Little rules like "I have to finish this one thing before I can go check Twitter" work well for me. The trick is actually determining what that one thing is and what finishing it means. It's easy to lose focus when something tedious comes up, but if you define your end goal ahead of time, you can remind yourself to not lose focus and just get to the finish line. A lot of the time, that will get me in the groove and I'll just keep going. At that point I'm playing with house money so I'm allowed to take a break at any point, and yet I plow on.
It also really helps if you genuinely really want to get the thing done out of personal care and perhaps some passion and/or obsession.
I am a 17 year old programmer (C/C++ mostly). I enjoy learning about Graphics Programming, but also have a keen interest to learn Security, Networking, and Machine Learning.
I feel sometimes making those rules can be hard for a lot of people. Hard to push yourself to do it honestly. I experienced not being able to push myself hard enough to meet deadlines especially with something like school where I just wasn't interested with what I was doing. However like you said, if somebody is really interested in doing something then it is far easier to get it done. I also find it easier to do something when I am doing it with other people, collaborating is so much fun, just hard to get people to do it along with you I have found. (Not many people I know program, so not many people really want to learn it or try)
Little rules like "I have to finish this one thing before I can go check Twitter" work well for me. The trick is actually determining what that one thing is and what finishing it means. It's easy to lose focus when something tedious comes up, but if you define your end goal ahead of time, you can remind yourself to not lose focus and just get to the finish line. A lot of the time, that will get me in the groove and I'll just keep going. At that point I'm playing with house money so I'm allowed to take a break at any point, and yet I plow on.
It also really helps if you genuinely really want to get the thing done out of personal care and perhaps some passion and/or obsession.
I feel sometimes making those rules can be hard for a lot of people. Hard to push yourself to do it honestly. I experienced not being able to push myself hard enough to meet deadlines especially with something like school where I just wasn't interested with what I was doing. However like you said, if somebody is really interested in doing something then it is far easier to get it done. I also find it easier to do something when I am doing it with other people, collaborating is so much fun, just hard to get people to do it along with you I have found. (Not many people I know program, so not many people really want to learn it or try)
Oh yeah. I definitely agree with your perspective on the topic too.