How do you motivate yourself to make incremental progress?
Something that has always been tough for me is embracing incremental progress. I get bursts of productivity followed by time periods of inactivity. When I think about my shortcomings, they sometimes seem too large to overcome with this strategy, so I know I need incremental progress to get there. Reflecting on examples of incremental progress that I've made, they have all happened with a good amount of outside influence. For instance in sports and in school growing up, I was forced to go to practice or do homework by parents, etc.
Are there strategies for gaining motivation for big projects like getting in shape or completing a coding project--especially now that I don't have things like deadlines or authority figures forcing me to do these things? Or does it more come down to discipline?
Would love to hear everyone's thoughts!
Discipline is the biggest part of it. But here's a tip: try not to focus too much on the big picture. Shoveling away at a giant pile of gravel is going to seem way more daunting and hopeless if you keep stepping back to look at how big the pile of gravel is--instead, just focus on filling up the nearby wheelbarrow, which will hold a much smaller pile and gives you a more immediately achievable milestone to work toward.
This is basically what I've been doing for years now. I don't focus on the end goal, but the immediate step I need to take care of now and the one that will follow after. Before I know it, that gravel pile ends up disappearing on me!
I think a big part of it for me is that I focus too much on the big picture. I'm a PhD student, so I constantly get asked about my progress and plans for down the road. It would probably be better to ignore that for now and focus on smaller steps. Thanks!
It's still a good idea to have some kind of plan, it's just a matter of not focusing too much on the end goal. Another thing I've done that helps a lot is not thinking of my future plans as a road map, but a set of loose guidelines. It gives me something to work toward and has a general framework, but I'm not restricted to following a specific set of instructions and I'm free to branch off toward another area if I find that my original plans don't align well at all with the person I end up changing into.
Example: I went to college to be a music major. Then I hit a roadblock when I learned that you need to audition to get into the music department. Well, I wasn't nearly at the level needed to get in and didn't really feel motivated at all to practice several hours every day, so I figured I'd try, but that I'd work on my gen ed requirements in the meantime. In the process, I took a programming class as an alternative to a math class that I would've needed. I was immediately hooked, decided that it was a far better career field for me, and switched majors to CS immediately. While pursuing my CS degree, I also decided that I didn't care to get into research or anything really theory-heavy for my actual career path, and decided instead to focus on application development, but I never settled on whether I would do front-end or back-end, or whether I would work on web, mobile, or desktop applications, but I had a strong preference for back-end work on desktop applications. I ended up getting a job working on all parts of a web application and thoroughly enjoy it.
Throughout that entire experience, I allowed my plans to remain flexible and deviated quite a bit from my planned path to see what else was around, and in the process I ended up at a much more fulfilling place than I would have had I insisted on pushing myself along the path of music no matter what.
In your case, it's probably a good idea to have a general idea of some area that you want to get into, but it doesn't have to be concrete. Hell, you can just tell people "right now X looks like an okay choice, but I'm still evaluating my options and trying to find something that would be an ideal fit". It's true, it's non-committal, it shows that you're thinking about it, and it also shows that you're considering a career, not just a source of income. And as a side benefit, it gets you off the subject without extensive discomfort or it could even lead to some helpful recommendations.
(In other words, find your "music major" option to give you some sort of guideline, but give yourself the flexibility to explore and change course toward your "CS major" when you find it.)
I think this sort of mindset is tough for me. Ambiguity definitely makes me anxious. Hopefully, I can focus on the concrete short-term goals and not let long-term ambiguity discourage me.
I hear you. And I'm not saying it's an easy mindset to adopt. This actually took me quite some time to get used to. But it's been well worth it because I can, as you stated, focus on concrete short-term goals and not sweat the long-term goals so much.
Good luck to you in any case. I'm sure you'll end up doing well regardless of your approach :)
Thanks for the thoughtful insights!
To add on to the immediate goals thing, those goal don't necessarily have to be "Accomplish X."
