[HN Gopher] Managing my motivation as a solo dev
___________________________________________________________________
Managing my motivation as a solo dev
Author : marcusbuffett
Score : 237 points
Date : 2024-06-05 16:01 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mbuffett.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mbuffett.com)
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Great article and tips. I've heard all of these before separately
| of course but having them all in one article makes it nice. As I
| was reading each one, I thought, these all sound like solutions
| (or at least helpful tips) I've heard for people who have ADHD,
| and lo and behold, I see the last section.
| mey wrote:
| I wish the tip at the end was, seek treatment for ADD/ADHD, or
| any other issues that impact your quality of life. It isn't a
| failure to do so and can make things better in the long run.
| tnolet wrote:
| Sounds very familiar. Was a solo dev for at least 2 years before
| being able to form a team around my product. One nit, one
| confirm:
|
| - I don't agree with the guiltiness on zero days. There is just
| no way to stay sane if you don't truly enjoy zero days. You will
| burn your candle.
|
| - I 1000% agree that any form of customer validation makes your
| day. Could be a Stripe ping, a mention on Twitter or here. Set up
| services like https://f5bot.com/. Google alerts is useless.
|
| My totally failed / crickets initial launch here on HN is
| findable via submissions in my bio, anno 2018. Three upvotes.
| dewey wrote:
| Another great service for mentions is https://syften.com/, also
| supports Twitter but is paid.
| marcusbuffett wrote:
| This is the one I use, should have mentioned in the article
| tnolet wrote:
| Yeah. We use that too now but still have my F5 account going
| marcusbuffett wrote:
| Yeah there's some nuance to the zero days thing. If it's a day
| I've already set aside that's fine, but I've found myself
| unable to decide in the moment "not feeling it today, this will
| be a zero day", and be okay with that emotionally. Unless I've
| shipped a massive feature recently or something, then it's
| okay. Motivation is a mess, is what I'm getting at :)
|
| Haha I share in your frustration with the crickets launch,
| anything I post here that I actually care about people seeing,
| gets shuttled off to the shadow realm, then stuff like this
| that's just musing tends to hit the front page.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| For what it's worth, I feel the exact same way about zero
| days. Intellectually I know I deserve them, but something
| inside me just refuses to stop thinking "I need to work now"
| until I've had some kind of "minimum viable productivity" to
| show. But interestingly as soon as I do, I can absolutely
| disconnect.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Yeah, I know that feeling well. The day after completing a
| massive thing, I'm super happy to have a zero day, and just
| enjoy the feeling of having accomplished something big. Other
| days, not so much.
| POiNTx wrote:
| Customer validation is also super easy to get.
|
| The easiest way I've found is to include a simple Google Form
| in the product. It's super rewarding to get feedback from
| users. Ask simple questions like: "What's your favorite thing
| about X", "What's your least favorite thing about X", "How did
| you learn about X" and "Anything else you wanted to let me
| know?". And make all the questions optional so there's a
| minimal amount of friction.
| Zambyte wrote:
| I think these tips are really helpful for me working on a team
| but remotely also.
| pizzalife wrote:
| This reminds me of when me and some friends were selling "IRC
| bouncers" aka IRC VPNs around 2005. Whenever we got a new
| customer ($1 SMS payment) there would be an automatic
| announcement in our internal IRC channel.
|
| Even though it wasn't a lot of money, it was a very rewarding
| feeling.
| thesurlydev wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I especially liked the leaving tasks 90%
| done. This is motivation for someone who has 1000 unfinished side
| projects to finish one tomorrow :)
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| I found that one interesting too. I do something similar but
| different: I keep a bunch of "warmup tasks" around, basically
| easy, low-risk (usually coding) tasks that are 90% likely to be
| quick motivational boosts to get started in the morning. NGL
| this has occasionally backfired and something simple turned out
| to be not so simple at all :-)
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > NGL this has occasionally backfired and something simple
| turned out to be not so simple at all :-)
|
| In my case it often backfires in the form of a sudden
| decision, right or wrong, that yesterday-me made a bunch of
| bad decisions about something so they all need to be
| revisited. Before I know it, the thing that was 90% complete
| is now 60% complete.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > I try to leave a task 90% finished at the end of a working
| session. It feels slightly worse than closing out the work, but
| it makes starting the next day 10x easier.
