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Motivation is a really tough one. Honestly, I am mostly motivated to go out of my way for delicious food and seeing friends. But if you're talking about motivat

Motivation is a really tough one. Honestly, I am mostly motivated to go out of my way for delicious food and seeing friends. But if you're talking about motivation for productivity, it's more complicated. I've written about this before on HN: In my younger and more foolish days, and inspired by Steve Jobs, I tried to literally live life as if every day were my last in an effort to be productive. I discovered that if it were my last day on earth, I would much rather spend the time joking around with friends or family rather than working, and I fell into a depressive funk. Abstract thoughts about death, while depressive, don't motivate me. What does end up "motivating" me are developing habits. In order to develop habits, I use pathetically achievable goals: I find goals to be counterproductive unless they're simply achieved and a matter of habit. For instance, "go to the gym and do nothing" became "go to the gym and walk on the treadmill" when I became habituated to showing up at the gym. Now I'm lifting regularly and I feel off if I don't get a chance to go work out. Audacious goals, on the other hand, are demotivating because there's too much chance of failure. If I hold myself to lifting certain weights, I may even end up getting injured. But now I'm happy simply showing up, doing what I have the capacity for, whether it's walking, stretching, or lifting. I can (and will) come back if I have an off day. Scott Adams talks about something similar in Goals vs Systems[1]. A goal of writing a book is much harder to achieve than a goal of typing a little bit in the morning. Ironically, the latter may be the best route to the former...as long as you don't think about it too much :) [1]: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102964992706/goals-vs-systems http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102964992706/goals-vs-systems

Jugurtha 10y ago
>Abstract thoughts about death, while depressive, don't motivate me. What does end up "motivating" me are developing habits. In order to develop habits, I use pathetically achievable goals This. I was chatting with a friend and he asked me about how I get motivated. My answer is that I abstract away the motivation with a process. For instance, I used to work out a lot when I was younger and then stopped.. But when I wanted to work out recently, what I did to start the habit wasn't to go to the gym because that's a "new thing", an action and I'm a "procrastinator".. I incorporated working out with the act of taking a shower and they became one, so each time I was about to take a shower, I'd do a few hundred push ups, then get in the shower and do a 100 successive squats and that was it. It's not much but it beats nothing. If I imagined I had to wear clothes, go out somewhere, work out, then come back and take a shower, I wouldn't do it.. As a side note, when I was in college, my commute was 6 hours and arriving late to class. Then they added a university bus. I had to take a bus to get to the Uni bus and I had to wake up early, so I said "why not work out while I'm at it". Woke up at 4h30 and a good work out, shower and food, and about 30 minutes of review study. The energy I had through the whole day was amazing.
- faitswulff 10y ago
  That's a good point. Combining actions that you already execute with habits you would like to develop can be a powerful thing. To take the gym example further, I realized that I needed to be doing more cardio (any cardio at all), but the treadmill was the most boring activity on earth. I could only spend a few minutes on it before getting bored. To combat this, I started listening to an audio language lesson in a foreign language that I'd been meaning to learn while walking on the treadmill. Pretty soon, I ended up spending 20+ minute chunks of time on the treadmill while learning my target language, which amplified both of the habits that I wanted.

Jugurtha 10y ago

>Abstract thoughts about death, while depressive, don't motivate me. What does end up "motivating" me are developing habits. In order to develop habits, I use pathetically achievable goals This. I was chatting with a friend and he asked me about how I get motivated. My answer is that I abstract away the motivation with a process. For instance, I used to work out a lot when I was younger and then stopped.. But when I wanted to work out recently, what I did to start the habit wasn't to go to the gym because that's a "new thing", an action and I'm a "procrastinator".. I incorporated working out with the act of taking a shower and they became one, so each time I was about to take a shower, I'd do a few hundred push ups, then get in the shower and do a 100 successive squats and that was it. It's not much but it beats nothing. If I imagined I had to wear clothes, go out somewhere, work out, then come back and take a shower, I wouldn't do it.. As a side note, when I was in college, my commute was 6 hours and arriving late to class. Then they added a university bus. I had to take a bus to get to the Uni bus and I had to wake up early, so I said "why not work out while I'm at it". Woke up at 4h30 and a good work out, shower and food, and about 30 minutes of review study. The energy I had through the whole day was amazing.

faitswulff 10y ago
That's a good point. Combining actions that you already execute with habits you would like to develop can be a powerful thing. To take the gym example further, I realized that I needed to be doing more cardio (any cardio at all), but the treadmill was the most boring activity on earth. I could only spend a few minutes on it before getting bored. To combat this, I started listening to an audio language lesson in a foreign language that I'd been meaning to learn while walking on the treadmill. Pretty soon, I ended up spending 20+ minute chunks of time on the treadmill while learning my target language, which amplified both of the habits that I wanted.