HACKER Q&A
📣 codingclaws

What activities are you motivated to do?


What activities are you motivated to do?


  👤 sph Accepted Answer ✓
"Motivated to"? Nothing healthy.

Motivation and willpower are a mirage invented by self-help books and successful people that do not know the reason of their success. If you rely on motivation, you'll find that you are physiologically very motivated towards some things, like eating junk food, sitting on your arse, playing videogames and watching porn.

Motivation, habits, addiction, are all parts of the same mechanism. What you need is habits, and an environment that is conducive to those habits. Or external forces that push you towards your life goal.

I am not motivated to work 6 days a week on my startup, not to waste my days playing video games or having a healthy sleep schedule. I have, with a lot of pain, created habits around those, so it's easier to do the work that not. I cannot wake later than 8am now, so at 9am I'm at my desk. I have blocked distractions in the morning, so all I have to do is work. I am broke, so I keep at it. And slowly, I start to enjoy the routine. We all enjoy the routine, motivation is a short-term fix that inevitably always returns to the routine. You don't need it.

I hope this rant is useful in some ways, I didn't mean it to sound like that, but alas. I also have ADHD, so motivation to me is but a fleeting idea.


👤 muzani
Enjoying game dev a lot more now that I'm more experienced. Back as a teenager, it used to be a struggle with tools and techniques. Now I just pull up an old Android template I used for take home interviews and it's effortless to hack together games with it.

AI as a co-designer makes it more fun too. Somehow AI is capable of more humor, creativity, and wit than me. It's been doing most of the writing.

Now I just wish I had better artistic skill. I probably have enough, but I'm not at the age where I can spend 4 hours on a single scene.


👤 CM30
Virtually none of them at the moment. Burnout has been kinda common this year so far.

👤 Quinzel
I'm allergic to boredom and a sensation seeker, so motivated to do anything that gives me an exciting experience, it doesn't necessarily have to be a good experience, just has to allow me to anticipate feeling something.

I also like having money, so i'm generally motivated to work to get money, though I don't always feel motivated once i'm at work, I feel more obligated once i'm there.


👤 greyzor7
Lately, I've been marketing my product launch platform (https://microlaunch.net) a lot, so each time I can focus on building it I feel happy. Also motivated to go out for a run, and chill with friends.

The things I feel unmotivated about lately: social media, and administrative tasks


👤 nonrandomstring
Swimming in the (sometimes cold) sea. It's somehow addictive. Conversation

👤 interbased
Read, watch shows, programming, exercise, games, cleaning and organizing.

👤 constantinum
Photography, learning music theory(rabbit hole),cooking,running

👤 petabyt
Playing video games

👤 joshxyz
paying the bills? fuckin hell man it feels more like being held at gunpoint that being naturally inspired and motivated, but it works well for me.

when things are comfy and convenient i find myself slacking. having accountabilities and responsibilities forces me to perform and compete whether i like it or not. i hate it, a lot, but it keeps me alive. capitalism meets stockholm syndrome.


👤 jonkiddy
Reading, FIRST robotics, soccer

👤 billconan
drawing, coding