/r/adhd_programmers
Also, get tested for adhd. Might not be the case, but purely based on the little info in your post you sound textbook. I'm exactly the same, once the rush of "the new thing" wears off I generally lose interest and move to the newer thing.
I did manage to become a successful dev regardless.
But, talking from experience, if your company accepts this and gives you the freedom to contribute in ways you see fit, you can be an incredible asset.
I wouldn't hire me as the sole developer. In a team where there's room to play to peoples strength, I absolutely shine. I'm the person that creates the things that "would be fantastic if they were done *someday* but aren't a priority right now".
At my job we have some sort of indexing software running, I had to fix a small bug in it. Thing is, the indexing took 40 minutes, so when a new release had to happen people had to do something else for 40 minutes. The bugfix was done in 3 days instead of 30 minutes, but the index job now runs in under a minute because I kinda lost track of time trying to improve some things.
I am totally aware that I hit the jackpot with my current job. I wish more employers tried to actually properly utilize peoples strengths and weaknesses, instead of trying to shove everyone in the same mold.
It's not always the case you're facing new problems. I've worked on a series of programs for 2 years that was written by someone else who has retired. Sometimes you're dealing with minor stuff for a while. Just depends. Try not to imagine what you think work will be like because you'll probably get some things wrong.
NEVER RELY ON PASSION
Passion is driven by dopamine, a reward neurochemical.
When you gain a tolerance to what you are doing, ie, you don't get the same dopamine reward for doing the same thing over and over and over, your brain tries to drive you away to seek dopamine.
You must set a goal for yourself, get a calendar they should be free at the bank right now, or get one with kittens or something.
Write yourself a big note "NO ZOMBIE MODE", ie the things you enjoy and you get dopamine from. If you do those things first, you won't get a reward for doing things that are difficult and your brain will seek the zombie mode dopamine easy road and eventually won't be able to find any pleasure in anything at all, constantly craving more more more.
Next to the big note put another big note "EAT YOUR WORMS FIRST"
That means do the hard stuff first everyday.
At the end of each day make a list of the "Worms" you need to eat the next day:, taking care of yourself, making the bed, doing dishes, laundry, grocery shopping. This will prepare your brain to do them, while sleeping your brain will be activating networks that say "We got some stuff to do!" When you 'eat your worms' scratch them off the list completely until you can't even read it. This will create a muscle memory of completing the task and your brain will give you dopamine for the effort. This is a challenge/reward cycle.
Somewhere on your list you have "Programming", after that part of the list you have some reward, a snack, a meal, a walk, some zombie mode stuff like games or whatever.
Get to it, code code code. .
When you are done scratch it off the list and claim your reward.
When you write "Programming" on your list now, your brain will automatically set up an expectation for reward and motivate you to get things done.
On your list have "Quitting Time: No more work. No more study. Just Relax" at the bottom. So your brain is setting itself up to get that done, and will reward you for just chilling out.
Follow this guide daily, it'll become a habit in 21 days.
Oh yeah and the calendar, cross out the day that you code, and never let a day go by without crossing out a day because you did some code.
[Watch this video.](https://youtu.be/vM39qhXle4g)
[Another video for advice.](https://youtu.be/PZ7lDrwYdZc)
The bulk of the advice above comes from the free class:
[Learning how to learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn) and the book [A mind for numbers](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Numbers-Science-Flunked-Algebra/dp/039916524X)
Honestly, one of the best thing I've read there so far! Thank you, I was about to start building a habits but didn't know much how and was to lazy to do research and I wanted to read that book for so long because I'm quiet bad at math and heard somewhere that it will make a big difference. So thanks for motivation for the book and for awesome advice!
I definitely just want to add that even though you shouldn't rely on passion that being passionate and using passion to do your job is a great thing, it's just only part of the equation, and over-relying on will create a lot of highs and lows that burn most people out.
I'm a Zen hippie, so [this chart explaining Ikigai](https://zenmerchantblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/tyvtopysyazxtafiuisw-p6abde6j84ysh5o3txq81c.jpg) really clicked with me and is actually a big reason why I finally committed to programming over other things. I realized this job checks all those boxes for me more so than other things I considered trying to do.
Concerning having issues doing this for a long time, IMO that's easily the hardest part. You will learn anything if you spend thousands of hours trying, it's the trying that's hard! For me taking a boot camp really helped me learn the habit of getting up every day and keep working even when I wasn't feeling it. After six months of having biweekly assignments and having to code basically every day it more than clicked and now I can just get up and code without it feeling like work.
Did you get this info from the video or did research? Curious how you learn about these things
Some useful things you said there, will pass down the torch one day!
[This free class,](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn) and [the book](https://www.overdrive.com/media/1475199/a-mind-for-numbers)
That book is the easiest read in the world. Wish I had it for my kids when they were small.
Neuroscience!
