I haven't been blogging on the site for very long, but since I've been blogging I've been coming up with some cool ideas that I think would be fun to work on or would be cool as a tool etc.
The problem is, is that I find it difficult to find the motivation to work on any projects in my own time.
I'm finding it hard to find that spark ✨✨ of inspiration that I used to get when thinking about projects.
What is procrastination?
Procrastination is basically your brain not wanting to do anything too difficult - it wants that hit of dopamine, it's an addict. It will try and get it the fastest way it knows how, and in a world where I can load an app and look at funny pictures, it's really not suprising that it's so easy to fall ino weeks of unproductive activity.
There are so many easy ditractions
I could make a massive list of easy ways that my brain can create a good feeling, one easy way - games, another? Funny cat videos. I could go on all day about stupid things that can release good feelings.
If you think of certain activities they can give a release of dopamine, but it takes a while to get there - as I say the brain can be lazy and want the fastest way to feel happy constantly and because your brain is lazy you in turn become lazy and want that drug hit.
Discipline
How you are supposed to combat this is to create a schedule and manage your time effectively, say to yourself that for example 6-7 pm is self learning time, and then after that it's game time etc.
So what's stopping you?
I think currently what is stopping me is just exhaustion and burn out, let me explain my typical week:
Monday:
5:00 - get up and get to the gym, get some physical exercise in before work
8:30 - get to work
12:00 - (lunch) read a book listen to podcasts, whatever.
13:00 - Back to work
17:00 - Walk 40 minutes home
17:00 - 21:00 - personal time
Tuesday:
5:00 - get up and get to the gym, get some physical exercise in before work
8:30 - get to work
12:00 - (lunch) read a book listen to podcasts, whatever.
13:00 - Back to work
17:00 - Walk 40 minutes home
17:00 - 21:00 - personal time
Wednesday:
7:00 - get up
7:50 - walk 40 minutes to work
8:30 - get to work
12:00 - (lunch) read a book listen to podcasts, whatever.
13:00 - Back to work
17:00 - Walk 40 minutes home
17:00 - 21:00 - personal time
Thursday:
5:00 - get up and get to the gym, get some physical exercise in before work
8:30 - get to work
12:00 - (lunch) read a book listen to podcasts, whatever.
13:00 - Back to work
17:00 - Walk 40 minutes home
17:00 - 21:00 - personal time
Friday:
5:00 - get up and get to the gym, get some physical exercise in before work
8:30 - get to work
12:00 - (lunch) read a book listen to podcasts, whatever.
13:00 - Back to work
17:00 - Walk 40 minutes home
17:00 - 21:00 - personal time
Saturday/Sunday - complete personal time.
So what do you do with all that free time?
🎸 - I play guitar
📚 - I read books
🥙 - I eat food
🗣 - Meet up with friends
In general I try and wind down before it all starts again.
but recently one of my favourite hobbies 💻 coding has just fallen by the wayside. I'm really not happy about it.
So what can you do?
There are slices of time where I'm not doing anything - just watching endless youtube videos or reading tweets or doing something I shouldn't be doing. This is the time I need to capture, to make it my own once more.
I have so many ideas, and it's a shame that none of them are seeing the light of day (in my opinion).
Why are you writing this?
To keep myself acountable! I like writing things like this ina public space it makes things feel more official, like if I don't do what I've said I'd do then I'm letting someone somewhere down so please if you read this keep me ccountable to my actions.
Signing off.....
Top comments (8)
Hi Mark! You seem to be quite disciplined and organized already. Although, finding motivation or inspiration can be hard, especially after burn-out. What do you think is the real reason why you are not as motivated as before?
I think tow things mainly.
Now that I've got a new job (im about 3 months in) I'm mostly trying to get to a good state again now that I have more time to myself again, it's pretty refreshing!
Thanks for the detailed response! I'm happy to read that you got a better job, as you said, that's pretty refreshing.
Now, getting too bogged down with details and analyzing all options is a common pitfall for us developers. At our daily jobs, we usually have the product owner and stakeholders take care of the high-level decision making for the project. But, when we develop something entirely by our selves, we have to do a lot more than just programming.
Is this problem something you would like to spend some time and effort into fixing?
Yeah, it's definitely something I feel like I should work on
Great! Would you like me to help you with that?
Sure if you feel that you can help me in one way or another, I'm not sure if you can dm me on dev.to, if you can reach out! If not feel free to message me on twitter: twitter.com/joro550
The only thing that helps me stay motivated is money or stay in a good team. I work for money and motivation is not a problem but in the personal projects I do, i almost always fail. The ones I didn't, it was because I was very happy with the team.
I never finish a project if I take it by my own and I work alone.
Yeah - I've found that if your not doing something for money it is difficult to feel the same level of energy for a sustained period of time, because you just want to play with other things all the time