4 ms·

My first question would be: Do you enjoy what you're doing? I've noticed that most people who complain about having trouble with motivation, willpower and pro

My first question would be: Do you enjoy what you're doing? I've noticed that most people who complain about having trouble with motivation, willpower and procrastination when it comes to their job (or 'occupation' in the case of a student like yourself) actually hate what they are doing. If you don't enjoy the things you should be spending your time on then obviously it's going to be hard to get the motivation to do them. My first point of recourse in this situation would be to examine exactly what your motivations are behind taking this course. Is it because you love it or because your parents told you to, or because you couldn't think of anything else to do? If the answer is anything other than "Because I enjoy it" then you probably need to re-examine your decision.

asciilifeform 17y ago
> If the answer is anything other than "Because I enjoy it" then you probably need to re-examine your decision Who is going to pay for him to live a life doing only what he enjoys? You?
- aarongough 17y ago
  Well, if he loves programming and is good at it then I might pay him to do what he enjoys. No matter what you love, there is almost always a way to make money doing it.
  - asciilifeform 17y ago
    > No matter what you love, there is almost always a way to make money doing it. Enough to live on? This is patently false.
    - aarongough 17y ago
      At this point I would say that is nitpicking... In some cases maybe not, but you could always supplement your income by doing something related. Or, if you have to, even something you don't like. At least in that situation you'll be able to look at your crappy part-time job and daydream about the great job that you do the other 50% of the time.
pj 17y ago
The thought that everything we do must be enjoyable is the wrong attitude. I think that is the attitude that has gotten us in trouble. There are a lot of things in life that we have to do that we don't enjoy doing. Taking certain pre-requisite courses is an example. I didn't like organic chemistry, but I did like the idea of being a doctor some day, so I had to take Organic Chemistry. The converse is also true, you can't have something just because you want it. Sometimes you have to work for things. You have to practice and try hard. The simple fact of the matter is, if you don't have the will power to say, "I will do these hard things I don't like doing because I want these other things later in life." Then you are probably on the wrong course or simply not cut out for it. We do have to make sacrifices and it sounds like that sacrifice for the OP is going to class, studying the material, and doing well -- even if he doesn't want to take that particular course.
- aarongough 17y ago
  I don't think that there's anything wrong with wanting to do only the things you enjoy. I would strongly disagree with the idea that doing so has gotten anyone in trouble. Granted that sometimes the things you enjoy entail doing additional things that you may not enjoy so much, but if you really enjoy what you are doing then mostly you will be able to justify this as part of the big picture. Personally I think that the idea that we all need to do things that make us money rather than the things we enjoy is what has made a lot of people over the years very unhappy. Imagine working a job you hate for your entire life because you think, or have been told, that it's all you can do. We live in a society that allows us to surpass squandering our lives this way, we should endeavor to do so whenever we can.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
GHFigs 17y ago
I've found that thinking love/hate is not sufficiently granular for most problems and rarely suggestive of many solutions. It can be good for making very high level emotionally charged decisions like whether you want to even stay in school or not, but when it comes to implementing those decisions, you often need to be more specific about your feelings to figure out exactly what needs to change. There is a chart in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's classic Flow, that I've found enligtening. It shows the "flow channel", the desirable state where the activity seems friction-free, surrounded by anxiety on one side and boredom on the other. Most people don't think of activities this way, where the goal is a mean rather an an extreme. I've found that every instance of procrastination or avoidance in my life stems from anxiety or boredom irrespective of things like desire, enjoyment, or willpower, while all of the things I do get done are things that I don't feel much anxiety or boredom about, likewise irrespective of desire, enjoyment or willpower. (Those factors only seem to come into play with planning what to do, not in actually doing them.) So it follows that the way to get things done is to figure out whether the problem is anxiety or boredom and then do what you can to counterbalance it back towards the flow channel. If you're procrastinating on something because you find it boring, the way to become motivated is to make it more exciting. Add constraints, make it more challenging, tighten deadlines, expand scope, batch repetitive tasks, turn necessary goals into desirable ones, etc. If you're procrastinating on something because it makes you anxious, the way to become motivated is to make it less exciting. Remove constraints, reduce the challenge, loosen deadlines, break up tasks into small pieces, reduce the harm of mistakes, reduce risk, etc. What that means specifically depends on what bores you or causes anxiety and how much control you have over circumstances, but I think there is always something you can do on a practical and tactical level to bring any activity towards that channel where you don't have to force yourself into doing it.

