Ask HN: How do you find motivation to do stuff?

[RockstarSprain]

Not sure how to put it better but the more I read about AI the less motivation I have to either keep up with the tech advances or to try doing new things... I wonder how others keep or even foster the kind of motivation necessary to try new things and actually stick to doing them long enough? I would appreciate input on this in the most general sense possible.

[raw_anon_1111]

As far as work? I haven’t found a method to get over my addiction to food and shelter and I need money to support my addictions and need to convince companies to keep giving me money by doing work. Thats my motivation.

As far as learning new “things”, it depends on what those things are.

I’ve been working in the AWS + app dev consulting space for six years and have been working with AWS for around 10. I know CloudFormation for infrastructure as code well and started using it in 2017. As I got more into consulting, I knew that eventually I was going to have to learn Terraform and the AWS CDK. Last year, two projects came up where I had to use both respectively.

I was able to one shot both with a detailed set of requirements I designed with ChatGPT. Why bother learning either? I know system design on AWS and how to verify the correctness of the output.

The second anecdote. I haven’t done any web development in decades and always wanted to get back into it enough at least to do internal websites. I have a good sense of UX and putting myself in the shoes of users. Now with v0 and coding agents, why bother? My goal was never to be a great web developer. I just wanted to create usable internal tools.

My entire focus over the last decade was to become more architectural and customer focused in consulting. I’m glad I did and those two areas have kept me employable and have been most of learning focus. Before AI, I delegated the grunt work to more junior developers, now I delegate it to AI.

As far as where my focus is at now 50+ outside of staying employable? I’ve been a gym rat since I was 16 (including a 15 year previous stint as a part time fitness instructor), and I spend my free time learning Spanish for my eventual retirement out of the country (motivation enough to get the f** out of dodge) and near term starting this year, we will be spending a few months in our target country every year - we just came back from spending two months there.

[nickd2001]

I'm assuming from this Q you might be early stage in your career? Its definitely hard nowadays. 30 yrs ago, as well as C++ I learned various Unix flavours - HP-UX, Solaris then Linux. Development on those seemed to be interesting projects and interesting people. Then I got interested in open source. I found that clinging to *nix, open source and tech used by academia was a way to have a long-lasting career, while other people doing e:g Microsoft tech back in the day or later on javascript frameworks found they suffered from vendor lock-in and/or skills with a short shelf life. So to me there was a clear career strategy, pick carefully what tech you spend the time learning, and you'll be fine. Whereas now, what are you meant to do? The future is so unpredictable. It seems every skill is now having a short shelf life. AI can do your job as it was. So you need to invest in and use AI. But that is constantly changing. What is lacking is a clear path to invest effort in. I don't envy people starting out today. Struggling with motivation when its unclear what to learn seems natural. Sorry for the pessimistic answer, maybe other people can helpfully argue against this ;)

[wxw]

I think feedback cycles and compounding effort are important.

Feedback meaning you have definitive endings (post it, journal it, etc) to your period of “doing stuff”. Cycles meaning you repeat this over time.

Compounding effort meaning that “doing stuff” in one cycle lets you do new or more complicated things in the next cycle.

Motivation is often just the momentum you get from succeeding. For independent work, you can define your own success criteria. The methods above are helpful for feeling successful.

[alexisp_07]

As a 27-year-old human, I’ve realized that life comes in phases. Recently, what really gave me a lot of motivation was launching a Chrome extension (side project, which no one 'll use probably :) ), built from scratch. Of course, AI helped a lot but I’m pretty sure that without it, I would have just started and never finished it. Having something of your own, even if it’s just a side project compared to your main job, makes you sleep better and feel happier.

I don't know how, but some months ago I found the motivation to read some technical Software books (never happened before).

I’ll admit I’ve wasted a lot of time doing nothing (like videogames or useless YT videos), but honestly, finding an ally like AI has helped me overcome the barrier of ‘I’ve never done this before, it’ll take too long just to learn it.’

[Gooblebrai]

FWIW, I think nothing is wasted time if you enjoyed the time when you were doing it.

[alexisp_07]

That’s an interesting POV. But, looking back, I feel like I could have invested even 15% of that time into something more productive.

[dan-bailey]

For me, it was accepting that I will never be the smartest guy in the room and never know the most about a topic. I decided to play to the strengths that come from ADHD, and have cultivated broad knowledge, with only a few points of depth. I work with AI/ML, and I transitioned into it from web dev. I make a point to learn what I need when I need it, rather than trying to stuff my head full of stuff that may or may not be relevant. Changed my focus to "be good in the current situation" rather than "be good at everything." Over time, that fosters learning that sticks.

[deterministic]

Recognise that waiting for motivation to strike is a bad idea.

Instead just get started with the smallest possible step you can just about manage to do. And then do another smallest step. A lot of times you almost automatically keep going and the motivation then arrives.

Maybe the first step is to create a basic "Hello World" application. And then a few empty functions/methods that flesh out what the app needs to do. Then maybe a few of those methods/functions are really easy to do (or AI can write them for you) so you quickly do those. Etc.