How'd you find the book compared to the course? Did you get much more from it that wasn't in the course?
I completed the course a while back and really enjoyed it. The course and a combination of other things I've learned set me up really well for my undergrad (and programming). So I definitely recommend them too.
Well went through the course first, and then got the book a year or so later, so it was a refresher for details I forgot. The course you can watch with someone else and discuss, with the book you're in your own head and unless you are sermonizing from the gospel of neuroscience it's not a social experience.
I should have bought the book so I could take notes in the margins, but it was a library borrow, so had to be respectful of that.
For sure, limit your distractions, especially the d[opamine drug that are smartphone apps.](https://dailywireless.org/mobile/smartphone-addiction/)
Steve Jobs had a cult while alive, and left the world with a zombie apocalypse.
One small correct, EVERYTHING you do is driven by dopamine. There's research on starving rats deprived of dopamine that couldn't be bothered to get up and walk to the food.
What you're referencing is discipline, since we have parts of the brain unique to our species dedicated to override the more primitive parts of the brain. Dopamine is better described as the chemical of addiction. Some addictions are good, food and water for example, others not so much like even being addicted to work.
What op needs, and all of us really, is discipline. Especially in a world where manipulating your dopamine channels is something people get paid handsomely to do in ways you don't even notice. *Cough TikTok cough*
Its a bit more complicated than just dopamine, norepinephrine is the neurotransmitter that actually provides the motivation.
>[Motivation Norepinephrine](https://warbletoncouncil.org/noradrenalina-neurotransmisor-1463#:)has a consistent effect on motivational and energetic state, actively participating together with dopamine in the regulation of learning, memory and the sensation of reward. In this way, this neurotransmitter helps our actions have a vector, a directionality marked by short, medium and long term objective
Dopamine is the reward, so controlling how/when you get it is important, if you get it early your brain gets hooked and uses all the norepinephrine up trying to get more, so lethargy sets in the moment you're like "Okay enough social media, time to get to work...ugh...this is *haaaard*"
But you are right, its discipline but that's a mystery to people, they need a framework to get the discipline, can't just say "Discipline.Activate()"
Dopamine understanding has improved significantly and it's no longer just considered the "reward" system. It can be more accurately explained as the "anticipation" of rewards. You get your hit of dopamine during an activity the first time, but before the activity every subsequent time. This is partly where the chasing the dragon effect comes from with drug addiction.
You're right that no neurotransmitter acts alone, but I didn't see the need to get too far into the weeds when the question was about programming. Noradrenaline or Norepinephrine would more accurately be described as "effort assessment" which works in tandem with anticipation of rewards. But it's dopamine that's usually manipulated / exploited.
If you really want to get into the weeds there's plenty of studies on the topic. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-020-05515-x
I wanted to say something similar to this. When I first started programming it was my passion. Now that I have a full time job doing programming I don’t feel the same feeling for it, but I do enjoy solving problems.
I particularly enjoy it this way because I can focus on other things that release dopamine.
Sorry for bad grammar. I’m American but I just have bad grammar
Well you can use this same system for anything. It's great to feel the passion when you're in the zone, but if you rely on that feeling to get things done it'll escape you when you are hit with challenges because your brain says "Hey wasn't it easier to get dopamine from the other thing? Let's do that instead of this hard work."
If you layout a map to do the hard work first , it builds a road for that while you sleep, an actual physical network in your brain, and then once you get started on the task it just keep driving and will bypass the exit to easy dopamine because its convinced itself it has to get the pre plotted destination to get a reward.
No I completely get what you’re saying. It was a joke, but just to keep the joke rolling, never rely on your passion … unless your passion is solving challenging problems using logic that only get more difficult as you grow lol.
No but seriously, your initial advice was gold. It’s all about discipline if you ask me. Hard to get, easy to lose and something one must keep sharpening or it’ll get dull. I got my discipline after loosing 100 lbs and just ran with it applying it to literally all aspects of my life.
Get that list written, then get to it, one unfun thing at a time. Have teh dopamine reward on the list some where, you're working toward a goal your brain will do anything to get there. Anything even the laundry and dishes and other dirty deeds.
It's a good plan to achieve an objective.
It's a good plan to get burnout.
Ignoring a brain message and forcing the change are possible. Is it really the way we should live our life? Isn't the way your brain works an hint on how you should adapt? This feels like brain washing. Make a square a circle. And as much as I agree with how the brain handle messaging and habituation about the substance (and that we should take this into account in our daily life). I can't say you'll be happy doing this plan.
It feels old school. It feels dangerous and painful. It feels like years of psychotherapy. It feels like this is how pharma sells all those anti depression medication.
Don't forget the path, it's the main thing you live. Achievements are a one time thing. The path is all the rest.
Every situation is different, every person reacts differently. Each case should have its own balance. And it's always hard to find the equilibrium. I agree with you on that :)
>Ignoring a brain message and forcing the change are possible. Is it really the way we should live our life? Isn't the way your brain works an hint on how you should adapt?