|
| Yeah, this one works incredibly well for me as well, and wasn't
| at all obvious until I saw it for the first time a few years
| ago.
| Xeamek wrote:
| The 'leave things undone' tip sounds really good, definitely will
| try.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I never liked it because I like to go home without any nagging
| problems, and intentionally not think about work until the next
| day. It's not always possible, but I try to wrap up loose ends
| to the extent possible by the end of each day.
| ed wrote:
| Personally I try to finish a feature, but leave QA for the
| morning. This way my first task is "copy and paste this
| command into terminal" or "use X feature in the app." Because
| there's always something that needs tweaking before it's
| really done, this naturally pulls me into flow the next day.
| It's a great trick!
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Leaving yourself a clear idea of what is next to do would be
| similarly effective IMHO. Finish the task you are on then
| open up the next task, maybe open up the right file in your
| editor then log off for the evening.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, I just meant I like to leave work feeling like I've
| reached a "natural" stopping point. Something finished, or
| at least the path to finishing is clear.
|
| What I dislike is when I'm stumped, puzzling over a bug or
| the correct implementation for a complicated feature. It's
| not always possible to resolve these situations by the end
| of the work day and they tend to nag at me through the
| evening. I don't like that and try to avoid it, rather than
| deliberately create this feeling ("leave things undone") as
| some sort of trick for motivation.
| bfuller wrote:
| One of my professors would always leave his pc set to the
| last move of klondike so he would return to work every day
| with a "win"
| ezekg wrote:
| > Leave tasks unfinished
|
| I also do this. I learned that if I leave a failing test for
| myself in the morning, I'll think about it on and off and jump
| right in next session without wasting time on HN or YT for an
| hour or 2 in the mornings. Sometimes this ends up causing me to
| work a little bit late, trying to make sure I actually have a
| failing test written for the problem (sometimes I have an issue
| without an accompanying test yet), but it's worth the extra
| effort/time. A failing test gives me something 100% actionable to
| jump into in the morning, as opposed to leaving e.g. a feature
| half written which can have an ambiguous starting point in terms
| of jumping back into it. I can't recommend this enough.
| marcusbuffett wrote:
| I love this, I'm going to start doing this. It'll help me
| actually start writing tests too lol
| tnolet wrote:
| I was super in the other camp. Could not sleep if something
| wasn't finished. Especially for coding. For marketing I found a
| (good) blog post can take a couple of days.
| ezekg wrote:
| I ebb and flow. Sometimes the failed test consumes me and I
| end up staying up late after the family goes to bed to solve
| it. :)
|
| It kind of flows into the author's other point, "if I've got
| it, use it."
| unshavedyak wrote:
| I'm similar, but for me it's i can't sleep if i don't
| _understand_ the issue. Once i understand it enough that i
| 've either fixed it in my head, or i'm confident i can fix it
| with the available knowledge, then it doesn't bother me.
|
| "Understand it in my head" is often a good stopping point
| too. Because if i actually go and fix it, i may find out i
| was wrong and spend even more time re-analyzing the issue to
| reach a new understanding.
| kahmeal wrote:
| This entire thread is an epiphany for me and I can vouch
| your bit as something I share as well.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I used to get into loops with that - I thought I understood
| something, then I'd try to implement it and hit a corner
| case, or even a caveat would come to my mind, and suddenly
| my understanding is crashing. I developed anxiety around
| this, because thinking and rethinking would mean I could
| spend days without anything to show for it (other than a
| thousand lines of semi-coherent ramblings in an Org Mode
| file). I started to lean towards taking things simple and
| direct, solving them more by feel than explicit analysis,
| in order to create a bedrock of something I could then
| iteratively improve or rewrite, _without having to keep the
| entire problem in my head at all times_.
| dugmartin wrote:
| I've posted about this here before but the thing I do it type
| out a single easy thing I need to do directly in the code so it
| breaks the syntax. Then the next day I can read the note,
| delete or comment it out to fix the syntax and then implement
| the thing. It is a good dopamine boost right out of the gate.
| chainingsolid wrote:
| I use this same trick, to ensure I resume right where I left
| off. Works great! Also helps me jump right back in, don't
| have to go looking for a problem/rabbit hole.
