[HN Gopher] Community Is Motivation on Tap
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Community Is Motivation on Tap
Author : lunw
Score : 100 points
Date : 2025-06-25 04:13 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (alanwu.xyz)
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| kixiQu wrote:
| A fun idea, but I'd like to read someone writing not about the
| concept, but about their experience trying to consciously shape
| their participation in community to help them achieve their
| goals. How well does that work in practice? What's awkward about
| it, and what goes smoothly? When does it break down? Which
| interests map well onto this approach?
| jeanlucas wrote:
| Been "doing" community for 10 years from technical to
| leadership communities (focused on Brazilian CTOs). I can
| answer the question above if you'd like to know.
|
| I don't have much written, but I think about it daily.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| I have a simple question. Is it worth building a community?
| Outside of being paid to do it, is it worth doing? Seems like
| more trouble than it's worth to me.
| jeanlucas wrote:
| when it's a community of practice, yeah, I think it
| absolutely is worth it.
|
| it's where I learn the most. Talking to people facing
| similar challenges, hearing how they approach things,
| learning new tech, and new businesses models. It also
| builds networking and creates opportunities.
|
| That said, I don't think everyone needs to build community.
| Most people won't, and that's fine; but just participating
| makes (and helping the organizer whenever you can) is good
| simplify wrote:
| What are the most common issue/mistakes that make communities
| fizzle out?
| jeanlucas wrote:
| Communities are basically promises: you create
| expectations, and they usually fizzle out when that
| commitment isn't met. Same applies to events.
|
| Most people think structure or rules keep a community
| alive, but they are just tools. What keeps communities
| alive is just being there for the users and in the channel
| they are used to talk and be active (whatsapp in my case)
|
| Also when leading a community it is important to step back.
| Let others speak/ to leave them be. It is easy to
| "monopolize the mic" but the real magic happens when others
| start owning the space. Your role as a community organizer
| is to create a stage for others.
|
| if you ever moderated an IRC channel, it's the same energy:
| keep the lights on, be present, but don't over-control :^)
| ethan_smith wrote:
| Check out "Atomic Habits" by James Clear - he documents
| precisely this approach with numerous case studies of how
| community accountability transformed people's habits across
| various domains.
| j7ake wrote:
| Also suggests 100% WFH is not as good as some weekly face to face
| time if part of the goal is to keep people motivated and
| disciplined
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| WFH does not mean you can't have face to face in today's age
| octo888 wrote:
| Come on let's not twist the meaning of phrases (assuming
| you're saying a video call is "face to face")
| Kiro wrote:
| "Face to face" is a protected term that means meeting IRL.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| I feel like I grind harder if anything when I work from home.
| Just because you aren't physically in the same place doesn't
| mean there isn't community.
|
| I do occasionally do onsites that are valuable for community
| building so perhaps it's more 98% wfh
| HPsquared wrote:
| Honestly I go to the office and it's just full of people
| chattering about non-work things and generally not doing work.
| It's demotivating. WFH days I'm far more focused and
| productive.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| Also open floor plans suck
| leoc wrote:
| Obligatory Schwarzenegger:
|
| "The kind of people who train alongside you in a gym makes a
| difference. If you are surrounded by people who are serious and
| train with a lot of intensity, it's easier for you to do the same
| thing. But it can be pretty hard to really blast your muscles
| while the people around you are just going through the motions.
| That is why good bodybuilders tend to congregate in certain gyms.
| By having the example of other serious bodybuilders constantly in
| front of you, you will train that much harder.
|
| That is what made Joe Gold's original gym in Venice, California
| such a great place--a small gym with just enough equipment, but
| where you would constantly be rubbing shoulders with the great
| bodybuilders against whom I had the privilege of competing-like
| Franco Columbu, Ed Corney, Dave Draper, Robby Robinson, Frank
| Zane, Sergio Oliva, and Ken Waller. Nowadays, it's rare to find
| that many champions in the same place, but if you aren't sharing
| the gym floor with great bodybuilders like Flex Wheeler, Shawn
| Ray, Nasser El Sonbaty, or Dorian Yates, it can be very
| motivating if there are pictures or posters of these individuals
| on the walls or championship trophies displayed.