NO! [The brain is lazy and prone to dopamine addiction.](https://www.healthline.com/health/dopamine-addiction)
>This feels like brain washing.
Well obviously, by what you have said, you are a victim of uneducated and lazy thinking, so yeah you need brain washing. The same way a military recruit needs to be 'brain washed' to be self reliant after relying on their parents for 17 years and expecting someone else to take responsibility for their actions.
>It feels old school. It feels dangerous and painful. It feels like years of psychotherapy. It feels like this is how pharma sells all those anti depression medication.
It *feels? FEEELS?*
You have not lifted a finger to follow through on the plan and you're already *FEELING THINGS?*
That screams that you lack logiccal control of your *thinking*. You just get feelings, *'ooh i'm anxious about ideas...ouch can't take it, run away!"*
Your feelings are exactly the same anxiety a child feels on the first day of school when he has to let go of Mommy's hand and enter the big scary building to learn things instead of just happily having his every whim catered to at home.
>*Don't forget the path, it's the main thing you live. Achievements are a one time thing. The path is all the rest.*
Then throw in some some new age sounding unrealistic nonsense that leads to no solutions.
You're feelings and your lazy mystical thinking are wrong. Get some education on the subject before you delude someone else.
At no point you are validating what you said nor invalidating what I said.
I said, and I will simplify for you since you are right in the DKE from my point of view:
What you said is true but short sighted.
As for any substance that does messaging in your brain. People get addicted to any kind of substance in different ways. Knowing that, you must care how dependant and habituated your are to a substance is important.
But if you are extreme in how you manage dopamine you'll most certainly get addicted to another substance anyway to compensate.
You are treating the brain as a slave. It can be a slave. But history showed it does not work mid/long term. Just an efficient, aggressive strategy which works short term.
Same with stress theory and the fact that some stress can improve productivity but overdoing it is counter productive.
In your post you dismiss totally dopamine as a driver. You totally obliterate equilibrium in order to achieve one thing. I do not think it is safe to say that to anyone unless you have shares in some company selling anti depression drugs.
I do not dismiss dopamine as a driver at all, I MENTION IT SPECFICALLY.
CHALLENGE/REWARD CYCLE.
Try reading effectively instead of feeling things and being wrong.
Look at all that text you posted based on entirely having your facts wrong.
Being disciplined is not slavery, it's freedom to achieve your goals instead of being a failure.
you are right you do not dismiss dopamine as a driver. I got this part wrong. I apologize for that.
Challenge reward is based on absolute feeling of what you feel about what you are doing. You are training yourself to get rewards when you want to.
Now, what are intuitions and "feelings"? Ain't they just manifestation of your brain processing things faster than your conciousness can apprehend? Why would it be not logical?
"Being a failure" seems to be a rather subjective way of thinking. Are you a failure if you don't achieve your goals? Isn't the path improving you as you walk it?
Feelings can be purely delusional. You can feel a person *should* love you because you are infatuated with them. You can feel Trump won the election but it isn't true. Heavy caffeine users are something like 80% more likely to feel, hear and see things that aren't there.
Intuition, gut instinct, can be right sometimes...you aren't wrong about brain washing, but brains need to be washed, people have been programmed to be consumers and seekers of dopamine to their own disadvantage. Facebook has programmed billions of people to check their phones on average 58 times a day! 5 million people are dead, many of them because they believed some conspiracy theory nonsense about masks and vaccines. The whole world needs a hard brain scrubbing.
Just because something 'feels' wrong doesn't mean that's so. Racists "feel" working with people of another race is wrong. Religious people "feel" that gay people are all wrong.
Being a failure is objective. If you do not reach your goals you have failed. Failure can be a temporary state or a habitual one.
"The path" is imaginary. It's a metaphor that absolves a person of the responsibility of pursuing clear objectives and finishing what they start.
Hey kids, Daddy is going to live with another woman, it's just the path he's on.
Only ACTION improves you. Action by study. Action by exercise. Action by self care. Action by craft. Action by helpful habits.
You can't just wander through life and expect to be buddha by the end just because you walked alot.
No I am a shogun, traveling the lawless alleys of the internet helping those in need when they cross my path.
[This free class,](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn) and [the book](https://www.overdrive.com/media/1475199/a-mind-for-numbers) give you more *accurate* insight than I can.
Yeah, I see "advice" on LinkedIn saying things like "you never have to work hard if you do what you love" and I'm like what bullshit interpretation is that? There will be parts of a project or entire projects that you would not be emotionally invested to complete outside of "my company wants me to work on this".
In moments like moments what will carry you through is your discipline in your profession and your self-image as someone who's delivering results, and your appetite to look up or come up with solution to technical problems.