asciilifeform 17y ago

> If the answer is anything other than "Because I enjoy it" then you probably need to re-examine your decision Who is going to pay for him to live a life doing only what he enjoys? You?

aarongough 17y ago
Well, if he loves programming and is good at it then I might pay him to do what he enjoys. No matter what you love, there is almost always a way to make money doing it.
- asciilifeform 17y ago
  > No matter what you love, there is almost always a way to make money doing it. Enough to live on? This is patently false.
  - aarongough 17y ago
    At this point I would say that is nitpicking... In some cases maybe not, but you could always supplement your income by doing something related. Or, if you have to, even something you don't like. At least in that situation you'll be able to look at your crappy part-time job and daydream about the great job that you do the other 50% of the time.

pj 17y ago

The thought that everything we do must be enjoyable is the wrong attitude. I think that is the attitude that has gotten us in trouble. There are a lot of things in life that we have to do that we don't enjoy doing. Taking certain pre-requisite courses is an example. I didn't like organic chemistry, but I did like the idea of being a doctor some day, so I had to take Organic Chemistry. The converse is also true, you can't have something just because you want it. Sometimes you have to work for things. You have to practice and try hard. The simple fact of the matter is, if you don't have the will power to say, "I will do these hard things I don't like doing because I want these other things later in life." Then you are probably on the wrong course or simply not cut out for it. We do have to make sacrifices and it sounds like that sacrifice for the OP is going to class, studying the material, and doing well -- even if he doesn't want to take that particular course.

aarongough 17y ago
I don't think that there's anything wrong with wanting to do only the things you enjoy. I would strongly disagree with the idea that doing so has gotten anyone in trouble. Granted that sometimes the things you enjoy entail doing additional things that you may not enjoy so much, but if you really enjoy what you are doing then mostly you will be able to justify this as part of the big picture. Personally I think that the idea that we all need to do things that make us money rather than the things we enjoy is what has made a lot of people over the years very unhappy. Imagine working a job you hate for your entire life because you think, or have been told, that it's all you can do. We live in a society that allows us to surpass squandering our lives this way, we should endeavor to do so whenever we can.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]

GHFigs 17y ago

I've found that thinking love/hate is not sufficiently granular for most problems and rarely suggestive of many solutions. It can be good for making very high level emotionally charged decisions like whether you want to even stay in school or not, but when it comes to implementing those decisions, you often need to be more specific about your feelings to figure out exactly what needs to change. There is a chart in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's classic Flow, that I've found enligtening. It shows the "flow channel", the desirable state where the activity seems friction-free, surrounded by anxiety on one side and boredom on the other. Most people don't think of activities this way, where the goal is a mean rather an an extreme. I've found that every instance of procrastination or avoidance in my life stems from anxiety or boredom irrespective of things like desire, enjoyment, or willpower, while all of the things I do get done are things that I don't feel much anxiety or boredom about, likewise irrespective of desire, enjoyment or willpower. (Those factors only seem to come into play with planning what to do, not in actually doing them.) So it follows that the way to get things done is to figure out whether the problem is anxiety or boredom and then do what you can to counterbalance it back towards the flow channel. If you're procrastinating on something because you find it boring, the way to become motivated is to make it more exciting. Add constraints, make it more challenging, tighten deadlines, expand scope, batch repetitive tasks, turn necessary goals into desirable ones, etc. If you're procrastinating on something because it makes you anxious, the way to become motivated is to make it less exciting. Remove constraints, reduce the challenge, loosen deadlines, break up tasks into small pieces, reduce the harm of mistakes, reduce risk, etc. What that means specifically depends on what bores you or causes anxiety and how much control you have over circumstances, but I think there is always something you can do on a practical and tactical level to bring any activity towards that channel where you don't have to force yourself into doing it.