Maintaining Motivation as a Software Engineer

Key Takeaways

so how to become motivated as a software engineer is a question i think everybody asks i get asked all the time how do i stay motivated what happened if i don't feel motivated how do i become motivated is this just how you always feel so yeah i'm gonna hot take pretty hard in this video okay i can feel right now that there's gonna be people in here that aren't gonna like what i'm about to say but we're gonna do it anyways so why don't you combat those dislikers hit that like button baby make a little comment like oh you're the greatest and then hit that sub button right now because by the end of the video you're going to want to take back all that but it's too late you already did it just move on move on with your life so i'm going to define a couple things so what is motivation well i really think it breaks down into two categories there's the extrinsic motivation the thing that kind of like you have to do you have a deadline at your job you don't want to be bad at your job because if you get bad at your job you might get fired if you get fired you can't provide for your family can't provide for whatever you can't meet your bills you get the idea it's not a great form of motivation it's actually one of the you know like it's not an enjoyable form at least so we all want that intrinsic motivation that motivation that i think people call passion right where you just desire to be good at something it's the desire so great it makes you go to great lengths to accomplish it we all want that and i think we all recognize we want that so let's kind of talk about that i'm going to tell you a little secret i stream on twitch okay that's not the secret yeah i stream on twitch multiple days a week but there are many days where i just don't really want to i just kind of feel like you know like i i just don't want to do it and there are even some days where i actually am like getting anxiety about doing it this happens it happens to me but something else happens i turn on the stream button i get ready i open up my terminal i kind of prepare like okay that's what i'm gonna do and also it's like something starts happening i kind of break through this molasses it's like i kind of just start moving through all this stuff that makes me feel like i can't do anything or i don't want to do anything and i start becoming motivated by about 10 minutes into the stream i'm feeling pretty motivated by 20 minutes into it i am crushing now you may not call it crushing you may call it fondling around in the dark tech pi is proverbial that's not the right term no no that's not it that's not it you know what it is you call crap okay but nonetheless this happens to me where i go from this position of not feeling it at all to just really feeling on fire for it and this happens quite a bit and i think this has probably happened to you once or twice in your lifetime so this is it this is the hot take this is the real piece of advice which is don't consider how you feel in the moment now i've personally learned how to separate how i feel versus what i need to get done or what i desire intellectually to get done and i call this maturity yeah i know i can tell there's people you do this they're like no don't say it to me this hurts i'm special okay i will become naturally motivated i'll just have passion galore and excel at my projects no you're not you're not gonna do it it doesn't work that way sure there's that one time in your life when you first started to do something and it was novel it was new it was exciting and you naturally felt a wealth ring of passion arise in your life but that was the first 20 and the first 20 feels amazing on anything but does that passion continue into the last 80 percent absolutely not that kind of passion does not last kind of the moral of this video or the thing that you can kind of take away is that pursue making how you feel align with reality as opposed to letting reality be aligned to how you feel because you will never feel that motivation you're never gonna get just constantly and continuously inspired to do something very rarely does that ever happen i'm sure there's a person that actually happens but it doesn't always happen i'm gonna you know like honestly every time i record a youtube video i don't feel it as i start including in this video i got interrupted by my kid and it killed the momentum and i felt like i couldn't finish it but i backed it up and made it happen because i know i can't let how i feel dictate what i should be doing and honestly if i were to listen to how i feel i wouldn't ever have made any youtube videos i would not even have streamed that much i would have just kind of quit everything i would have just done what i need to do to barely get by in life i have to excel that i have to jump over it i have to make a choice consciously to ignore it and i hope that you can take away that same thing and that's truly where i think real passion lies real motivation lies it's not in the moment it's being able to connect what's up here to what's in here and sometimes it is really really hard i've even heard the quote that that's the greatest distance in the universe is from the head to the heart you know i've been making these these videos just kind of giving out advice or things i think about and i really do hope that you like this i really do hope that you take the time to consider what i'm saying and if i'm wrong let me let me know give me your thoughts and i do actually mean that i do read and respond to so many comments because i wish i had someone telling me these things when i was younger okay i didn't have this i grew up without a dad i grew up with no one telling me how to live my life and it was really really hard and i've had to discover so much by trial and error as opposed to just simply having someone tell me these things so so that's my motivation and yeah i don't always feel it i wake up every day feeling just like you do like trash to drinking coffee to reading stupid emails to hopefully getting somewhere at the same time i know i have that inner desire and i just have to make it come out so thank you for watching my name's the primogen did i mention i stream on twitch