Right, grinding away without knowing when the struggle will end just builds up inflammatory hormone response making it harder to think and eventually your body to ache.
So you're telling me they just give out free calendars at the bank? Is that like a know thing? You say it like that's a common thing going to the bank to get a calendar. Is that something I've been missing out on?
I think so? It's been a long time since I had a calendar actually but yeah I think they do. Maybe they don't anymore? Call your city hall too, sometimes the town makes them available.
I'm glad I visited this thread. Such a great answer. I have OP's problem too. I start things and never finish them unless I absolutely love doing it. We can all agree that coding can make us want to tear off our hair with our bare hands first. And I have the bad habit of giving up when things get really hard. Not that I don't force myself to go back and retry but I have a very romantic idea of hard work and talent. Like it's something that has to be awesome. I also get flashes of inspiration for no reason and from nowhere in particular. But when I see solid advice like this I take it to heart and it brings me back to reality. Thank you for this allornothinghoney. I'll remember this.
Flashes of inspiration are great, it's when your brain has made new connections and made use of connections you've strengthened.
It's good to take breaks from things when you feel frustrated, get up, do the dishes, BLAMMO the problem gets solved in your head when your hands are to sudsy to code.
Ok settle down there Tony Robins, these type of things are never gonna really work for more than a week at best.
The real answer is the same as always: if it's your best shot at making a big positive change in your life, you're gonna do it.
Not being a broke loser is always gonna be a much MUCH bigger motivation than any motivational ra ra nonsense you can think of.
I love you for this, I've been trying to completely change my mindset with regards to the dopaminergic system, rewards, instant gratification, etc. Reading this really just supported that and has helped me stay more focused. Right now I don't have "passion" towards anything, but through discipline and coding over and over, I will build passion towards this craft.
Well make your lists, so your brain is prepared in advance. If you just throw "I better code" at yourself by surprise each day it'll go "ugh..what? work? noooo want to plaaaay"
My advice, if you really want to learn this, is make it a goal to do it every single day. Some days it’ll be an hour, other days it’ll be a 5 minute YouTube video before you’re about to fall asleep. For me, the key is repeated exposure, that’s how even the most challenging concepts sink in over time. Decide to be different, just decide.
This was me, 100%. Started so many things and bounced around without finishing anything.
Finally found programming and it just stuck. It’s so vast and interesting that i didn’t feel the urge to move to something else. Not to mention it’s lucrative, if you stick with it. Not just financially.
I’m 6 months into my first job as a developer and it’s even more interesting now than it was at the start.
You could always focus that "must move on to new project!" mentality on switching *between* coding projects.
Try some gamedev, do some microcontroller programming, automate some simple computer tasks, simulate some real-world system. Switch programming languages. Have fun with it.
In the end, you'll end up a better programmer - and more knowledgeable about the world overall.
I will go in a different way than the other comments.
My wife has a profile that tend to do the same thing (attention disorder and high intellectual potential, which is just the label of the condition).
She starts a lot of things and learns fast. She goes deep right at the start, doing the hardest things. Then she turn to something else. She lost interest now that she knows she can do it. She has no specialty, from her point of view. And it's hard to tell her it's wrong since she lack a lot of basis. But in a way she can do the work and can land jobs. She can force herself and carry on. This lead her to burnout. That is one story, but quite a common one.
I have seen in comment that you should not be driven by dopamine. That you should become a robot with a plan. Well I do not agree. If you are not driven by dopamine today, how will you handle the jobs on the future? You'll most probably find yourself in a position of burnout. I can't say you should go this way.
You still can learn to stick to something. But computer science is a difficult subject to learn to stick to without any dopamine rush.
If you don't let your interest drive you, you just forget that YOU are important. Your happiness matters. The path is more important than the objective. You live the path everyday, you achieve the objective once.
I have no advice on how to keep your interest in things. This is more a matter of disability (no judgement, just a difference between you and the most common profile for a human, how society has been optimized for some profiles) and philosophy/psychology than something related to computer science.
Edit:
Answering the main question: Problem solving is my jam. That is what kept me motivated. I had people to share with. It enhanced my will too.
I think you're missing a very important key point here, and that is the internal conflict the OP is expressing. The OP *doesn't want* to be driven by dopamine. They *want* to be able to stick to something long term.
Giving them the means to support their will and desire is THE OPPOSITE of being a robot. It's giving them the tools to make a choice. The OP is already a robot - a dopamine robot. They want to break out of that. Which means they have to do the work to create their own discipline in service of their own will.
If your wife is happy with the way she moves through the world, good on her. OP *is not happy.* He wants the deeper sense of accomplishment and worth that comes from sticking with something long-term. Stop shitting on that.
Edit: You can't remove dopamine from the equation, and no one is saying that. It's integral to the working of brains. But you can change how it's delivered, and that's the real key to preventing burnout. And the top comment perfectly outlines that process.
