5 ms·

What if I gave you one hundred dollar bills and said this is all the money you had to spend. Once it's spent, it's spent, and you can never get any more. How m

by sunir 13y ago

What if I gave you one hundred dollar bills and said this is all the money you had to spend. Once it's spent, it's spent, and you can never get any more. How much would you spend on movie ticket? A blissful escape, sure, but you probably have other things to do with your life. You're only going to live for maybe one hundred years at most, maybe many less. Spend your years wisely.

lifeformed 13y ago
I agree, I would be super motivated if that was the case, because it would give me a concrete deadline. But it's hard to simulate desperateness, because I could always bail out (unless I gave all my money away, which isn't a good idea). It's not like I'm rich or anything, I just saved up enough money to do exactly this (work on this project full time) for a while, and yet here I am, sitting around struggling to do it. I want to want to work hard. I just really need to learn self-discipline.
- nyrina 13y ago
  I think giving all your money away is a great idea. To me, specifically. :) :)
- neltnerb 13y ago
  It's extremely difficult to self-manage if you haven't been in a safe situation to experiment with it. Personally, I find that the only sensible and generally applicable solution is to set short-term goals based on a formally written project plan to yourself. You don't ever have to give that project plan to anyone else, but you should write it as well as you possibly can. It should be clear on what kinds of things are feasible to do, what is required, what you can do first to prove the concepts, and so on. I do this for every project I start, after struggling with the problem in graduate school a bit. It takes about a week per proposal to put something together of reasonably high quality, but by the end you actually probably have a very good sense of the strongest argument you can make to do the project as well as the weaknesses, as well as ideally a logical argument for why it might work based on citable evidence. This would also include things like "this experiment I can do" (translated to "this market idea I can test" in business) will generate some result that is clear and helpful in moving towards your medium term goal -- which is probably to either make enough money or be able to raise enough money to pay yourself and enough staff to move to the next medium term goal. Then take that medium term goal and break it down not into time-based goals but sensible sub-goals. If you want to build a web service, a first goal might be "I think that people have a use for... I can test that by building... and collect data using... if that works, then it's worth doing the second goal..." Break it down as small as is sensible to do, but limit this kind of strategizing so that you don't go really far down a road before putting it aside to sit and let you get a fresh perspective. Bounce it off others to see if they can poke holes in your strategy that you didn't think of. And so on. Anyway, it's not so much self-discipline as it is realizing that big goals are always changing and medium term goals are uncertain. You have to always be able to change those goals based on the actual data you collect. But the short term goals should be achievable. And it will take time to isolate what good short term goals should be. A good short term goal might be, to start, to make a good start on identifying short term goals...
  - lifeformed 13y ago
    That's a good idea - even though I'm in the middle of the project, and the project is big enough where a plan of the entire project wouldn't be feasible, I can at least do it for the chunk I am working on right now. I think just being explicit with my tasks would be a huge step. Right now everything is vague and kind of just in this "idea soup" in the back of my mind. Every time I pull out the next idea to work on, I realize I had all the wrong expectations the whole time.
foobarbazqux 13y ago
> Spend your years wisely. Before you can do that you have to spend a great deal of your years to become wise.
cliffcrosland 13y ago
This sort of monetary risk incentive has been very useful for me. There's software to do this. Have you tried Beeminder? I've used it to force myself to build positive habits, including daily exercise and side-project progress. There have been more than a few moments where I've awakened after 11pm realizing that I'd be charged $5 if I neglected to do push-ups during the next hour. In anger, I invariably got up and did them, but now I do them without hesitation each day. Pledge some money on Beeminder, and make yourself do a certain number of focused hours of work each week on your project. Even small financial risks are surprisingly motivational: "No way I'm letting Beeminder take my $5."
- exceptione 13y ago
  Never heard of it, but per your recommendation I watched the intro video. A bit off-topic but... I never have seen such a horrible product video. I couldn't hear most what she said, not only because of the bad presentation but also because of the unnerving background music that makes the speech even more inaudible. Now it looks like im totally grumpy, but the concept seems nice. Just a reminder to beeminder to delete that awfull video clip.