[sminchev]

Sometimes, I really get bored, reading about AI products. At some point there are so many that look the same: UI + API + AI. I usually lose motivation when I don't see that the effort will give me good results or gains. 7 years ago I started learning Haskell, I read 2-3 book started working on a de-duplication app. At some point I realized that in order to learn the language to the level where I am confident that I know it, I need to practice it for at least an year, and afterwards, I need some miracle to happen to find a project and practice is. I decided that it does not worth the effort.

Now, the other case, I have a newborn. Now with two kids I am highly motivated. Also, with AI, not knowing a language is not a stopper anymore. So I made a pretty descent Android application for monitoring elderly people, that runs 24/7 despite Android is trying to kill it all the time, without practicing the language. Knowing that I can do it, seeing the results, having the responsibility sleeping behind me, gives me good reasons to continue. :)

Also what are our alternatives? Because of AI, I am not sure that I will have a job after one year. If I can do an android app with 400+ source files for 4 months, with 2000 unit tests, then it might happen that my employer reduces the working force, because there is not enough work for everybody. If don't have a back-up plan, what will I do?

If I still find myself tired and not motivated, I get another cup of coffee and continue :D :D

[upupupandaway]

25 years into my career here. Motivation is awesome to get you that rush to start building something. Discipline, however, is far more important and will get you more success than anything else. Discipline for what? Achieving goals that you have set. If you don't have goals then that's the problem right there - how will motivate yourself for anything or have the discipline to achieve it?

Over the years my goal changed from being a software wizard to having $x.xm in my bank account by the time I am 50, thus securing my daughter's education all the way through college. Every time I don't want to join the 999th call of the week on "how we can better work together", I look at her picture and realize who I am doing that for - discipline.

[fullstick]

I'm finding there is a lot of stuff I can do that has no connection to AI. I've been climbing and drawing and journaling and gardening and going to live concerts, and AI only gives me more motivation to do these things.

For doing tech stuff... Yeah I don't know. Amateur radio is techy without a lot of AI.

[omertt27]

I think as sam altman says, you should try to save your momentum.Momentum is everything.Also i am always talk myself about i should be patient about the process.If you work everyday, you believe that you will succeed one day.Thats my mentality.

[thushar10]

Fear can be a good motivator, at least for my personality type. It’s mostly about the fear of losing my lifestyle if I don’t adapt, or being left behind in a world that moves too fast.

It doesn't have to be a negative thing. Adaptation is evolution. Some people are inherently high agency and driven internally, but others need a specific reason to move. Pragmatic fear happens to be the reason that works for me, whether it’s to take care of my family or just to keep up with my friends.

[FloorEgg]

If you're spending more than 15-20 minutes a day on "social" media the problem isn't generally AI, it's specifically the AI that makes the media addicting. The more attention you give media the harder it is to give your attention elsewhere.

If you're protecting your attention and still facing motivation issues, then I'll need to know more about you to understand the root of it.

All we can do is stab in the dark/speculate given what you've shared. I only pointed at media because these days it's the most likely culprit.

[AnimalMuppet]

It sounds like you don't have motivation to keep up with the changes of the AI state of the art. That's fine. Don't.

But motivation in general? Let it find you. When you see "hey, I really want to do that", well, that that's motivation. You want to do that. You don't have to manufacture motivation - you have motivation.

And once you have motivation, if you want to experiment with using an AI as you do it, that's fine. If you don't, that's fine too.

[chistev]

I want to be in a better financial state five years from now. I want to be an overall better person in every aspect five years from now.

That's my motivation.

[andsoitis]

By being optimistic. That doesn’t mean being positive all the time, but rather being open, curious, and resilient.

[late_night_fix]

I just stop tryig to 'keep up with AI' and started doing my own thing again.Way less stressful way more productive.

[markus_zhang]

I have an obsession to not become mediocre technically. And because I’m indeed very mediocre it is nagging at me from time to time, so I got some sort of knee jerk reaction to do something.

[hdogrukan]

I've stopped search or read new AI models since 2025. Because I didn't reach that. So I focus my projects.

[linesofcode]

AI is simply a force multiplier when it comes to tech. If you were motivated before LLMs what has changed?

I don’t think AI is the problem here.

[BeetleB]

I think it will help for you to articulate why AI is reducing your motivation.

Pre-LLMs, what motivated you? Why did you do what you did?

[nicbou]

I am not a software developer anymore, just a guy who applies his software development skills to his day to day business problems. The switch made me more pragmatic about software, but also made coding a lot more fun since it's not my full-time occupation. If you want to love something, don't do it for a living.

To me, AI is a bit like a dishwasher or a spreadsheet: a labour-saving device for the things I don't enjoy doing. It handles the tedium so I can do more of the fun stuff. It also removes the friction from learning stuff. At times it feels like a real world pokedex, or an iteration of Steve Jobs' bicycle for the mind.

Remember to play too. Coding for money makes you forget why you got into it in the first place. I love cooking and making watercolours because I never expected to do it professionally or even for money. Sometimes it's good to just fuck around with no expectations of productivity. Do stupid things, mess up, have fun!

[binaryroot]

Honestly I think motivation comes and goes for the long run you should not reply on it.

[hadifrt20]

honestly, the thing that snapped me out of the AI doom spiral was building something small with it instead of reading about it.