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I noticed the same rush when consistently journalling and keeping track of my habits. There is something commit-like about checking in on yourself, even if it's

I noticed the same rush when consistently journalling and keeping track of my habits. There is something commit-like about checking in on yourself, even if it's not even remotely code-related. I also think it builds a well-maintained framework that you can attach other (especially time management) chores to. (Well, I'm already at my desk for journalling, let's also write down other tasks I need to do today/tomorrow and get started with the first one) I'm not quite sure whether it's really important to keep your github bathroom wall green, but it builds a quite useful habit imo.

dailykoder 2y ago
I think what you are pointing out is really really important. All of this "get SOME work done every day" is really really good, but (atleast in my experience) you have to separate your feelings from likes or stars on social media. Do it for yourself. Do it because you like to do it. Do it because you can develop your inner strength with it. Sure, github stars and a great commit history might give you a dopamine rush, but so does learning to appreciate the struggle and working through it. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks about it. Over the past year/months I built a RISC-V CPU in VHDL. It can barely do anything and if I show it to most people they'd probably think it's super boring. But I love it. I love to work on it. I love to let the LEDs blink the way I wanted to, because I achieved to implement some small thing in hardware and see that it works (imagine my dopamine rush the first time it successfully ran gcc-generated code and blinked an LED on actual hardware. That's boring, innit? But I loved it.). It's often a really hard struggle, because the progress is so little, but I learned to force myself to do it, even if I don't want to/don't feel like it, because I know it will bring me joy in the end, even if I hate it for days/weeks. I sitll do it. Same with journaling, as you said. It's all about the habits. Find your habit and do it.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  For some of us, setting habits is hard-to-impossible. Finding a source of "a dopamine rush" that's correlated with the work at hand is how we get by.

dailykoder 2y ago

I think what you are pointing out is really really important. All of this "get SOME work done every day" is really really good, but (atleast in my experience) you have to separate your feelings from likes or stars on social media. Do it for yourself. Do it because you like to do it. Do it because you can develop your inner strength with it. Sure, github stars and a great commit history might give you a dopamine rush, but so does learning to appreciate the struggle and working through it. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks about it. Over the past year/months I built a RISC-V CPU in VHDL. It can barely do anything and if I show it to most people they'd probably think it's super boring. But I love it. I love to work on it. I love to let the LEDs blink the way I wanted to, because I achieved to implement some small thing in hardware and see that it works (imagine my dopamine rush the first time it successfully ran gcc-generated code and blinked an LED on actual hardware. That's boring, innit? But I loved it.). It's often a really hard struggle, because the progress is so little, but I learned to force myself to do it, even if I don't want to/don't feel like it, because I know it will bring me joy in the end, even if I hate it for days/weeks. I sitll do it. Same with journaling, as you said. It's all about the habits. Find your habit and do it.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
For some of us, setting habits is hard-to-impossible. Finding a source of "a dopamine rush" that's correlated with the work at hand is how we get by.