Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to keep working on a project?

I don't really know how to tell you anything useful on this. A lot of my motivation seems to just be an intrinsic part of my personality. I don't generally have a hard time being motivated. I just love the process and act of building things.

Of course there are times when I hit the "schlep"[1] stuff, which is not as enjoyable. How I grind through that is just by reminding myself that it's inevitable and necessary, and that all the other hard work I put in will be worthless if I don't get this unpleasant stuff done and complete the project.

Lastly, and to be completely honest... as much as I enjoy building for the sake of building, I do also have financial goals. There are things I want to do, see, experience, etc., that require more money. And I see the projects I work on as a path to potentially being more wealthy than I am today. So while you may accuse me of being shallow, I do occasionally pick up an issue of Top Gear magazine, or Motor Trend, or whatever, and look at the cars I'd love to own one day, and remind myself "this is one of the reasons I work hard, and grind through the schleps". Or maybe it's a travel guide to some exotic locale I'd like to visit, or whatever.

And while it's (apparently) "politically incorrect" in this day and age to have, and openly acknowledge, a desire to attain significant wealth, I posit that there's nothing wrong with a drive to gain wealth, and to use that as a form of motivation.

So yeah, my motivation is a mixture of both intrinsic and extrinsic, but it's really more the former. I'd love building software even if I didn't get paid for it at all, and even if I weren't trying to build something to sell.

[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html

Your problem isn't motivation, it's not understanding that not all work is, or needs to be, pleasant, or intrinsically enjoyable.

Look at what your goal is: if the result isn't motivating, then the unpleasant work isn't the issue, rather your goal.

The biggest mistake I did when I was working on a reasonably bigger project is that I wanted all modules to be in there to Go Live, to the point I ended up fixing browser related bugs before I ship assuming users will hate the product if I don't.

I never ended up launching it and since then, I stuck to the real MVP, as in the smallest thing I could ship. This helped me launch 2 side projects and got insane confidence boost.

- Have something to be excited about. There is the rational reason to do something, but there is also something that is emotional and exciting about it. It could be about seeing your idea used by many people, or just the vision of building something real out there (which is mighty hard by itself). It could be even things that will happen later as a result of this project - may be it will open up new avenues for you to do other exciting things, live a different lifestyle, boost your confidence and so on. I call it the "emotional fingerprint" that we tend to get excited about. Identify the biggest 1-3 things that excite you greatly, even if they are really "embarrassing" to share with others. Keep them on the fore-front of your mind every day.

- Have a few people in your network or outside it who can care about either you or the project, and make sure you talk to them regularly. Your cheerleaders. Show them what you are doing, get their feedback, look for signals. It can feel like a waste of time as an engineer, but in my experience really helps me get outside my own head.

- See frustrations as learning. Think about the long haul. Is this just a one time project you're doing or do you want to be in it for the longer term, perhaps for multiple projects down the road? anything worthwhile you'll do will have frustrating or unexpected elements built in. How you deal with them also strengthens you for the long run.

One mental approach I apply is to treat each difficulty as a puzzle to be solved. Every time you solve one, you become better at solving similar puzzles in the future. It is tempting to want to know the answers in advance to everything. Forego that temptation and embrace "puzzle-solving" everyday to issues you have never encountered before. What I am implying is "gamifying" this whole process a little bit. If you have played frustrating puzzle games before, you can perhaps relate.

Just my 2 cents on this topic :)

Just work on a something every day. It can be small or big it doesn't matter just make progress. Over time you will see how much you have accomplished.

Instead of thinking that you have to write the entire billing functionality, think I just need to get an API token from the server today, fix a typo or whatever... and if you aren't feeling motivated to continue after after the small task be done for the day.

Personally, I like micro-rewards for getting little tasks done. Things like, spending some time on a side project after doing some house chores, or grabbing a brewski after doing taxes. Little things. It could help if it is compatible with your voice-in-head firmware.

Payment processors are awful to work with... and it's sometimes tricky to test with.

They really do make you question your desire to remain on this planet, let alone continue to work on it!

I've found that more documentation they provide just adds to the confusion and contradictions. Sometimes contacting support helps... more often than not, they'll provide you with a key ingredient that isn't even in the documentation!

(failing that, for 1.0 just go for a Paypal button)

I went the hard route and integrated Stripe from the get go, but am now planning to move to Paddle as the amount of work I have to do to enter invoices into my accountants system each month isn't worth it for what I'm making right now.

I set daily goals at the start of the day, really small ones and then by the end of the day, I complete at least one of those goals and then that's it. It might take 20 minutes to an hour to add a bit of code that will go into the final feature.

Then I mark that I did that task and keep track of my "streak".

That's the thing that keeps me going. My streak is 13 days now, since the beginning of the year on my current project. I'm not going to break it now. It's less about the project and more about the streak.

If you want it badly enough then just force it. The rewrite should only happen once.

Sometimes I'll re-read a book. Masters of Doom is motivational for me as one example.

Sometimes I'll take a long'ish break (weeks) and teach myself something new just purely for fun. Experiment with something, that may or may not relate to the project. I divert my brain to an enjoyable stretch of time, a vacation, to prepare it for the final forced crunch of work.

I recently blew off a month and did almost nothing, when I could have completed what I'm working on. I got to the 85% finished line and hit hard resistance mentally. Some of that is feeling exhausted (it can feel like it sneaks up on you all at once), a lot of it is arriving at a large batch of work that I really don't enjoy doing. Combine those two and your brain puts on a yellow vest and begins protesting the longer you persist.

