[simonpurdon10]

You just gotta find something you love. If you're passionate about what you're studying, you'll look forward to doing it.

Internal motivation basically = being passionate about something.

Everyone's passionate about something.

[amateurdev]

Completely agree with this! One thing I like to do is break any task to smaller pieces and then achieve those goals. There are some times when I'm really excited about something and can work days without any distraction (both work and personal projects) and it doesn't feel exhausting at all. On the other hand, when it is something uninteresting, writing even 10 lines of code takes half a day to me. These are the times when I need the micro-goals the most. Just achieving these small milestones itself gets me on a roll to complete the bigger tasks.

One other big thing is making it a schedule. I used to hate working out and cut corners sometimes. But then I decided to go everyday for 1 week, then 2 weeks and checked that day off on the calendar. Looking at all checkmarks made me slightly uncomfortable when I felt like not going one day. Now it just doesn't feel like work waking up at 5am to work out. Its just become a habit. I've kind of removed the emotion of passion or excitement and do it because I have to do it. As dull as it sounds, looking occasionally in the mirror makes me happy to see what I've achieved, but I never think about that when I have to wake up.

[ck425]

I disagree with this. Passion is the outcome of ability and achievement not the cause. If you wait to be passionate about what you need to do you'll be waiting a long time. You need to do the hard work and then the passion follows, not the other way around.

[burntoutfire]

> Passion is the outcome of ability and achievement not the cause.

I doubt that's the case. For one, there's plenty of people who are excellent at their jobs, but who dislike them. Also, there's plenty of people who are passionate about things that they are terrible at.

[outime]

This is it - simple, not easy. You can lie to yourself for a while but not forever. Motivation comes when you do something you like doing.