| rnoorda wrote:
| I once heard this advice given as "park facing downhill." I
| find it difficult to not finish up before I stop working, but
| it helps me get started in the morning to jump into a nearly-
| complete task.
| djcannabiz wrote:
| Ive heard a similar idea, from Hemingway. "Learned never to
| empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was
| still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it
| refill at night from the springs that fed it. I always worked
| until I had something done, and I always stopped when I knew
| what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of
| going on the next day." -- Ernest Hemmingway"
|
| I really agree, and I also thinks it can be helpful to do
| something similar when taking breaks (have lunch/take a walk
| while leaving a failing test).
| maddynator wrote:
| Does anyone knows if there are any instructions on how do you
| configure the money bot?
| marcusbuffett wrote:
| Basically just setup a discord webhook, and most languages will
| have a discord client you can use. Just when you get a
| subscription webhook event from stripe/apple/google, send a
| notification to that webhook
| oglop wrote:
| Step one; log on
|
| Step two; feel sad
|
| Step three; hate your life choices
|
| Step 4 repeat
| hamasho wrote:
| Thanks for the tip! I'll try leaving a task unfinished to start
| the next day with a small win. As a remote dev, I struggle to be
| productive all day. My company trusts me and gives me lots of
| flexibility, which sometimes allows me to procrastinate for days,
| leading to self-blaming and anxiety. I know starting the day in a
| good mood makes the rest of the day easier. Kicking off with a
| small victory definitely helps my productivity!
| ravenstine wrote:
| While I'm not exactly sure what "solo dev" means for the author
| in terms of intent, I believe that the need to manage motivation
| is usually a sign that what one is doing is at least somewhat
| off-course from the ideal of the individual. In simpler terms, if
| you are struggling to be motivated for something, you can
| certainly try to change _yourself_ , but it can be at least as
| reasonable to change that _something_.
|
| I learned this about myself a few years ago when I quit my job to
| build a compact piece of wearable hardware that measures
| metabolism through breath in real time. Even though I was burning
| through my savings, I spent close to a year working on this thing
| day in and day out. I had so many different "responsibilities" on
| my project and so many things to learn that motivation was never
| an issue, and I did finish a working device in the end. This is
| coming from someone who has dealt with motivational issues many
| times. That also wasn't the first time I quit my job to work on a
| project, though previous projects often ended early when I lost
| the motivation. At first, I thought this was a sign of a problem
| with myself, but in retrospect I think it's good that I lost
| motivation. Those ideas weren't that great and I wasn't as
| engaged in them, and it's likely I just would have wasted more
| time and money on them had I not acknowledged the writing on the
| wall.
|
| In fairness, this outlook is easy to have when you aren't doing
| something for income. To some extent, we do have to manage
| motivation for day jobs. I can't honestly say that I'd be coding
| enterprise applications if I wasn't getting paid handsomely to do
| that. Even though I am paid, part of motivation is having a
| mission that's important to you, and it's easy to lose sight of
| your mission if you've been paid a regular salary for quite some
| time.
|
| The author's "leave tasks unfinished" strategy plays into this
| principle at a very small level, but I think recognizing a
| greater ambition and keeping it in your consciousness can be
| important as well. A lot of people find the motivation to work
| harder and longer when they have kids, for instance. Since I
| don't have kids, I've found that regularly coming back to
| investing and retirement planning has been a good motivator for
| my day job because I get enjoyment out of making my money work
| for me; I loosely visualize what I want my life to be like in 20
| years from now and strategize how to get there based on my
| current trajectory. I don't think about it most days, but
| revisiting this every few weeks reminds me why my day job is
| important. For others, perhaps owning a house and converting the
| garage to an art studio would be a goal to motivate one through
| their day job.
|
| In short, I think motivation is more a form of measure than a
| virtue in and of itself. It can tell you whether you've lost
| sight of ambition or if what you're doing just isn't that great.
| "Hacks" will only get you so far.
|
| That said, a "hack" that works for me is to just keep reminding
| myself to "keep up the pace." Even if I barely accomplish
| anything in a day, as long as I accomplish a minuscule thing on a
| daily basis, my frequency of accomplishment stays roughly the
| same. Going too long not really getting anything done is when
| motivating yourself to jump back in the game gets very difficult.
| marcusbuffett wrote:
| Yeah I think there's definitely something to this. I've had
| periods of time working at companies that I wasn't aligned
| with, where motivation was virtually unreachable.
