[dtran]

>Working solo has its difficulties. For one, my income is somewhat tied to my productivity, and my productivity highly correlates to my state of mind.

Since going back to being primarily a maker after organizing my days around being a manager[1], and being an avid runner, I've redefined my relationship with "motivation" in a way that can be summed up succinctly by author Brad Stulberg: "You don't need to feel good to get going. You need to get going to feel good." I know that I am long-term very motivated, but day to day or hour to hour, "motivation" is a tricky word, because my energy and creativity waxes/wanes.

Agree with the author that structure is the most important thing for me to work around this. Even though makers dream of an open schedule, on the days where I'm off my usual routine, it's really tough to prioritize all the many things always on my plate. It's even tougher trying to decide to peel myself away from work to go for a run that I know will help me focus better after. Making the decision can be emotionally and mentally taxing, whereas if I rely on the default that I just go out for a run as soon as I wake up, the rest of the day just flows from that without the decision fatigue. Time-blocking or even just very simple structure like the OP has has been really effective for me. This includes a hard stop time each day even if it feels like I'm on a roll— my younger self would often borrow against my future energy, and that seemed to rarely work out in the medium-to-long term.

> This is combined with a lack of co-workers. Comrades in the trenches, if you will. And finally there's the ability to not do anything, which can be quite nebulous and dangerous if not managed.

For anyone who is a solo-creator struggling with this, "body-doubling" is a term from the ADHD/neurodivergent community that simply means "doing a task in the presence of another person". Surprisingly, they don't have to be working on the same task to help you feel like you have "comrades in the trenches". If you're interested, check out Flow Club in my bio.

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

[mettamage]

You don’t think yourself in another emotional state, you act yourself into one (act as in you do stuff not act as in acting like an actor).

This is what I found combatting my social anxiety by approaching people on the street. Even after a decade of doing it, I am still as socially anxious as ever but simply giving some genuine compliments to a few fellow pedestrians loosens me up after half an hour (in Europe).

[sph]

Good advice. Re: body doubling, I think I would benefit a lot from that, but I hate having a webcam turned on all day with strangers. Or even a microphone. I feel these body doubling apps focus too much on neurodivergent extroverts, and it's a damn shame.

Honestly, if I need strangers around, I'd rather work in a coffee shop, but ideally I just want something no more intrusive than an IRC chat to shoot the shit while the code is compiling.

Still crossing my fingers for body doubling that less intrusive.

[mklepaczewski]

Body doubling isn't only for neurodivergent extroverts. I'm an example of a neurodivergent introvert who needs body doubling to do more than 2-3 hours of work per day. I understand what you mean, though.

The problem with working from a coffee shop is that your strength and motivation to go there must come from you. You must get up, leave your apartment, go to the coffee shop, and decide to work there. For chronic procrastinators, it's rather tricky. A person like that needs enough motivation to do it but not enough to work alone.

Shameless plug - you can try us (https://workmode.net/). However silly it sounds, we provide body doubling as a service. Try the demo session - no registration is required, and it lasts from 15 minutes to several hours.

Some features that might convince you to finally give body doubling a shot:

  - you connect with our employee (aka productivity partner), not a random stranger,
  - you always connect with the same productivity partner,
  - all sessions are 1-on-1. It's just you and your productivity partner,
  - you don't have to enable your camera. We don't rely on you being our body double. We're happy as long as text chat/audio/screen sharing/webcam feed makes you productive,
  - you can share your screen at a greatly reduced resolution. It's enough for us to distinguish between you watching Youtube/reading Hacker News and spending time in IDE/Excel/other work-related apps. We're unable to read any text on your screen, even at 32px font size,
  - every day, we make sure that you connect with us. We make sure you tell us when you want to start the next day, and in case you don't show up, we'll call you and keep calling you.

[ekanes]

Hmmm, what if you had a simple concept of pushing a button that's asking the other person, "hey, you still going?"

(I'm kind of reminded of video games where there are some "canned lines" that you can click on in the middle of the action and your character will "say" them to the opponent.)

Still going! Still going? 10 mins more and let's break! I think I'm done Thanks for playing Ok Hmmm Never!

etc. :)

[sph]

Eh, not sure I want body doubling to peer pressure productivity.. mostly should be a way of very low key socialising and venting about code not compiling.

[mentalpiracy]

thanks for this.