The only way to stay motivated is to be around people who are doing something great daily. You can't stay motivated if you are around people who are doing the same stuff daily.

Before learning to stay motivated, learn to not get demotivated. Things like your side projects can also demotivate you, trust me.

How to avoid getting demotivated?

1. If you are not able to figure out something, even after spending hours on it, then call it off for that day.

At first, you might think that how can you find the solution to a problem if you wouldn't spend more time on it, but that's not always the case. I'm saying it by experience that sometimes, you need to keep your mind off the problem. Start fresh the next day, with a different perspective towards the problem, and you might find a solution within minutes.

2. If someone tells you that you are in the wrong direction, don't just listen to them blindly.

There will be several people who'll tell you to follow a different path to achieve the same target like becoming a web developer. There can be infinite ways to achieve the same thing and most people don't understand that. Don't make yourself uncomfortable with what they say. Instead, just keep going if you feel like you are making progress. You can't lie to yourself, you know whether you are making progress or not. If yes then keep going, if not, then take some time to reconsider.

3. Never feel guilty about time wasted.

It happens to me many times. I play mobile games a lot(just one specifically called shadow fight arena). Sometimes, I think about it that I played that game for 2 hours last day, the precious time which I could've used to learn something or spend some time refactoring my old code. This generates a feeling of guilt and we don't feel like anything. Another day goes by doing nothing.

I'm slowly trying to get out of this by inculcating a thought that playing a game should make me happy and relaxed Instead of filling me with guilt.

4. Don't let your college marks decide what you can do.

I'll be honest here. I'm a below 6 pointer student who wants to learn more and more about how the web works. I want to learn how things work at a basic level. I don't just know React.js, I know what they do under the hood (almost and still learning).

You can't call yourself a web lover if you don't know how DNS works.

That's what I'm talking about, don't let my last sentence demotivate you. If you don't know how DNS works then learn it. This should be the attitude. If you don't have time right now, then make notes of what you need to learn and when. You will find yourself filled with motivation. You won't have time for the boring stuff.

How to stay motivated?

1. Read online articles/blogs and watch tutorials.

You need to join a community of developers around you. The best part of being a developer is to have the freedom of creating anything that could reach millions of users overnight. But obviously, that requires a lot of skills other than being a developer. But at least you can think start building things on your own.

You do know that Mark Zuckerberg made Facebook in his hostel room right?

Well, I'm not saying go out there and make another Facebook, but there's a lot of other things that you can try. Remember one thing, you can't make it perfect just on the first try.

If you knew success was a certainty, what would you attempt to do?

That's the beauty of life. So keep trying and keep building stuff.

2. Whatever you build, make sure you can show that to anyone.

A negative feeling can arise if you built something and now you cannot show that to someone. Keep your projects on the git and also showcase them on platforms like LinkedIn, in your blogs, on your website.

Also, make sure that the project you are showing is complete, otherwise, it'll leave a negative impact. You'll see that these things can boost your confidence. Don't make anything public until you are happy with that.

3. Always spend time on your old written code.

This might not sound that effective but it works for me. Instead of wasting time just sitting idle, I like to spend some time refactoring my personal projects, add new features, or bug fixing.

I am also making it a habit to spend some time on open source projects instead of just working on mine, that'll make me a really good developer.

4. Humans are social animal (Are you human?)

Don't feel like you can do much by ditching friends and utilizing that time to code. You are a social animal, enjoy your life dude and keep exploring things.

That's it for today. Have a good day devs. Let me know in the comments what else we can do to stay motivated and focused on our goal.

Keep exploring things...