Re:How I stay motivated working on my long-term project
by justtart on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @02:10AM
(#24478336)
I enjoyed the article too.
It makes the assumption that the motivation is already there and he enjoys doing it, only is not seeing immediate feedback.
I think 3 years is kind of arbitrary and not to be taken literally. He's just saying that sometimes these projects take longer than expected to gain any traction
The thing about not being open to other opportunities reminds me of the idea of flow: You don't focus on getting into flow but you focus on avoiding distractions that would prevent you from getting there.
The other thing I liked was the somewhat non obvious advice to stay focused on your goal and not be open to other opportunities. This sank a lot of my projects over the years. Hot, exciting new idea beats familiar, hairy, in progress idea. But if you keep chopping and changing you'll never finish anything. There is a risk you ignore a really much better opportunity, so you can't do this 100%, but you do really strongly need to bias towards finishing what you started.
Lastly when I started on the project of teaching myself to write software more than half my life ago now, I hated it. It was alien and difficult and boring. If I'd quit after a month I would have not found my passion, and I would have missed out on a pretty great career.
Also, I would say learning to enjoy the gym took a lot more than a month.
So don't give up so soon, but also three years is a long time if you really are not enjoying what you're doing. Maybe something in between, based on how you feel about it.