I know this is probably an obvious advice here on HN, but one of the things that I feel has given me sense of purpose (and in turn motivation thanks to that) wa

I know this is probably an obvious advice here on HN, but one of the things that I feel has given me sense of purpose (and in turn motivation thanks to that) was starting my own company. Now, of course that might not be suitable for you right now for whatever reason, but it doesn't need to be a company for the suggestion to be valid; how about just putting yourself a challenge of making a game that's polished enough that you can share it here on HN for example, or to reach a certain number of downloads/users? I believe that if you are ready to put on such big artificial challenge as you put it as getting into MIT/Stanford, then doing a baby-step shouldn't be that hard right? So why not start there and increase your motivation step by step? My point is, if you have the skills and time (and motivation!) to start a challenge as hard (at least for me) as trying to get into a top-tier masters program, then you must surely have at least that much motivation to do something much smaller but with a higher chance of success and with much quicker results, which in turn should ideally motivate you more to keep going. So to answer your question, how do you deal with loss of motivation? well, doing small things that add up seems to work wonders for me (and others as well I presume) Just make a Tetris clone with a twist for example. After that, maybe add multiplayer to that same thing. And you can keep on going like that and at some point you are going to realize that this thing is now much bigger than you would have thought, and suddenly you have spent X amount of time on this project.... and I guess that's motivation. (Also, it doesn't have to be a game obviously, but how about making some simple software to help one of your parents/family members/friends with something they might be struggling with? that could also be a source of motivation: helping others do things that might be very easily solvable with your skills)