|
| That said even if you're working on something you love, there
| will be weeks where the work just isn't fun, and that's where
| this stuff comes in. I love the project I work on now, a chess
| improvement site, but sometimes I need to take a week to move
| cloud providers, or deal with App Store review, or work on
| marketing. Can't always be fun even if the overall project is
| directionally aligned.
| imvetri wrote:
| I pick weights over my head. It strenghthens the inner voice
| stronger, and it tells me, this gives me stronger mind voice,
| calm pace. slow and steady
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| IMO one shouldn't rely on motivation to do things.
|
| You don't need to be motivated to do things. You can do things
| even though they suck. There'll be good days when motivation is
| there to cheer you on, but that fucker is the ultimate fair
| weather friend, so there will also be days when it's a slog and
| motivation isn't even picking up your calls.
|
| It's a complete misconception of human psychology that motivation
| precedes action. It's the other way around. Act first, become
| motivated later. That day you wake up full of motivation and fly
| out of bed and there's eye of the tiger and you're running up and
| down stairs airboxing in sweatpants, that day isn't ever coming.
|
| I think the notion that one needs motivation to do things comes
| from the educational space, where there's a lot of talk about
| motivating students to do this or that, and somehow this has been
| internalized into a notion that this is how we also operate
| ourselves, that we somehow need to bribe or intice ourselves to
| do the things we want to be doing, which when you think about it,
| doesn't really make sense.
| thefaux wrote:
| "Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and
| get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a
| bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not
| going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out
| of the process; they come out of the work itself." -- Chuck
| Close
|
| Close is a complicated person but the quote holds up.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Showing up and getting to work is a great mantra for people
| who already have traction. For people that aren't, that's a
| recipe for burnout, as you need space and time to keep
| pushing in the face of uncertain returns.
| divan wrote:
| > It's a complete misconception of human psychology that
| motivation precedes action.
|
| It's not a misconception, it's the definition of motivation.
|
| The misconception is using the word "motivation" only for
| intrinsic motivation. If you have a gun pointed at your head,
| you'll be quite motivated to do whatever the person holding the
| gun tells you. External motivation can be extremely powerful,
| it just doesn't last long.
|
| > Act first, become motivated later.
|
| You're right. You need some external motivation to start
| "acting first". There are four types of external motivation
| (from more external to more internal) - fully external,
| introjected, identified, internal. Rewards and punishments are
| the first (external), rewards/punishments "in your head" (aka
| image of your parents telling you to do homework or you don't
| get TV time) are the second (introjected), part of your
| identity ("I'm Muslim, thus have to wear hijab") - third
| (identified), and "I truly believe I have to do something" is
| fourth (internal). Internal type of external motivation differs
| from intrinsic motivation (which is defined as "acting because
| I enjoy the process", and you can truly believe you have to do
| something but not enjoy it).
|
| Discipline and self-discipline are somewhere between
| introjected and internal types, but it's essentially a codename
| for external motivation nevertheless.
|
| In many cases you really want to instill intrinsic motivation
| in kids/athletes/employees/etc. But you need to "act first" and
| repetitively link it to the positive emotions - and that's
| where external motivation (and discipline) can be used
| strategically to create intrinsic one. Unfortunately a lot of
| people/fields/disciplines get stuck in the external reward
| systems and don't use it strategically.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| This is all fine modelling, but doesn't have much bearing on
| the experience of being human. It's a description, and
| describing something (regardless of which words you use) does
| not change its nature.
|
| Motivation, in the sense of "I feel a desire to perform an
| act I deem to align with what I want to do although it will
| bring me immediate-term discomfort", that type of motivation,
| whatever you call it, does not precede prior success in that
| activity; that type of motivation, whatever you call it, will
| go away in the face of hardships and struggles; that type of
| motivation, whatever you call it, is not necessary to perform
| the task at hand.
| jasode wrote:
| _> , that type of motivation, whatever you call it, does
| not precede prior success in that activity; that type of
| motivation, whatever you call it, will go away in the face
| of hardships and struggles; that type of motivation,
| whatever you call it, is not necessary to perform the task
| at hand._
|
| I didn't downvote but I wanted to comment that your
| explanation doesn't work for a lot of "unmotivated" people.
