I've lost interest in myself

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6043665

by fenginoff • 13 years ago

13 17 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

How does one find motivation? Slowly over the past few months I've lost the drive to learn, to try to achieve. I'm not suicidal, all I have the desire to do is lounge, read reddit, and watch netflix. I feel as if this is wrong, that I want to move forward not backwards. I want to WANT to study and improve. Any advice HN?

declandewet• 13 years ago

One can easily find motivation in commitment. If you commit to learning something, (as an example; by investing money in it) then you would be more likely to be motivated as you would not want your money to go to waste.

Think of your time as money, as personal self-development. Also, lower your goals when you start out. If you fail to achieve a certain goal at a certain time that you expected to, you'll be frustrated, and it is this kind of frustration that is a demotivator. By avoiding frustrations, you're optimizing your ability to remain motivated.

As an idea of lowering your goals, try this: Instead of trying to achieve, simply try to be productive. You can still have Netflix on in the background while you work. Once you've reached a consistent productivity level, then try to learn more, but don't just read - work while you learn. Then begin trying to achieve.

seiji• 13 years ago

Step one: get out of your environment. Your brain has become addicted to responding certain ways based on your surroundings. There are some lines of thought you physically can't have when you're stuck like that.

Step two: be in places where you feel you are wasting your time. Get stuck in traffic for hours. Go to some family event where everything is trivial and people talk for hours about how obamacare is destroying america. Get your brain to start wishing, "I don't want to be here wasting my life on trivial bullcrap -- I want to be doing something important with my time."

Step three: when you get back into your brain-stuck environment, DO NOT START doing what you did before. DO NOT open reddit (block it in your hosts file or run dnsmasq and block (asterisk)reddit(asterisk) hosts and (asterisk)ycomb(asterisk)). DO NOT turn on a tv show or a movie. Once you start your old habit, you lose. You won't have a chance to stop yourself until you go through another sleep/wake cycle. You are allowed to turn on music.

Step four: start something new. you wanna be starting something. Find something you can't do, and figure out why. Do you know how a webpage is delivered from server to browser? When was the last time you wrote a BST? Just start doing something that requires thought and potentially creativity on your part. Things will fall into place after that.

But, for the love of Tony Robbins, DO NOT START your old habits. DO NOT open reddit. DO NOT watch a tv show or movie at your computer. Once you _start_ you become unable to stop until your brain resets.

shail• 13 years ago

Take a vacation.

mattm• 13 years ago

I've faced these kind of issues in the past and am currently developing a course for programmers that can help with this. It will be launched this week. If you are interested, please email me and I'll notify you when it's available so you can check it out.

shubhamjain• 13 years ago

These things are not unique and certainly you are not the only one who has faces them. I can recall three to five times when I had completely lost the vibe about programming, it become just an obligation for my job. I found it hard to even look at code in my free time.

Fast forward few weeks, I started reading specs of MP3 format and created a reader of ID3 tag in PHP[1] and I am back to normal, the obsession about coding is back as it.

As @serji tells, find something new, try to create something about it and its just matter of some time when your passion will be back as usual. Good luck.

[1] https://github.com/shubhamjain/PHP-ID3

jayrobin• 13 years ago

This excerpt[1] from "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" comes to mind. Detailing a stage where Feynman lost his passion for physics and regained it by studying things purely for the satisfaction of his curiousity and the enjoyment of the process.

  He says, "Feynman, that's pretty interesting, but what's the importance of it?"
  "Why are you doing it?"

  "Hah!" I say.
  "There's no importance whatsoever. I'm just doing it for the fun of it."

[1]: http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html

impendia• 13 years ago

I recommend exercise.

Best to combine this with starting something new. Take up jogging, swimming, martial arts, yoga, ultimate --- whatever sounds interesting that you've never tried before.

nnoitra• 13 years ago

Get a job.

sejje• 13 years ago

I'm a programmer, and a lot of times I'm deciding what to do...read, watch movies, watch netflix.

I also want to improve all the time, and I also want to work on my side projects, but I don't always feel motivated.

