Consistency and discipline over motivation | Hacker News Reader

Consistency and discipline over motivation

blog.donnywals.com

104 pointsdwltz19 comments

One thing I've personally noticed is that being disciplined can quickly create or renew motivation. Getting something finished even though I don't want to do it feels great. That alone is often enough to jump start that positive feedback loop and get me moving rapidly again.

Me too. This is also called "fake it till you make it". It sounds like empty b.s. But there is a lot to it. The book Stop Worrying and Start Living suggests that when your mood is bad, force yourself to smile and pretend outwardly that everything is good. I've found this really helps, even though it sounds dumb.

Also along the same lines is Picasso's famous quote: inspiration comes, but it has to find us working.

You made a typo, it should be "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living".

Fixed, thanks, that's a funny one!

When this works it is great. Always nice to have this "life hack" available.

However, it doesn't always work for people with depression, and unfortunately when it fails it can make things worse rather than better.

Suffering from HNDoS; read it at http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

Also links to http://impossiblehq.com/get-disciplined-not-motivated and http://thereallimegreenandloki.tumblr.com/post/101385465984/...

Thanks for putting up the cache link :) it's actually an outage on directVPS' end so I hope they resolve this fast

I think I am being HNDoS'ed... I need to get back to work really... really!

From the article: "When I look at more senior developers I notice...[they] take multiple short breaks throughout the day and between those breaks they tend to be very focused on the tasks they have to complete. They don’t have their Slack open all the time and they work on a single thing at a time. And they are consistent about that."

For help focusing on a single thing at a time, check out http://focusr.co

Great read.

One of my favourite quotes is "motivation follows action". Often times I've found myself loath to do something, but once I start "revving up" (at work, it might be starting with something simple like a small refactor; at home, it could be committing to simply washing one plate of the stack I have remaining) I find I gain the motivation to keep going.

I agree, waiting to get motivated can be really frustrating and it can fuel a sense of guilt because you know you should be doing something. Just starting do it triggers a rewarding feeling and spawns that precious feeling of motivation i guess.

I started taking fixed breaks every hour to (try to) reduce my rsi pains and it does seem help my productivty. I used to check reddit/hn/feedly whenever I got really frustrated with something but now I usually power through it because I know I'll get a break soon anyway.

I agree that motivation needs to be trained. But be careful with "being tough with yourself". People tends to fail ah the beginning and then blame themselves so much that they give up...

> When I look at more senior developers I notice that many of them have a workflow similar to this.

Could it also be that they are good at getting you to notice this? I think pretense is valued above consistency and discipline.

> I think pretense is valued above consistency and discipline.

And what has led you to that thought?

Because the OP seems to suggest you overcome lack of motivation by pretending you have motivation, but he calls this discipline and consistency. Also, the comments about fake it till you make it support that interpretation.

I've also gone to meetings.

It's not about pretending you have motivation; it's about using discipline and consistency (having a routine) to get you through the periods where your motivation wanes.

Motivation comes and goes; discipline is as eternal as you will it to be.

And discipline is a bit tricky to boot-strap. I think that's the part that's being argued about here. Or maybe not.

I'm afraid you and I have different definitions of discipline and consistency.

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