Motivation

[I ate the lotus]

How do you motivate yourself to work (I mean real work, not checking forums or talking to webmasters on MSN)?

I give myself small targets (ones I can reach within a day) and give myself rewards based upon those targets, for instance today I bought myself an album from iTunes for spending 3 hours adding content...

[MarkB]

I work better if I can see an end to what I'm working on. If I have days of work to do, I feel less enthralled with it, if you know what I mean.

My work ethic is somewhat wanting most of the time, I have to admit :)

[moonshield]

i need no motivation :)... I think my motivation is the idea that some money could be around the corner.

[Joachim]

Going to my day job is one motivation.
Making money with doing something I like is another.
Saving for that once in a lifetime car is probably one of the biggest (shht) :cool:

[moonshield]

a super car?

[cameron]

Motivation is something I lack and need badly! My main motivation though, is to never have a job working for someone else.

[Shawn]

My motivation is knowing I want to take care of my soon to be fiance.

[moonshield]

congratulations

[Nintendo]

Knowing that for years to come, something I finish will rack in the cash with very little if any work being needed, aka Residual Income.

[mini]

It's really hard to get motivated if you earn nothing. Very very very hard indeed! However, once you see your first dollar then keep increasing, you can get motivated exponentially. I agree with Nintendo, residual income is very powerful.

[AndyH]

Money and achieving things.

[The New Guy]

I think there is long term motivation and short term motivation. Long term being the most powerful at the beginning of a project (when its a nice fluffy dream) and at the end (when the dream is being realized). The big motivators such as monitary gain and achievement are long term.

The problem occurs with how to motivate in the middle stages of developement, where your intial "dream" is a mess of complete and incomplete and the end looks like a big blur. This is where you need short term motivation, and by short I mean it could only be a day long, or it could be a week. The trick is goal setting theory (google it, i'm not going to explain the whole thing) where a person can obtain smaller amounts of achievement from smaller more managable goals.

So what do I do? I set goals for a project. First, some long term ones to put the project into perspective, and organize my short term ones from there. So a long term goal may be writing forum software. The short term goal would be: "Today I going to write a database abstraction layer". This may take me an hour or a couple, the idea isnt to organize your objectives around timeframes but to let timeframes evolve from the objectives. Timeframes make tasks more difficult because they add pressure which hurts the goal setting process.

Some keys:
Goal must be clear -> Timeframes are vague, make clear objectives
Goal must be challenging -> Challenge makes the reward more gratifing, however if it is to challenging you won't do it.
Goal must have feedback -> Since your the loan worker your going to have to do this yourself. Write down all your goals and check off the completed ones as you go along, it will help keep you on track and motivated.

Thats about it. As for practical tools, I code with something call php designer 2005 which has a nice todo list which I use and is right infront of me while I code. Very nice tool.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

TNG, I agree, have a target and then break it down into little chunks. Otherwise the end just seems too remote

[Westech]

Great post, newguy. I try to do something similar to this both in my web publishing work and my day job. I use a markerboard in both my home office and my "office-office" to list my long term goals and the steps needed to complete them. That way they're staring me in the face all day every day and I'm less inclined to waste time.

[chromate]

Motivation? A nice house with a huge garden. Learning to fly and owning a high performance airplane :) Wanting to be one of those people that post on sitepoint in one of those "how much do you make per month" threads, saying "I earn $xx,xxx and only work 3 hours a day".

I got over halfway there not so long ago, and then Google hits and it feels like I have to start all over again. Motivation to do that is hard to build up especially knowing how fragile it all is now.

But it's motivating to know that it IS possible. I've seen it first hand and I'm better placed now to avoid mistakes I made the first time around.

Now all I need is an idea that satisfies all the criteria I have in my head. That will motivate me to work my guts out. I feel less inclined to work hard on something that's more risky.

In the end, my main motivation is money (!) and some day providing a useful service to thousands of people that they wouldn't want to be without.

BTW, Shawn, Congrats!

[MarkB]

These days I have no motivation; by the time I get home from work, I feel like crawling straight into bed.

The only reason I want to succeed is so my wife and I can live quiet, peacefull lives without ever having to worry about money. So, I guess my motivation is happiness.

[aj8]

I think motivation really only appears when you start seeing real fruits of your labour. Once you reach a point of critical mass finding motivation is easier. Having said that, everyone has an 'off day' now and then.

A.

[Joachim]

Odd, I really though I replied to this thread yesterday.

Thepoorman, something in the lines of
Ford cobra, db7, lotus exige, sl, e-type, ... in no particular
order of preference :D

[chromate]

I'd go for the cobra and then the e-type :)

[Joachim]

Another thing that motivates me is that I would like to find some free
time to go fishing again.

Water, nature, quiet, all factors that are good for my mental state after a day
of non stop phones and a million lines of code.

At least for me it is, some find fishing just it the opposite ;-)

[Joachim]

Yeah the Cobra still is one of the most stunning cars available, the e-type
of course has a very nice history.

[thebillionaire]

I make no money therefore I have little motivation, I have actually read books on motivations, but it doesn't help one bit, everyone has to develop there own, but you cant always wait for motivation, when im down and just feel like playing games, I say this to my self

"I wise man is a master of his mind, a fool is his slave" (some quote by some dude)

Meaning if you are a fool you will give into these temptations, a wise man does what will benifit him. Its still kinda hard to do that, so I just listen to music ignore my mind (temptation to play games) and work. Plus I have to disagree with some of you guys who say that setting time is bad, for me its good, being in school, I start my work the day before its due, so I pretty have learned to work under pressure.

I do the same for exams, set time and topic for each topic, and time, the time forces me keep me on track, other wise I just wonder off taking "breaks" for hours.
Hope that helped.

[moonshield]

um just get me the new M6 and I will be happy.

BMW is the ONLY car i buy :)

[thebillionaire]

I want to be able to afford an Alien Ware gaming pc, 4.0ghz, 4gb ram, and every thing config. The total came up to like $25 000. I also want a workstation with dual monitors.

Cars I want:

Maybach 62
Rolls Royce Phantom
Bentle
Bugatti Veyron

Money Im earning, $5 a week - spent on lunch

[Joachim]

Lol Thebillionaire,

I though I was already over my head with a DB7 till you came along,
A 1 million dollar car ;-)

Well at $5 a week that makes it about 3846 years, hehe.

[Nintendo]

Well at $5 a week that makes it about 3846 years, hehe.

Than another billion years for inflation!

[James]

I got over halfway there not so long ago, and then Google hits and it feels like I have to start all over again.
Ouch, that really stinks.


Odd, I really though I replied to this thread yesterday.
So did I...

An RX7, or RX8, or Skyline, or pimped-out Corolla. Nice body kit on it, great metallic dark greyish-blue (around #4B5A69, or maybe a bit darker, like #38424C). Yeah.... I think that'd be nice. Right now my motivation is just that I enjoy what I do.

And yes, Congrats to Shawn.

[MarkB]

Yes, belated congrats to Shawn - be sure to let us know when you actually ARE engaged though. It's not good enough to just talk about it! :p

[Joachim]

Than another billion years for inflation!


Yeah, not to mention that after 3846 years that car is going to
be a collectors item and very expensive ;-)

[chromate]

It's not good enough to just talk about it! :p

Yeah. She might say "no" but I didn't wanna say anything :) heh

[James]

Let's not doubt him.