|
| In 1980, training at World Gym for my final Mr. Olympia
| competition, I showed up at the gym at seven o'clock one morning
| to work out and stepped out on the sundeck for a moment. Suddenly
| the sun came through the clouds. It was so beautiful I lost all
| my motivation to train. I thought maybe I would go to the beach
| instead. I came up with every excuse in the book-the most
| persuasive being that I had trained hard the day before with the
| powerful German bodybuilder Jusup Wilkosz, so I could lay back
| today--but then I heard weights being clanged together inside the
| gym and I saw Wilkosz working his abs, Ken Waller doing
| shoulders, veins standing out all over his upper body, Franco
| Columbu blasting away, benching more than 400 pounts, Samir
| Bannout punishing his biceps with heavy Curls. Everywhere I
| looked there was some kind of hard, sweaty training going on, and
| I knew that I couldn't afford not to train if I was going to
| compete against these champions. Their example sucked me in, and
| now I was looking forward to working, anticipating the pleasure
| of pitting my muscles against heavy iron. By the end of that
| session I had the best pump I could imagine, and an almost wasted
| morning had turned into one of the best workouts of my life. If I
| hadn't been there at World Gym, with those other bodybuilders to
| inspire and motivate me, I doubt that day would have ended up
| being so productive.
|
| Even today, when I'm training for other reason, such as getting
| into top shape for a movie role, or just trying to stay in shape,
| I absorb energy from people working out around me. That's why I
| still like to go to gyms where bodybuilders are training for
| competition. Even today, after all this time, it still inspires
| me."
|
| p. 87 in the 1999 edition of /The New Encyclopedia of Modern
| Bodybuilding/, by Schwarzenegger and Bill Dobbins.
| http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0684857219/
| DaveZale wrote:
| very nice. that captures it.
|
| But it's the same deal with the folks you work with, run with,
| climb mountains with.
|
| In fact, in a recent Pump Club newsletter, he said coworkers
| can make you or break you. Especially if they're sub par.
|
| So sure, maybe individuality is overrated. Sure, community
| helps.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| That's the case for everything. I remember training in a boxing
| gym with some pros. Everything was on a level so much higher
| than I had seen before and I raised my own level a ton until I
| had to realize that my natural speed and strength was just not
| sufficient to really make it.
|
| I think that's also why children from high achieving families
| usually do better in adult life. What they view as "normal" is
| just a higher standard than what most children see. I remember
| being friends with the son of the local (big) factory owner.
| They communicated with their children on a totally different
| level than what I was used to with my parents. When they
| entered professional life they had a better understanding of
| the business world than most of us will ever achieve.
| DaveZale wrote:
| I like to follow Arnold Schwazenegger's Pump Club free
| newsletter, but not because I am a body builder.
|
| You're right, it's a community where you get solid no-nonsense
| advice, like, ditch the supplements except creatine and maybe
| whey protein or vegetable protein.
|
| At the same time, he emphasizes building desired habits, to the
| point where thinking is not required anymore for that purpose. He
| even goes as far as saying your own brain can be your worst
| enemy, it wants you to be comfortable.
|
| If I say any more, I'd be overthinking it. It's a good
| motivational community for fitness in general. Just like you
| said, specialty communities for specialist advice. But the google
| news feed I get just scrambles my brains. They've profiled me for
| 30+ years, and they feed me nonsense now, because I answered many
| of those questions many years ago. AI is not good at forgetting.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Note: many neurospicy brains _do not_ get the thing where
| something happens on "automatic". If you've tried to "build a
| habit" and never got to the "now it's automatic" stage, don't
| beat yourself up about it. AFAIK, we have to rely on patterns
| and explicit attention and reinforcement ("everyday I do this,
| I have a good day, so now I've got more motivation every day to
| do it")
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| For me it's often that once a habit gets automatic, I forget
| about it and stop doing it. My habits are mostly formed by
| things I fear and think about a lot like getting out of shape
| and fat, going broke or dying lonely.
| sandspar wrote:
| This seems implausible. People with mild mental illnesses are
| still animals. All animals can be conditioned. When you leave
| a building, do you exit through the door or the window? I
| assume the door.