| _It just moves the difficulty /mystery to a different set
| of words in an attempt to describe it._
|
| E.g. _" How do I get that intitial
| urge?/trigger?/spark?/agitation? ... to start the activity
| that creates post-activity motivation?"_
|
| Which of course, the answer always ultimately ends up with
| a variation of ... _" You Just Need To Start"_. Ah yes,
| "just start".
|
| And thus, we circle back to the same Mt Everest of
| difficulty for a lot of unmotivated people. They're still
| stuck and can't get started.
|
| I think the issue is that there are well-meaning people who
| honestly think they're "not motivated" and then "just force
| themselves to get started on acting anyway". Now, being in
| the groove of acting can then become the self-reinforcing
| "motivation". They then think this personal experience of
| cause-&-effect of acting-precedes-motivation in their mind
| can be transferred to other people. But it does not work on
| a lot of unmotivated people. So, those who are still
| struggling look for any mental hacks that might work better
| than _" just get started instead of waiting for
| motivation"_.
| divan wrote:
| > "I feel a desire to perform an act I deem to align with
| what I want to do although it will bring me immediate-term
| discomfort"
|
| It's an _internal type_ of "extrinsic motivation", right.
|
| > will go away in the face of hardships and struggles
|
| Yes, and this is true for all types of extrinsic
| motivation.
|
| > doesn't precede the success
|
| Well, that's where things get interesting. There are three
| main factors that influence motivation - autonomy,
| competence and relatedness.
|
| Autonomy - perception of your actions being connected to
| your own values/beliefs/desires. Competence - perception of
| your actions being connected to the growth or achievement.
| Relatedness - perception of your actions bringing closer to
| the people you care about.
|
| Those 4 types of extrinsic motivation go mostly on the
| scale of decreasing autonomy. And it's important to say
| that all types of motivation have slightly different
| natures and can work simultaneously, just one of those will
| dominate.
|
| So you are probably right saying that the internal type of
| extrinsic motivation doesn't require prior success. But,
| once you start doing it, the perception of success
| (whatever that means in a given context) will greatly
| contribute to shifting your dominant motivation either
| closer to the intrinsic motivation (i.e. you'll start
| enjoying) or towards amotivation (opposite extreme side).
|
| Perception of success is mostly a "competence" part. That's
| how the coach might choose the right level of challenge for
| the athlete, to keep their motivation growing (or at least
| not falling). And if you really want to build intrinsic
| motivation, you absolutely need it.
|
| And yes, not every task require intrinsic motivation. But
| it would be also true to say, that every task will benefit
| greatly if people performing it are intrinsically
| motivated. There are two main reasons: efficiency and...
| people happiness.
|
| An intrinsically motivated person will require less
| pressure/incentives, will keep doing the task amid
| hardships. Which directly translates into economic value.
| It also directly linked to the feeling of wellbeing and
| vitality (aka happiness). It might not be very important
| for whoever needs task to be done, but a society where
| autonomy is inhibited and extrinsic motivation is
| dominating is _very_ different from society with high level
| of autonomy. It 's like, people are just happier.
| ipsento606 wrote:
| > that type of motivation, whatever you call it, is not
| necessary to perform the task at hand.
|
| and on what basis have you determined that the article is
| about "that type" of motivation, as opposed to the other
| type which you acknowledge is necessary to actually do
| anything?
| loa_in_ wrote:
| It's more of a failing of modern world to not cultivate this
| kind of motivation than a misconception.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| If you can't do anything without feeling stoked to do it,
| there's just so much stuff you're never going to be able to
| do. Doing things that are uncomfortable and unappealing is
| such an important life skill.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I believe a task without motivation is pointless. If you are
| not motivated but is doing it anyway, it already has innate
| motivation, you just may not admit it is.
|
| Not motivated to pay your bills? You do it anyways because not
| getting services cut off is actually the motivation, or that "I
| always pay up" is motivating you
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I find that sometimes there is just no motivation, there's even
| a big reluctance. It's very weird how or why this happens now
| and then. Maybe it is a natural protection mechanism kicking
| in, or maybe it is just a chemical imbalance of hormones
| involved in the reward system.
|
| 'Just do it' (tm) does not work in those cases.
|
| After a while i just google 'how to get out of a rut' and that
| works after some undefined amount of wasted time.