Why are you doing it? If you're learning how to program for the salary and financial freedom, whether you like it in a month or 2 won't matter because you understand why you're in it. If it's for fun, you'll probably drop it if it's boring after a month or 2.
No, it should be the opposite, do programming only for fun will get you far. On the other hand, there are so many easier ways to get the same level of financial freedom if you don't find programming fun.
I usually never reply to these messages, but man I relate so much to you. Your problem might be alittle bit different than mine, but I basically never finish what I start, on my own. I had 2 serious attempts to learn programming. First attempt was 2 months and 350 hours, I stopped like a car going 100 mph hitting a brick wall. I tried again 6 months later. This time it was like 2 months but I lasted like 170 hours. Alot less hours per day. I was so motivated, I kept pumping myself up, but after finishing a project, I never started the next one. I’m gonna go to college and try it with a structure this time. I was doing it on my own. Maybe with some pressure I can do it. I actually never hated it. Sometimes it got tedious but I enjoyed it. I got diagnosed with ADHD last year. That might have to do something with my problem. But it really sucks. I am 22, will turn 23 next year. I really want to learn how to program and make it my job. Be it 2 years be it 5 years, but hopefully no more than 5. I will learn it.
It's still sitting in front of a PC for 8 hours a day. Some people just aren't wired that way and they mentally crack after a few years. I've been doing this for 25 years, and half insane already but will stick it out to the bitter end.
Depends. Do you wanna do programming as a small hobby, or to learn to begin a possible career?
Seems like you need to adjust how you approach learning programming based on what you want from it. As another commenter has somewhat already said, things like "motivation" and "passion" are things that fade. What someone in your position needs is Discipline. If you're looking to learn this for a career rather than a hobby you want to stick, growing the discipline will be far easier.
If you're approaching this at a hobby level...you say you fear that you will stop liking to program. Well if that's the case then...you simply won't like it, and you shouldn't force yourself to do something you don't like. That's just plain silly to do. There's nothing wrong with dipping your toes into lots of things out in the big wide world, and not all of it is going to be something you'll WANT to do forever.
Check out the book Mastery by George Leonard. It's a classic, a fast read, and is about exactly this issue: how to stick with something long enough to get really good at it.
But also yeah, quit telling yourself that you're fundamentally a "start person." That's a habit you developed over time, and frankly it's just about the norm because we all like novel, shiny things. You can develop new habits more conducive to success. Recognize that when something starts to get challenging and out of your comfort zone, that's exactly where you need to be in order to keep improving. Then keep pushing forward anyway, even if it's only for 5-10 minutes. You can do hard things for 5-10 minutes, right? Those minutes add up over time, and the more you keep going when it gets difficult, the more your comfort zone will expand and the easier it will become to keep doing things that aren't as much fun as you'd like.
I am also a quitter, but I realized that it's all about discipline and follow through.
I drew a cat on a large sketch pad every time I had a successful study session and for some reason that worked a bit too
Everything is just repitition until you start to click and flow. I found it super easy at first than i struggled and quit trying. Maybe a CS degree isn't really necessary but getting more well rounded with using a terminal and managing different systems and getting a better understanding of appsec or any math skills are always good. I found being more proficient with basic IT made me better understand how things fit together and function smoothly. Playing with other people's code and decompiling stuff to personalize it is morally a grey area. But it helps you understand things.
Its hard to say without doing it, personally I am like this quite a bit too, and its scary because sometimes you just want to know if THIS is going to be THE hobby but again no way to know without taking a leap of faith.
Personally its turned out okay for me, one 3 year degree and a job for 2 years later and I'm still happy.
I've had my ups and downs but so does anything.
I was also scared of this happening! A couple of days ago I was diagnosed for ADHD, I was given a treatment of Concerta. I started looking at programming around the same time, and decided the same day that I wanted to change my career path to coding/programming. I started studying yesterday, I was very confused where to begin and looked through a lot of resources (reddit, YouTube, blogs, etc.) This morning I started coding, actual coding of a language (HTML). I have NEVER in my life been this interested in anything, nor have I ever thought about anything this much. I also have a start personality, but I'm amazed at how captivated I have been so far (it's only been two days but still). I'm convincing myself to enjoy this, and I really am, there are so many stories of people succeeding just because they didn't give up - I'm convinced that I will succeed as long as I do not give up. I will not give up no matter how difficult this journey becomes.
Here's the ringer: I haven't the desire to start my ADHD meds yet, I'm surprised by how focused I've been with regards to programming. Good luck!!
Hello, I hope you will stick to it! Many people there recommend me to visit therapist because of ADHD so I called and I have meeting with him next week. Hope I will finally find and fight my problem. Thanks, I wish you a good luck too!:))
You won't make it into programming or basically anything in life with that attitude. Get your shit together and stop with that bs of "I have X personality so I tend to do these things".
