something.

I have found #1 to be the most effective by far, but it's very hard to find a good pair partner for crud like writing a meaningless paper for some stupid class. I have also found #5 surprisingly effective. It's usually been my last resort, but empirically, that weird attitude shift, the resulting commitment, and all-out expenditure of energy actually feel good. You might do a couple "forced marches" and take notes on your own emotional state, to see if the same is true for you. (This is actually a form of #4.)

I've found myself in a similar boat for a long time now. Go see your doctor and get referred to a psychiatrist for an evaluation.

Not that medication is the only solution, but ADHD can manifest itself in different ways and sometimes taking something can help you bridge the gap.

ADD can be an advantage if you learn how to concentrate and control your impulses (read Richard Branson's biography). Plus the OP is in high school. How many people here can say they had motivation and concentration problems in high school? An individual's brain isn't fully developed until his or her late 20s.

I agree with you, but when I was in high school I was able to slack off and do things an hour before they were due and got a good GPA simply because I was intelligent enough to pull it off. I had no reason to believe anything might be wrong with me. Now, 5 years later, I'm struggling to keep myself focused and can look back and realize that this might have been manifesting a lot longer than I thought.

Like I said, it's not the end all solution but it is worth exploring.

You don't have to get a high school degree. Seriously. But there is some unpleasant work that needs to be done. High school is not unpleasant work that needs to be done.

"High school is not unpleasant work that needs to be done." Could you elaborate on that?

Hard to read...he's saying there are two categories within "unpleasant work": necessary, unnecessary. School is in the latter.

oh, I see. I agree, but my parents don't, and I can't support myself yet.

so prioritize. learn a set of valuable skills that will allow you to support yourself. then drop out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com