|
| Another trick to fall back onto, is changing jobs.
| nottommo wrote:
| I don't really understand this line of thinking, but maybe we
| have different definitions of motivation. If you are not using
| motivation to do things what is the reason you to do things?
|
| For me anything I do is because I am motivated to do it.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Isn't it possible, even common, to seek an outcome, but not
| feel inclined to do the thing that takes you toward that
| outcome? I don't think there's anyone who doesn't want a fit
| body, yet to borrow a phrase, "nobody wants to lift no heavy-
| ass weights"
| artemavv wrote:
| Has anyone tried FocusMate or similar services? I have not used
| it myself but I think it may be useful to overcome
| procrastination. However, I doubt that having a random
| collaborators (a new one for each session) could do much for my
| motivation. I would prefer to keep collaborating with the same
| person for a longer period - a week or a month, to get better
| accountability
| hu3 wrote:
| I haven't yet but I'm contemplating streaming work on Twitch /
| Youtube.
| gs17 wrote:
| > For example, the Money Bots, which pop up every time someone
| subscribes.
|
| Imagine not getting that message for a long time. Some people
| might say "that's encouragement to work harder so we get
| subscribers!", others "no one likes it, I should give up". It
| feels like this is much more powerful if you're already
| motivated.
| residentraspber wrote:
| I completely agree! The company I'm currently working on is
| pretty cyclical such that we get a bunch of new activity
| towards the middle of each month and nothing at the beginning
| or end. This leads to our notifications to go wild sometimes
| making us super happy then trailing off and making us worry
| other times.
| LZ_Khan wrote:
| This is awesome, thank you. I feel like some of these tips could
| be substantial research areas in psychology in the future (like
| first go from nothing -> work rather than reddit -> work)
| mpalmer wrote:
| In my experience it's always challenging for people who struggle
| with focus and motivation to have conversations about it with
| people who don't have those issues, even when everyone involved
| means well.
|
| Unless someone has experienced both dynamics, it's _very_ hard
| for each to put themselves in the shoes of the other, because we
| 're talking about brain chemistry.
|
| No one with severe ADHD symptoms really knows what it's like to
| have a calm mind for an entire day, let alone most days (and what
| that means for one's career and social life). They can reason
| that such a thing is possible, but that's different from really
| grasping the experience.
|
| Same for the other way around - you can reason that ADHD is a
| real and often debilitating condition because you see its
| effects, but you still might have trouble believing they're not
| also just a little lazy.
| mpalmer wrote:
| Very good post. A lot of it rings true with my own experience and
| it seems like you've found a lot of good ways to work with what
| you've got, instead of around or through it.
|
| I also like "addressing the pain" - a bit too much. I seek out
| pain just to build tools that address it, because that's almost
| always more fun than the task itself.
|
| If someone paid me just to build things that improve people's
| personal workflows I'd take the job in a second.
| kahmeal wrote:
| Sounds like a great personality type for a platform engineer..
| mpalmer wrote:
| Yeah I agree, something like that. Honestly though I think
| it's more than that, I like building "toys" that are fun to
| use (and help with productive work). I don't think anyone's
| hiring toymakers, I might need to go solo myself if I'm
| determined.
|
| And of course my deep fear is I'd find that perfect job and
| nothing about my habits would change.
| franczesko wrote:
| 'Some days when I'm not getting anything done, I've got this
| lingering guilt that I'm having a "zero day"'
|
| I had this and after many years of treating myself that way, I
| treat myself kindly. It's a toxic approach and the easiest way to
| burnout. It's OK not to do anything.
| SeriousM wrote:
| > Do nothing > I get sucked into high-tech Skinner Boxes all the
| time. Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, etc. The best way I've found to
| get out of this is to do it in two steps. First I go from Reddit
| to doing nothing, then I get to work. > Going straight from
| Reddit to focused work is very hard, but doing nothing is much
| easier, and eventually your brain calms down and it doesn't feel
| nearly as hard to start writing some code. > I really mean doing
| nothing; I'll just sit in front of my screen for a few minutes
| and as if by magic, the consumption-fueled dopamine-overload fog
| will lift, and I can get excited about creation and problem-
| solving again.
|
| Exactly that. I guess the hardest part is to close the browser
| tab of YT/HN/...
| oars wrote:
| Useful tips, thanks for sharing.
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