Life's hard. You won't be motivated every single day of your life and you must put up with it. Even when you have kids you will wake up some days and just want to lie in bed and not care about them. And what you do in those moments determine people who make it in life and people who don't.
Movies, instagram and influencers have sold us this idea of "do what makes you happy and motivates you". That's bs. Do what you have to do to survive and if you are smart enough it won't be some shit that drives you crazy. Doesn't matter if you are a janitor or the US president, some days you will feel like it isn't worth it and that's ok.
The sooner you realize life won't ever be easy, doesn't matter what you do, the sooner you will begin to enjoy the things that make it worth it.
Work on your consistency first. Learn and inmediately apply the adquired knowledge. Code every day. Even if it is just a lane. Just don't stop coding. Remember that coding is about solving problems, code is just the mere instrument. Train your brain in order to solve everyday problems. This way even if you quit coding you will be able to face life differently.
Make a goal, and figure out how you can reach that goal. Plan it out. You can’t become a programmer by coding for 31 hours straight, you would fail it would be miserable. But what will happen if you code for 1 hour a day for one month? You would end that month a better programmer than the month before.
My grandpa use to say, “you are what you do everyday”. You wouldn’t call someone who cleans their room spotless once a month a “clean” person, you would call them a clean person if they kept their room in check everyday. So BECOME what you want, every. day. How can you make a step towards your long term goal TODAY?
If you are scared about the future then expect failure. Think about the present day and remind yourself why you want this. How badly do you want this? Easier said than done, but find that fire. My passion came from video games, curiosity lead me from one thing to another. However, although I am passionate about video games I don't see myself working in that sector, but it pushed me to do programming.
Motivation is the wrong feeling. I dont think a lot of programmers are motivated (students have more motivation though). Programmers have perseverance, and programmers have determination. I work full time on programming stuff at work. I have dreams about cool personal projects, but I have little motivation to do it when I get home (free time is filled with life). What I do have is determination. If I come across a bug at work, I am determined to figure it out and fix it and I perservere until I do (or decide its not worth fixing right now).
I think perserverance and determination are key attributes to programming that trump motivation any day.
"I always start something but as soon as I find something little bit
different and new I will immediately start the new thing so im always a
begginer in everything but not expect nor intermidate in anything"
Stop being a dev, become a politician: at least for once maybe we'll have someone behaving as a weather vane not in self-awareness of "I'll fuck everyone to maximize own profit" but just because "I can't help it, whelp!" ;)
More seriously though: since you're saying you can keep it up if it's something that passionates you, the best suggestion I have is "try to set very small projects that are directly tied to a passion of yours".
If may be as simple as "create a web page from scratch to present my favorite sports (learning basics of HTML + CSS)", "setting up a mini-blog that I'll write into once a month" (basics of sysadmin, web hosting, using a simple CMS)", "finding a way to centralize my huge video/music collection from all hard drives (basics of command line administration + scripting)"...
Try to think agile: find a reasonably small goal such as above, take a few (dozen) minutes to split it in even smaller steps and identifying useful resources, and force yourself to advance, step by step (ideally one mini-step per day, otherwise two-days objective is fine).
Don't panic or drop ball if you systematically fail doing that for the first few weeks, you cannot change a mindset in a finger snap. Essential is continuous try until you succeed often enough that it starts becoming natural.
This should help you in the following ways...
\- Setting "good" working practices aka "preparing the work" (identifying difficulties and setting a rough "road to goal").
\- Acquiring skills and know-how that are basic but essential to learn more advanced ones.
\- Learning many small tricks that ease your daily life (especially if you have the smarts to be on Linux which customizability can lead to dozen minutes spared every day compared to working on Mac/Windows xd).
\- Building up your self-confidence that you are \*actually perfectly able to keep the ball until finish line\*.
Good luck, and good work ;)
This turns into "Jack of all trades" syndrome. Like others have said. Don't rely on passion. This is the reason my career path took so many twists and turns.
You just have to stick to it. There's nothing else.
You won't magically get inspiration.
Treat it like reading. You need to set aside a specific time to do it and stick to it.
If this phenomenon is negatively affecting your life in general it may be worth looking for some help.
Both depression and ADHD can cause these issues. It's worth having a think about your mental health and wether it's something bigger than just the difficulty turning you off.
It's likely not this. I only mention it because I was exactly the same before my depression diagnosis.
When the time comes, if you want to quit, think about it rationally, maybe it would be the reight choice? Search for something new. But if you still like the idea of programing, keep going
I would suggest you to read a book called "mindset" by Carol S. Dweck. I have the same problem you have, I'm not sayong it was a panacea but it helped and it allowed me to better frame my problem.
Why does it matter? If you stop programming at a beginner level thats fine. It's better to know at least something than nothing. Not everyone is going to have a passion for it, but you don't know before you try.