I've found the best way, typically, is to watch or read something interesting about programming. Lately, "Clean Code" is a bit inspirational, or talks from pycon on pyvideo. It's enough motivation to get me started, and getting started keeps me going, for those few hours at least.

Rinse, repeat.

meerita• 13 years ago

Solve real problems, not the ones you create in your head. I recommend traveling and explore the world, then you will see real problems. I've read many stories of people finding good ammount of reasons to fight for.

joeldidit• 13 years ago

I'm like this currently, but not willingly. You can take supplements to get your motivation back (like Pramiracetam), or you can find something you are interested in. Watch a good movie, read a good book, talk to the right person, then write about it, or use it to fuel something you think is worth doing. Are you sure you didn't need some time off? Either way, you should kick the habit before it drags on too long, because it'll become ingrained hard to move on from.

alias1• 13 years ago

My tl;dr

* Listen to music to block the distractions/world

* Get out of your old environment (coffee shops seem to help me, +caffeine source!)

* Travel: It just always seems to put things in perspective for me.

* Probably won't work for everyone, but I tend to have 'The Holstee Manifesto' on the wall near my computer, and probably read through it a few times a week. Makes you think.

Pradeepv• 13 years ago

1. As someone said, do something that is out of your current routine to reset your system.(Go for a run, Stand in line at the DMV or post office, etc).

2. Find an actionable & useful project that you've to code/build at least for an hr where you see tangible progress. Allow that progress to motivate you so that you start spending more time on that.

Misiek• 13 years ago

Don't give up. Motivation is a skill that can be trained like a muscle. Don't be afraid to make mistakes but never do the same mistake twice. Learn from other's mistakes. Exercise, I recommed martial arts. Read interesting books and watch good movies - start with http://www.imdb.com/chart/top. Eat dark chocolate and drink a glass of wine (or beer) every day. Fall in love. Start a family, have a baby.

xxtjaxx• 13 years ago

i feel like I have these Moments at a quaterly pace. This is strange to me too. I start out in a yea hacking and working on things like a crazy person. Then a month or 2 later I slouch. After I'm full of that too I restart the engine and start working. This apparently correlates heavily with the months in which I use google. The ones where I am actively working on something are the ones where I search for stuff the most. If this is the first time relax It'll go away again.

// aside: Since my Family lives in a less densely populated area with poor connectivity, I found it a perfect distraction-free zone to get back in a productive mood. I have probably started reading into 1 new programming language (Python) and got fairly productive in it already. Started reading into Scheduling in CompSci. And maybe have already decided on my next to be learned language(erlang maybe). The Bad connectivity may be easy to replicate. Just pull the plug or work via 3G. Surely makes you feel like you have time to read something

So. Heads Up! It will come back :)

arh68• 13 years ago

I've yet to solve the problem once and for all, but so far, in no particular order:

- Take a vitamin B pill (B12 mainly) and/or a 5-HTP supplement.

- Keep lots of interesting books lying around, without making a goal out of reading them.

- Watch inspiring personal struggle/triumph documentaries to regain optimism (the one about Bo Jackson might still be on netflix).

- Practice identifying, avoiding, and moving past Gumption Traps.

- Become an armchair 'expert' in something (at the time) useless and non-achievement-related, like overhead valve engines, pre-Renaissance cathedral construction, friction stir welding (do _not_ get caught up configuring your text editor)

There's a method to the madness in mixing these. Everything in moderation, ymmv, etc.

fenginoff• 13 years ago

Reading the comments all of you have written has made me very excited as all of you have neat and helpful ideas. Perhaps the best motivator is hearing a bit of advice and receiving support from a wonderful community!

I've added reading the Holstee Manifesto to my morning ritual, what a neat poster Alias1. Feynman is a personal hero and his desire to do what is "fun" is a great motivator, thanks jayrobin. Misiek, my girlfriend would love it if we had a child, though I suspect there a few steps before that happens...

Thanks again HN, I look forward to hear more from all of you!

I've lost interest in myself

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