If there's something I really am not motivated to do, I tend to set a goal to work on it for a certain amount of time. If I'm lucky, I will get invested and then I'll work much longer and get a lot done. At the worst, I've put in an hour on something, which is one more hour than I would have otherwise.
How old are you?
It's hard to understand change over time for a young person. As I've gotten older, I've seen how easy time slips away and putting in a small amount of effort each day can lead to huge progress in even short amounts of time (like a week or a month.) When I was younger, all I wanted was instant gratification.
Eventually you'll find what motivates you. For me, it's my wife. I want to be able to do good things for her so I make decisions based on that. I realized that my failings are my own fault, but my successes are equally my fault. I know if I'm putting in the effort, I'll get a result that I want. I know if I don't put in any effort, I'll be worse off than where I was before.
I imagine this will be different for everyone. I read a book called The Automatic Millionaire which is about a man who retired at age 55 with millions of dollars and two homes but only earned a median income. He did this by spending less money, certainly, but also making small changes to his life like paying slightly more on his mortgage and automatically saving money from his bank account each month.
Some more direct practical advice: make small goals and work on one thing at a time. I often get caught up in starting several projects at the same time and at first I love it, but it gets to be too much so I stop doing one and lose my motivation for the others. I'll also look at something from a big picture perspective when I should focus on what I need to do now.
For instance, I wanted to start a YouTube channel. I focused more on the ideas for the channel and writing multiple scripts and thinking of marketing more than just making the videos themselves. I made my list of things too long and become demotivated.
I like the tip of working on one thing at a time. Sometimes I feel torn is so many directions. I'm in my mid 20s, still trying to sort out where my career is going. Thanks for the advice!
Here's another tip. Don't wait for motivation. Just start doing whatever it is. Don't over think it. Even if you only do the thing for five minutes, you've done more than before you started. Most times once you get started, then the motivation comes to keep going.
I like this tip. Something that I tried is question why I don't "feel" like doing something. If the only reason I can come up with is "I don't wanna," then I tell myself I have to do it. It's amazing how many times I can't come up with a good reason for not doing something simple like the dishes/taking care of important work emails/going for a jog.
And it's incredibly rare to come back from a jog and think, "Man, I wish I hadn't gone for a jog." This applies to most other undesirable tasks.
The Paradox of Behavior Change and Motivation is Overvalued are a good place to start. Someone mentioned this author in a thread last week and his site is a treasure trove of scientifically backed information on how to live a better life in general.
The first article describes the tendency towards equilibrium in our mental processes and the need for 1% changes. The second article explains why environment is often more important than motivation as well as how to design a good one.
He offers 3 strategies:
I will have to think about this more. I'm going to brainstorm some ways I can implement some of these things. Thanks!
Consistency is key! Set yourself a schedule to do a your certain activity a day. When you do something regularly it becomes a habit and it is easy to make progress. And make sure to be consistent with your schedule, because when you take one day off, it leads to another day off, and another. So as long as you forces yourself to do something consistently in the beginning, you'll begin to make progress.
Consistency is definitely something I struggle with. I travel a lot and am involved in several organizations. It's hard to maintain consistency. I've tried to introduce a few weekly habits--things that I force myself to find time for in a given week.
Working on a project with a journal for progress will help. Progress can be hard to measure in respect to the end product, but keeping a small journal (just a few minutes of writing a day) can help to keep you motivated on the days you are having trouble keeping going. It's hard to work toward something bigger without keeping perspective in place.
Remember, whatever you work to accomplish, it all takes time.
Planning Prioritizing and Progress, or as I'd like to call them the 3 P's
1.Plan what you're gonna do daily and find those places where you can hope to improve or develop your skills
Prioritize as to what's more important. The thing with me is, I tend to have a hard time deciding what to do first and hence try to do it all at once which never really works
Progress, is, in my opinion, the most important one. It’s not what you actually accomplish as much as how much you feel you’ve accomplished that drives your sense of motivation.
Of course, there are many ways to go about it. Good luck !
Your last point is interesting. As a squandering PhD student, there are definitely days where I work hard and accomplish little. There's definitely a psychology to maintain motivation.
Dont let your dreams be dreams