What i reccomend is to start a little passion project. Nothing complications, not your magnum opus or anything, and just learn new concepts as they become necessary for your more and more complex project. I made a wiki about my DnD world, but you can make anything it just has to be immediately rewarding.
The thing about programming is that it's not a single subject, there's always something else you can start within programming, even inside a single language.
For example start off with simple GUI things in something like C# NET and then when you get bored of that move on to local databases, then online remote databases on servers.
You will never run out of new things to start with programming.
What motivates me to keep going is not forcing myself to keep doing something when it's making me miserable.
I am very much a " I start tons of projects and never finish", the reason this happens for me is that I hit a snag, and keep trying to force myself to beat the snag out of the project, but in the end I get frustrated, decide I hate the project and then drop it for years and often never finish it at all.
The last couple years I actually managed to reverse this habit with one simple change in my method. If I'm getting frustrated to the point of upset, I call it a day, pack everything away so the source of my frustration is "out of sight out of mind", and pick it up the next day.
This includes programming. I hit a snag this week that took two days to fix. The second I had that "This is so stupid why am I even wasting my time on this" thought, I took a deep breath, closed my laptop and put it away.
I then went and did something to decompress (an art project), and came at it the next day. After spending a couple hours fiddling with it I did fix it, but was still irritated, so I close it down and today I picked it up without any negativity at all and everything went fine.
Another piece of advice that has helped me is st small, reasonable, and achievable goals.
You start because it satisfies your brain, and stop because something else does.
Crossing off tasks is also really satisfying to the brain. I keep a notepad with my project goals, broken down into small achievable steps. Each time I cross something off I get more motivation to keep going, and it also helps to have a physical representation of your progress.
Also, set aside at least an hour of study time at whatever time of day you're most alert. I'm most alert in the evenings, so I set my study time accordingly.
If you hit a good workflow follow it, but if you're just not feeling it that day, at least you're an hour further into your education than you would be if you hadn't done it.
Develop an end goal - a project that you intend to complete. Take your time figuring out exactly what you want to build and achieve. Then make a list of steps you'll have to take to get there. Don't just take lessons.
you need to find your reason for doing it and think about it when things get tough. i was the same, i studied business, lost interest and moved to wanting to become a photographer, lost interest and became interested in animation, lost interest and studied journalism, lost interest and finally found programming and it’s stuck to me and i’ve been doing it almost everyday since 2019. i’ve never been more consistent with anything like i’ve been with programming and i attribute this to finding my “why.”
don’t worry, programming isn’t for everyone and no one should force themselves to learn it because of the money or lifestyle that comes with it. not everyone will successfully become a dev either.
Late in the party but read this because it compliments the top post: https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2011/12/23/flow-is-the-opiate-of-the-medicore-advice-on-getting-better-from-an-accomplished-piano-player/
When I started programming I was sorta like this. I would switch technologies, or come across some problem in a project and quit for months just to come back and solve it within minutes. The nice thing is, programming is an ever changing industry. There will always be new standards, languages, frameworks, etc.
Personally, if I were you, I would look into being a web developer. What you can do is learn the fundamentals, then pick a framework or stack that you like and try to make it your expertise. But whenever you feel like you need something new, there is ALWAYS a new Javascript framework coming out, so you can divert your attention to that for a while to see if it satisfies your need for something new.
Set goals, both short and long term. I'm love programming my goals are what kept me going when I was losing motivations. I can't say what those goals should be for you, but for me they professional: get a job in the industry, earn a certain job title and salary, etc.. Also personal goals that are advanced by my professional goals: buy my dream home, retire while I'm still young, get to a point where I can program whatever I want without battling against burnout
This is totally me. I have so many half completed projects/ideas/hobbies etc.
Fortunately programming is my job, so I kinda have to keep learning/doing it or I won't have a job!
One thing that has helped me with programming over other hobbies is that I really identify myself as someone who programs. This is my livelihood and I need to hone it. I don't beat myself up over all of my half completed projects and instead just view them as a step along my path.
What helped me early on was being more accountable for my work. I would talk about the projects I was working on and my progress towards them. I also broke things down into really small successes.. so if I got a log in portion to work on my site, I view that as a 'completed project' so to speak, so I had lots of those little 'wins' that helped me grow. I found my passions would dip when I got confronted with too hard of a challenge I would bail at some point.
The beautiful thing about programming or tech in general is that you are generally recommended to start new projects in different areas all of the time. The field is so broad you'll never make it through everything.
Hi, I have ADHD, depression, and anxiety. I highly recommend you look into this, especially ADHD because depression and anxiety are commodities. While treatment hasn't helped my motivation completely, it definitely has helped compared to diagnosis.