I've found that after taking a break, controlled anger is extremely effective as a helper for a final push over the line. That is, getting pissed off about the situation of having allowed myself to lose momentum and burn time rather than finishing something that is ~85-90% done and could have already been completed if I had simply maintained a steady momentum. I direct that anger in a focused manner as a big punch at the project that puts me over the remaining hurdle/s. It gets me into a mindset where I can just grit my teeth and dig through whatever shit I have to get done. Then the final 2-3% is usually just basic clean-up on loose ends or polish, truly trivial work.

Some might suggest that anger is always a negative. I strongly disagree with that. I think it's highly useful when channeled properly (never at others, and never in a serious self-harm form) and so long as it's not a common occurance during a project. It's critical to differentiate between using anger to overcome a self-challenge you're certain that you want to overcome, versus working on something you don't actually want to do. And to be clear, I'm not talking about rage or anything so dramatic. Rather, an internal expression of: damnit, fuck this, I'm going to finish it and nothing is going to stop me (except in my head it's all capitalized).

I always try to remind myself that the thing I'm building, I really, really want to see it live. I want to see it exist in the world, to see other people get value out of it. I set out on the journey for a reason.

I have several techniques:

- Be kind to yourself

- Be comfortable with not finishing everything you need to do today

- Break down large tasks into smaller tasks

- I break down the small tasks using https://asana.com/

- Complete smaller tasks to gain motivation/momentum

- I try to use other smaller tasks (not related to the project) to build momentum

- Break up my day into time slices

  - Gym for 1 hour

  - Work for 1-2 hours

  - Lunch for 1 hour

  - Work for 1-2 hours

  - Some other activity for 1 hour

- You can use a time tracking of sorts. I've been trying https://clockify.me/

  - I use tags to indicate what I'm doing:

    - Relax

    - Play

    - Planning

    - Research

    - Programming

  - Breakfast

  - Reflection

  - Work

  - Gym

  - Social

You can do a half and half approach. Let the user know that they will be invoiced, and a representative will reach out to take their payment information. For example, if I was using Stripe (the payment processor I'm familiar with), I would setup my register button to just send me an email with data that I could then enter into Stripe manually, ie. name, email address, etc. I wouldn't include CC info in this because I wouldn't want to deal with compliance. Since you told them to expect a call and you're invoicing them you've got a good reason to call. If you go this route let the user use your product right away. The other cool thing about this approach is that you can also start to build a rapport with your clients, which pays dividends when you want to solicit feedback.

I find that motivation really spikes when you start seeing sales and money rolling in.

The only thing I've found that comes anywhere close to this is Adderall, and that has awful side effects.

I've been in several of these type of groups over the years, and they usually fail because people flake and no one calls them on it. I think we've finally gotten the formula right though. The main thing is that people who aren't doing their part will get a warning and get removed from the group if they don't take it to heart. We make it indirect....instead of calling someone on it directly, you tell someone else, and they address it with the person.

I could describe our whole system in more detail (there are a lot of little tweaks we've made), but the main thing that is important is that you have to think of it as a complex engine that needs fine tuning to keep "firing on all cylinders". Don't be shy about telling others what you need. But mostly, make sure that everyone is vigilant. If you flake on the tasks you are committing to, we can work with that. If you flake on monitoring others, you get a warning and if you keep doing it you are out.

One of the things we've found works well is to structure tasks so that getting started in the morning (or after a long break) is easy and -- if possible -- fun. That is, you never leave a task in a state where you have a long "warm up" period. Get it to a place where it is satisfying to work with before you put it down. This often means finishing up a major task, then starting a new one and just getting it going before you call it a day. And of course write some documentation (which could just be a todo list) before you stop work.

We're eventually planning on doing this in a bigger way (with a web app, etc), but for now we're open to bringing new people in if they are very VERY committed. Get in touch if you are interested (rjbrown at gmail). You need to be willing to use Skype video chat several times a day.

The best way to get experience is to do things, so given that no one is going to remember, might as well try to do it. Your successes won't be remembered along with your failures.

I've been in the same position. For me, if I'm working on a substantial project solo, one great source of motivation is when people are using it, giving me feedback, etc. So when you have actual usage, some momentum, it's (generally) easier to keep going. The more time goes by without actually releasing something, the easier it is to lose momentum.

Also, if you really don't like a provider, it's generally not worth your time to use them. You will end up spending some time maintaining in the future too and you will resent it, so probably better to find something that's good to work with.

Hopefully you're using Stripe (if you can) check it out if you haven't.

Also keep it simple in the beginning just handle the recurring payments, you can do cancellations, refunds manually in the beginning.

Another trick is to break down the task into as many subtasks as you can, and when you’re feeling obstinate about working, just get one small subtask done. It also helps you visualize the finiteness of the total pain you have to endure.

There’s basically no way to be intrinsically motivated about tedious, pointless-feeling work, but you can connect it causally to the overall success of your project, which presumably you do care about.

It's 99% 'perspiration', remember?

If you care about the outcome (whatever it is) then that should be enough 'motivation' to do the 99%. You're a professional, right?

If you want a 'purely motivational' project then do something that's simply that: games, writing/playing music, reading etc., where 'it doesn't matter'.

Instead of trying to 'find motivation', literally just sit down and start working out a little plan. Having a plan and a path forward might provide some clarity to the outcome, so you can 'see the light at the end'. I'll bet that you don't have trouble 'working on it' once you actually start 'working on it'.

It's like working out at the gym: once you are there, the workout is not so hard. It's just getting there that's sometimes tricky.

So just put one foot after the next with a little plan in mind and you'll be there in no time.