Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself?

Re:Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself? by allendoerfer on Tuesday November 24, 2015 @11:07PM (#10625279)

By avoiding triggers, that demotivate you. I see myself as a stupid machine, which behaves like it does in certain situations. If you want change in the long term, you have to change the situation and preconditions instead of trying to reprogram the machine, that will follow. Exercise, eat healthy, sleep enough, see enough sunlight, do what you like. If you have a setback, try to find out, how it started and try to avoid that situation, don't try to master it.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself? by insoluble on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @01:44AM (#10625737)

> change the situation and preconditions instead of trying to reprogram the machine

Kudos on recognising the prevalence of this phenomenon. When people are running in a reactionary mode, trying to reprogram the system is asking for failure. Just like with a black-box program, the input parameters need to be changed if you want the output to change. Your environment (including objects, TODO lists, people, emails, texts, location, food, and drugs) constitutes the input parameters. The environment must be changed for the output to change. If you forget to change your environment after recognising a problem with the output, then you fail to make a lasting change in the system. Essentially, your environment is a part of the extended you that you can pretty easily "reprogram".

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Re:Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself? by allendoerfer on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @11:49AM (#10628042)

Exactly. Also, if you are successful in altering your "extended you" your inner you will also change. E.g. if you want to become good at tests, you have to set the environment to be better at tests, once you have done that, you will become better at tests, but you will also be more likely to do more of these tests with your initial success behind you and feel more confident etc. making you actually better beyond the environment you created.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself? by insoluble on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @12:47PM (#10628409)

> better beyond the environment you created

That sounds like an interesting approach to life: Improve your environment; watch yourself improve; then repeat. It's like a big optimisation problem slowly working its way toward the maximum. It's like a personal singularity.

Sometimes I spend so much time in my head that I forget to change my environment. It would be nice if our best thoughts could somehow be put into effect more quickly without necessarily interrupting other planned activities. I guess that's where self-control and sequential execution come in. At the same time, the original plans may have become invalid.

Sometimes after you change your environment, it's like you have to re-compile the kernel before you can run the program you were initially planning to run. The trick is in not losing state information during that recompiling process. Sometimes writing cookies (aka, notes) can help here. Conversely, some changes are so big (or time-consuming) that your whole plan needs to be re-wired.

They say that teaching is one of the best ways to learn. My experience seems to confirm this advice. Perhaps when you go and explain something to someone else, not only do you organise and solidify the understanding in your own mind, but since you pull something out of your brain and stick it to the extended you (and beyond), that knowledge can take on a life of its own in the outer world. Your very awareness that the knowledge has been transmitted to the outer world seems to have a strengthening effect in your "inner you". It's as if the outer "awareness" links back to hidden parts of the inner you, as were it virtual dendrites connecting your brain to the collective consciousness.

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