[sgentle]

Here's the problem, as I see it: who is your manager? Because a manager is normally paid a lot of money to help you be productive. It's a hard job, the kind people get degrees in and work for decades at before they can do it well.

If you're trying to work for yourself, then your manager is you. You're giving yourself a very difficult job, a job that you're trying to do at the same time as your creative work (and, if I'm not wrong, all of that while still working 9-5, so 3 jobs total). You may not even realise it, but you are a manager at the moment. Not knowing that doesn't stop you from being a manager, it just makes you a bad manager. An absentee boss.

Here is some evidence from your own words that tells me you're crying out for good management:

"As soon as I understand the basics of X, I lose interest. After I had managed to open a very simple lock, I stopped practicing." <-- This is classic lack of perspective - a manager needs to keep focus on the big picture, to give direction and focus to the work being done. Without that, you end up just doing whatever's in front of you, whether or not it's useful.

"Actually, (graded) university projects are the only projects I've finished in my life. Why do I need grades to motivate me?" <-- Because grades can be very motivating. A good manager understands that people aren't robots. You need to have your work structured in a way that makes you want to do it. At university you get tasks divided into small packages, each properly structured with a clearly defined goal and scope, steps to achieve the goal, and a metric for measuring your success at the end. Can you say the same for the work you set yourself?

"It's typical for me to open 40-something tabs of news stories, just to skim through them, without reading a single one in detail" <-- Have you considered that you do this because you're interacting with a very simple manager-bot? "Hey, HN", you say, "give me something to do". Well, HN will give you stuff to do, with a (small) reward for a clearly defined action.

Here's my suggestion for you: Be a manager. Set aside an amount of time each day to work as your manager. Ask yourself about your goals, figure out what you need to excel at those goals, and make sure that you get what you need. Is your work structured the right way? Is what you're doing now working? If you can't figure out what to do next as a manager, go learn. Read a book or online article about management to get ideas. But, mostly, just make sure you actually do it.

Your trade, if you want to be a self-motivated creator of worthwhile things, is both creation and management. You have tools and skills and time invested in the former. Invest in the latter too.

[twink]

First of all, thanks for the helpful input.

> Here's my suggestion for you: Be a manager. Set aside an amount of time each day to work as your manager. Ask yourself about your goals, figure out what you need to excel at those goals, and make sure that you get what you need. Is your work structured the right way? Is what you're doing now working? If you can't figure out what to do next as a manager, go learn. Read a book or online article about management to get ideas. But, mostly, just make sure you actually do it.

It's easy to find blah-blah blog posts and books written by self-proclaimed life advisors, usually with very low information density (which makes it impossible for me to read carefully). Can you recommend any particular material?

[sgentle]

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey is a pretty seminal personal management book. It's my top recommendation in terms of "foundational" material. It's not got much in the way of practical tools, but the ideas are applicable everywhere.

I would recommend Drive by Dan Pink if you're interested in learning more about creative motivation. It's pretty short, and actually very well summarised here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is very good programmer-specific management material. They cite a lot of work benchmarking the productivity of different workplaces, so it's very "x is good, x is bad".

Jim Collins' Good to Great is an examination of businesses that succeed vs fail, and the attributes that get them there, it's essentially an extended summary of a longitudinal study he and his team did of businesses that outperformed the stock market by a high factor over 10 years. It's more leadership than management, but still very useful.

One that I haven't read yet (damn my stupidly big reading list) but recommend on reputation alone is First, Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. Here's a summary: http://www.slideshare.net/gregcrouch/executive-summary-first...

I share your frustration about blah-blah blog posts. With the exception of First, Break All The Rules (which I haven't read yet) and 7 Habits (which I forgive because it's so damn good), the books I mention are based on actual research which is cited in the book, not just some dude going "I think this because I know stuff". Because they're books for busy people, they have summaries and bolded sections and callout boxes too. :)

Overall, though, I would caution you to not put the cart before the horse. There are a thousand books on management that could teach you something new, but it will all just go on the big pile of irrelevant information unless you actually need it. You won't unless you're actively trying to manage. If you start by spending that time you'll be much better placed to contextualise the knowledge and, therefore, actually benefit from it.

[prknight]

Barbara Sher - Refuse to choose. It's book about people similar to you.

Also, if you work well with a particular extrinsic structure (and enjoy it), why not leverage that. did you enjoy the uni projects that were for grades? Why not create the same type of conditions. All motivation is ultimately intrinsic anyway.