| pjerem wrote:
| Except it's harder and harder the more you age. And it's
| true for animals too.
| mirabar wrote:
| I don't know enough about the science of what you reply to,
| but neurodivergence is not a mental illness, so not sure
| what you're implying here. I'd also wager people leave
| rooms by the door because it is easier, so I don't think
| that requires a habit or conditioning.
| p_l wrote:
| Conditioning does not equal "habit". You can train a lot of
| things to the level of muscle memory (like I always check
| seat belts before moving and avoid taking them off, or how
| I mentally recall coordinated turns even when turning while
| walking), but it's a completely different set of behaviours
| - or at least totally different difficulty level - when it
| comes to "habits" that take longer time and aren't linked
| to directly executed skills - think like making a habit of
| training every few days to get more fit, or even habit of
| checking email at the start of work day.
| visarga wrote:
| > AI is not good at forgetting.
|
| There is also a related feeling of fatigue with our own digital
| archives - photos, old writings. We like to save them but not
| to look at them. They evoke powerful and somewhat uncomfortable
| feelings. And once we write something down, or take a photo of
| it, it gets out of our head, we don't care about it as much.
| The simple presence of the archive changes how we think.
| DaveZale wrote:
| Same here! I don't want to be reminded of an passing interest
| that I had ten years ago when I was researching a topic
| briefly, either, which is what a newsfeed might offer up. And
| I completely agree about old photos. Sometimes I get a new
| used phone just to start fresh. My stack of old used phones
| is always there if I want to see the old photos. But I've
| never looked.
|
| Same with email contacts in gmail. Someone I briefly
| corresponded with about business 15 years ago will pop up as
| an email address gets typed ahead automatically and I will
| just smh and type over it. It's good to just move on to new
| things sometimes. Forget unpleasant jobs in the past.
| aeblyve wrote:
| Also applicable to living alone vs. living with someone else imo.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I feel like I am constantly looking for relevant communities but
| I find it really really hard to find anything. Maybe I live in a
| too small city or something.
|
| I suspect that my current social media addiction tendencies is a
| compensation for not finding good communities for my interests.
| santana16 wrote:
| You are 100% right. Finding a good one is _incredibly_ hard.
| Usually requires a capable and dedicated person to run (which
| are very hard to come by).
| worldsayshi wrote:
| > Usually requires a capable and dedicated person to run
|
| This makes me think that there's some friction to this that
| could be alleviated. Like having more of and more diverse
| third places.
|
| I used to be part of a number of theatre groups. Those groups
| did often have dedicated and capable singular people that
| made it work. But other times it was more of a group effort.
| Often the most dedicated people arose to the occasion once
| the context was there, because they had a bit more intrinsic
| motivation for what we did than others. And in some of the
| cases we got a lot of help from various institutions for
| admin and getting a place to practice, which certainly
| lowered the friction.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The hardest, best way is to build it yourself.
| mmcromp wrote:
| I'm not so sure. You'd still need to figure out how to find
| and attract the people you want to be around while keeping
| the people you don't want out. Itd probably be easier to keep
| trying different avenues until you find a group you vibe with
| beshrkayali wrote:
| I think the author is overselling the benefits of communities a
| bit. Sure, groups can boost motivation through approval-seeking
| and availability bias, but they can also trap you in groupthink
| or misaligned priorities. I'd say the Brawl Stars grind example
| (despite author disliking the game) isn't really a win.
|
| Communities can hijack your goals, pulling you toward their
| agenda instead of yours. Overreliance on them risks eroding self-
| discipline when the group fades.
|
| Instead, define your goals clearly and use communities sparingly,
| for knowledge exchange, not validation. Relying on communities
| too much can leave you stuck in an echo chamber, chasing approval
| over purpose.
| santana16 wrote:
| Sometimes moving somewhere is better than not moving at all.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| I don't disagree with the benefits of community.
