Ask HN: What motivates you?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17883165

by muzani • 8 years ago

26 27 8 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

m1573rp34130dy• 8 years ago

Eureka...

gcb0• 8 years ago

fake internet points

drakonka• 8 years ago

Learning and the goal of feeling competent.

swatcoder• 8 years ago

I've tried chasing big goals and I've tried avoiding everything through escapism. Turns out that it doesn't matter much what I try, I eventually just do what I do. Thankfully, the trend line is positive.

Once I figured that out and learned to trust it, I stopped thinking in terms of big conscious motivations and instead just started looking at the unconscious roadblocks that were in front of me. If something was getting in the way of where I seemed to be going, or if I noticed myself charting weird paths around some thing in avoidance, I'd start looking closer at why and gradually free myself of the hinderance.

There are plenty more such blocks for me to find and work through, but this method feels more balanced and more effective than any motivation-centered paradigm ever seemed to.

cm2012• 8 years ago

My wife in general + having other people be impressed with me.

SubMachineGhost• 8 years ago

My insecurities.

Due to some life circumstances, i grew up feeling that i am not deserving of being where i am at and that at i am the worst person in any given room.

I came to embrace these feelings because they motivate me to keep improving my life on a daily basis.

jklein11• 8 years ago

anoncoward111• 8 years ago

The hunger in my stomach and the desire to not sleep on the streets.

bsvalley• 8 years ago

death (we're going to die at some point, let's make the best use of our time).

JakeMIles12• 8 years ago

Macro Level: The well being of my daughter Micro (Daily) Level: Been using Motivate App and it's been really helping in the mornings.

Random_Person• 8 years ago

Usually self-preservation. Often, the software projects I work on are things that simplify my life and it just so happens that other people want to use them too.

I enjoy eating, having a home, feeding my children, and playing games. So, I do what I have to do to keep that going. Everything else requires effort for me to even start and once I'm going, even more effort to maintain.

JSeymourATL• 8 years ago

Dan Pink struck a cord on the subject of primary motivators - autonomy, mastery, and purpose. > https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation?language=en

phakding• 8 years ago

1. I want to do certain things/buy things (travel places, climb mountains. buy/build small plane)

2. need x amount of money/y amount of vacation time

3. target next company

4. requires certain technologies

5. study/practice

6. interview

7. success / Failure (go back to step 5)

reducesuffering3• 8 years ago

Minimizing the net suffering in the world through effective altruism.

jxub• 8 years ago

Well, the most effective way to do it is just anesthetized annihilation of all humanity.

Probably we should flip the mental script and say that this definition of minimisation of suffering has effective altruism as a local minima, and painless and unconscious death as a global minima, because it eliminates all suffering immediately and thus would be the perfect solution.

Death is considered almost univocally bad, so perhaps this definition of doing good should also take some type of maximization of subjective happiness into account.

muzani2• 8 years ago

Whoa, chill out there, Skynet.

I think people actually enjoy purposeful suffering. That's even what many games bring about. A life without suffering is boring.

But we don't want unnecessary suffering. Like parasites. Or having to walk 5 km for a barrel of clean water.

Suffering in the aid of others, like bringing a barrel of clean water over 5 km for your family, is actuallu very satisfying though. More so than, say, getting 5 customers through a day of telemarketing.

reducesuffering3• 8 years ago

It's a good point. The preference is on minimizing suffering rather than increasing the happiness of those who are already well off. I'm curious how you'd put that philosophy into a succinct phrase then.

ethiclub2• 8 years ago

May I ask how you achieve this day to day, and what your big audacious goal is?

It is rare to see someone able to make this their direct passion and drive.

Related: In my personal experience this is the ultimate macro driver (net positive gains in world emotion - decreasing 'suffering emotion', increasing 'happy emotion') but for micro day to day, it's a huge weight and can be an overwhelming self-burden, so different small scale motivators are needed.

Related: I wish that there was a unanimous (or more widely accepted) structure for mapping emotion to as-objective-as-possible values (acknowledging the vast nuance of emotion, hormones-et-al, subjective experience etc.). Or in other words, subjective experience and (practically fractal) complexity of the problem make it difficult to slap figures on externalities to offset them.

reducesuffering3• 8 years ago

The big audacious goal is minimizing global suffering. Yes, it can be a weight if you focus too much on "if I don't achieve this, people will be worse off", but you ultimately realize that thinking like this should only be done if it helps you toward the metric. If the burden is heavy, but it helps so many others much more than yourself, it's barely a burden compared to what so many beings go through.

I believe a person achieves this day to day by focusing on the goal, and then extrapolating backwards to what is going on each day, each month, that is working towards that goal. I believe a person can contribute by focusing on a couple important categories:

1. Economic: Accumulating wealth gives you tremendous leverage to affect change in a positive way. Informing people of issues and remedies. The ability to improve and affect infrastructure and policies to be more communal and social. Putting dollars behind improving global medicine and technology for good.

2. Inspiration and Information: Assisting grassroots movements to better the world, spreading factual information, creating new science, writing, big ideas, and art. Basically, what has good chances of improving the well being of people and animals without simply economic might.

In the end, you'll have moved the needle and can hopefully get many other people to move the needle forwards too. Society is approaching a point where we have the opportunity to finally make all livelihood well off, without the immense pain and destruction that has occurred in the past. It's because of the people in the past who pushed us forward, and the onus is on us today.

marketgod• 8 years ago

Money.

Every day I want to earn more than the day before.

MilnerRoute• 8 years ago

Sometimes the thought of doing today's work really well is genuinely exciting to me.

And if not that, I feel a certain sense of "honor", for lack of a better word, in meeting my commitments and doing what I said I'd do.

muzani2• 8 years ago

Surprising, but out of the rest, this is probably what resonates with me the most. I just really like the idea of doing what I said I'd do. Or just making a new set of commitments each day and sticking to that.

billconan• 8 years ago

Curiosity motivates me

cattlefarmer• 8 years ago

When I was in my teens, twenties and early thirties, I very seriously yearned for world domination. Probably because I grew up low-middle class and was always the small kid being picked on. I didn't work too hard at it because at my core, I'm a lazy person. Still, I put in enough effort to become the big fish in my various little ponds.

I only realised how insignificant I really was when several years ago, I stumbled upon Quora and the various 'How do I join Google' questions, and even more when discovered HN and what proper software development really is like.

HN has given me a huge imposter syndrome while at the same time given me the resources to really educate myself and learn more about making things flash on a monitor.

Nowadays, I do it simply because I enjoy it.

anotheryou• 8 years ago

Curiosity, awe, love. My job however I see as hindering in most of that (Project/Product Management non-bullshit¹ job offers welcome).

I love to learn, I like science, to analyze and to attempt to shape our information environment. This act of discovery is also great on a personal level, but that was a stronger factor when I was younger. Well and I love people (though I have sympathy for many, that doesn't mean I'm not selective on whom to spend my time with). Some hedonistic sprinkles on top are also welcome (music, travel, good food, a beer).

If I could I would divide my time between exactly those things: 1/3 learning, 1/3 building, 1/3 people and all at a nice place with good food.

¹ http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

askafriend• 8 years ago

Bringing some order to chaos.

Ask HN: What motivates you?

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