by sunir 13y ago

lifeformed 13y ago

I agree, I would be super motivated if that was the case, because it would give me a concrete deadline. But it's hard to simulate desperateness, because I could always bail out (unless I gave all my money away, which isn't a good idea). It's not like I'm rich or anything, I just saved up enough money to do exactly this (work on this project full time) for a while, and yet here I am, sitting around struggling to do it. I want to want to work hard. I just really need to learn self-discipline.

nyrina 13y ago
I think giving all your money away is a great idea. To me, specifically. :) :)
neltnerb 13y ago
It's extremely difficult to self-manage if you haven't been in a safe situation to experiment with it. Personally, I find that the only sensible and generally applicable solution is to set short-term goals based on a formally written project plan to yourself. You don't ever have to give that project plan to anyone else, but you should write it as well as you possibly can. It should be clear on what kinds of things are feasible to do, what is required, what you can do first to prove the concepts, and so on. I do this for every project I start, after struggling with the problem in graduate school a bit. It takes about a week per proposal to put something together of reasonably high quality, but by the end you actually probably have a very good sense of the strongest argument you can make to do the project as well as the weaknesses, as well as ideally a logical argument for why it might work based on citable evidence. This would also include things like "this experiment I can do" (translated to "this market idea I can test" in business) will generate some result that is clear and helpful in moving towards your medium term goal -- which is probably to either make enough money or be able to raise enough money to pay yourself and enough staff to move to the next medium term goal. Then take that medium term goal and break it down not into time-based goals but sensible sub-goals. If you want to build a web service, a first goal might be "I think that people have a use for... I can test that by building... and collect data using... if that works, then it's worth doing the second goal..." Break it down as small as is sensible to do, but limit this kind of strategizing so that you don't go really far down a road before putting it aside to sit and let you get a fresh perspective. Bounce it off others to see if they can poke holes in your strategy that you didn't think of. And so on. Anyway, it's not so much self-discipline as it is realizing that big goals are always changing and medium term goals are uncertain. You have to always be able to change those goals based on the actual data you collect. But the short term goals should be achievable. And it will take time to isolate what good short term goals should be. A good short term goal might be, to start, to make a good start on identifying short term goals...
- lifeformed 13y ago
  That's a good idea - even though I'm in the middle of the project, and the project is big enough where a plan of the entire project wouldn't be feasible, I can at least do it for the chunk I am working on right now. I think just being explicit with my tasks would be a huge step. Right now everything is vague and kind of just in this "idea soup" in the back of my mind. Every time I pull out the next idea to work on, I realize I had all the wrong expectations the whole time.

foobarbazqux 13y ago

> Spend your years wisely. Before you can do that you have to spend a great deal of your years to become wise.

cliffcrosland 13y ago

This sort of monetary risk incentive has been very useful for me. There's software to do this. Have you tried Beeminder? I've used it to force myself to build positive habits, including daily exercise and side-project progress. There have been more than a few moments where I've awakened after 11pm realizing that I'd be charged $5 if I neglected to do push-ups during the next hour. In anger, I invariably got up and did them, but now I do them without hesitation each day. Pledge some money on Beeminder, and make yourself do a certain number of focused hours of work each week on your project. Even small financial risks are surprisingly motivational: "No way I'm letting Beeminder take my $5."

exceptione 13y ago
Never heard of it, but per your recommendation I watched the intro video. A bit off-topic but... I never have seen such a horrible product video. I couldn't hear most what she said, not only because of the bad presentation but also because of the unnerving background music that makes the speech even more inaudible. Now it looks like im totally grumpy, but the concept seems nice. Just a reminder to beeminder to delete that awfull video clip.