|
| But the thing he describes with StarCraft Vs whatever the
| brainrot game is can be explained differently. I think the author
| likes the idea of liking StarCraft, but doesn't actually like
| playing it. Brainrot on the other hand is engineered to be
| addictive. Surely if he LIKED playing StarCraft he wouldn't have
| to be searching for motivation. Personally, I know that in my
| life I only need motivation for the things I don't like. The
| things I like I just naturally do a lot.
|
| One insight that I've had is that people often don't really
| understand what they like and don't like. How many times have you
| heard "oh I wanna be a writer" "ok what have you written?" "I
| haven't written anything yet because I'm not a writer yet." These
| people like the idea of having achieved some end result, but they
| don't enjoy the process, and aren't even aware that the two are
| different.
|
| In fact some times I think the word "to like" isn't that useful
| as it doesn't map well into anything in the mind. I think perhaps
| we should differentiate between the ideas of "things I planned to
| do", "things that I did", and "things that when I do make me feel
| such and such internally". If you re read the post with these
| ideas in mind, it makes a lot more sense what's happening: the
| author planned to do one thing and did another. You no longer
| need to invoke strange ideas like "I need community to give me
| the motivation to do the thing I already like doing because
| without motivation I do things I don't like".
| misschresser wrote:
| My experience is similar enough to the author's though. I was a
| Masters level dueler in starcraft2 and had a huge passion for
| the game, and a huge part of that was that the community was
| exciting at that time. I participated in the subreddit, I wrote
| articles, I casted games on the side. My friends played the
| game. I eventually had a go/no-go moment where I could've kept
| pouring myself into the community, potentially worked with
| folks like Artosis and Tasteless, etc.
|
| But all signals were that the community was dwindling and
| blizzard wasn't properly invested in the game, which lowered my
| motivation a lot over time. So my decision was No.
| HPsquared wrote:
| There's liking the process, then there's liking the overall
| experience (including end result). Like doing exercise or
| whatever.
| xeonmc wrote:
| > But the thing he describes with StarCraft Vs whatever the
| brainrot game is can be explained differently.
|
| Author clearly hasn't watched Artosis stream before.
|
| (Context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbaT7zPskPM)
| vorgol wrote:
| But be sure to join a non-toxic community.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| > "Seeking approval is in our genes."
|
| Sure, but so is seeking food. Not controlling one's desire to
| seek food leads to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc. Not
| moderating one's desire for applause leads to similar issues,
| more mental neurosis than physical disabilities, but equally
| harmful in the long run.
|
| > "Looking at successful athletes, founders, musicians, game
| speedrunners, or overachievers in any area, they seem to have
| unlimited motivation to do loads of tedious work or practice."
|
| That's also part of many people's marketing and promotion
| strategies: "I grind all the time". In the real world, random
| chance, parental resources, or other 'non-self-made-person'
| factors often play significant roles in apparent success stories.
| Since people are seeking approval, and the overall society
| celebrates the 'up-by-your-bootstraps' narrative, people will
| sell this narrative because they want that approval - addiction
| to the applause button.
|
| I've seem that desperation for approval that seems rather common
| in the social influencer world before - in the eyes of a junkie
| hunting their next fix.
|
| This isn't to say some level of community isn't important and
| useful - taking a course in a technical subject where you show up
| at an appointed time with other people and then present your
| project at the end of the course, that's all good and motivating
| - but if the only goal is to get more applause, that's mental
| illness.
| em-bee wrote:
| i always felt that it didn't matter what job i had on as long as
| i was part of a good team where we could support and motivate
| each other even if the tasks themselves were boring. in fact a
| good team is the only thing i find motivating at all. no work is
| interesting if i have to do it all by myself or of i have to
| fight teammates or office politics.
| divan wrote:
| It's well studied topic in psychology of motivation. In the main
| theory of human motivation, Self-Determination Theory (SDT), it's
| one of the three main predictors of motivation change. It's
| called "relatedness" - the need to feel connected to others
| (others two are autonomy and competence). These three function
| almost like a slider that you can increase or decrease in order
| to influence yours(or others) motivation in your particular
| domain or situation. It's one of the life-changing theories in
| psychology. Similar to "game theory" you don't need to get deep
| into it, but rather learn the fundamentals to start seeing world
| (mostly motivation/wellbeing of you and others) differently.
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