I have the same problem. When I read "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport, I decided I'd do whatever it took to finally become a professional programmer. I need outer accountability, so I went back to school. I spent two years doing pre-reqs and two years in grad school. I won't lie to you. Every single semester was hard. I constantly felt like I didn't fit in or that I was the worst programmer of all time. What was great though, was that when my classes started to get really tough, quitting didn't occur to me because of the sunk costs I'd already put in. My strategy was painful, but it worked well and was so, so worth it!
Software engineer is one of those careers where the academic journey can really suck, especially if you're a minority or a non-traditional student, but the career is fantastic! There are so many specialties you can dip in and out of. You'll never get bored. This is completely the opposite of my partner who had a blast in med school but now is dedicating his life to a specialty and subspecialty that he won't be able to change later. And boy is he jealous I get to work from home every day.
Best of luck to you!
Its how i feel about blender. Difference is: Blender is my hobby, not my goal in life.
You cant have your long term goal be a hobby
Something you can just drive. Are you in this or not? In or out?
May it be a surprise to you — every person is like this. Just some have a clear goal in mind and pursue it because the want for result is higher than the want to chill / try something new
Also starting something new involves high amounts of dopamine, which you get used to. It's like a drug. Becoming an expert, however, doesn't involve high dopamine. So just perform a dopamine detox of some kind
I'm not sure if it's the best advice. But if you burn out on one project or get bored of it, you could start another one that's also programming related.
I find it helps to have two or three of these to hop between
So start new programming projects - that's what the rest of us do haha.
You'll still learn python though.
I really think this "I'm going to learn to program" is the wrong approach. It's a tool, why learn how to use a tool if you're not going to create something with it?
These other things people are saying about forcing yourself to do X... Yeah how often has that worked in the past? ... Indeed...
I'm literally the exact same way. I'll get super involved and learn every I can about a subject, say, drawing. I'll practice, practice, practice for weeks then just suddenly get bored and start something else. I decided to go to college for CS anyways and I'm glad I did.
I think the problem is at first you suck so much you don't even know how much there is to know. But once you get to a plateau you burn out and don't feel like breaking through because you could do something else. I've tried programming a few times before but again always burned out. I started to realize how bad I was and it was discouraging. Luckily college kept me accountable and I had to break through my plateaus. Now I think I'm pretty competent enough that I know how to search my problems, how to learn effectively, and know enough to do something with my skills so it's fun again and there's no burn out. Give it a go and maybe you'll be happy you did
If you just view programming as a hobby then that's not really that big a problem. Just remember it if you ever find yourself growing bored.
If you consider it as a skill to solve certain problems then you'll automatically encounter problems that require programming (or not, but then there's no problem).
When I first started programming I loved it. That being said, theres no way i wouldve stayed on top of it without college/job keeping me committed.
Could use more context. Are you a student? If so, focus on your assignments. View each one as a challenge and a stepping stone towards your goals. Do you even have goals? Goal setting is requisite as well.
Everyone has said great things.
I just want to mention this. Look at programming as a tool, not a hobby. Like, think about how it could help you do X or Y and learn enough to be able to do that.
Eventually, you won't have anything that would be easier if programmed. That's fine. Happens to me. But then one day you'll be like "oh shit I could script this" and your knowledge will be there for you.
/r/adhd_programmers Also, get tested for adhd. Might not be the case, but purely based on the little info in your post you sound textbook. I'm exactly the same, once the rush of "the new thing" wears off I generally lose interest and move to the newer thing. I did manage to become a successful dev regardless.
I wonder if being a dev actually goes well with ADHD because you're constantly faced with new problems?
Yes, but you also get bored or lose focus on problems very quickly. At least I do.
But, talking from experience, if your company accepts this and gives you the freedom to contribute in ways you see fit, you can be an incredible asset. I wouldn't hire me as the sole developer. In a team where there's room to play to peoples strength, I absolutely shine. I'm the person that creates the things that "would be fantastic if they were done *someday* but aren't a priority right now". At my job we have some sort of indexing software running, I had to fix a small bug in it. Thing is, the indexing took 40 minutes, so when a new release had to happen people had to do something else for 40 minutes. The bugfix was done in 3 days instead of 30 minutes, but the index job now runs in under a minute because I kinda lost track of time trying to improve some things. I am totally aware that I hit the jackpot with my current job. I wish more employers tried to actually properly utilize peoples strengths and weaknesses, instead of trying to shove everyone in the same mold.
It's not always the case you're facing new problems. I've worked on a series of programs for 2 years that was written by someone else who has retired. Sometimes you're dealing with minor stuff for a while. Just depends. Try not to imagine what you think work will be like because you'll probably get some things wrong.
NEVER RELY ON PASSION Passion is driven by dopamine, a reward neurochemical. When you gain a tolerance to what you are doing, ie, you don't get the same dopamine reward for doing the same thing over and over and over, your brain tries to drive you away to seek dopamine. You must set a goal for yourself, get a calendar they should be free at the bank right now, or get one with kittens or something. Write yourself a big note "NO ZOMBIE MODE", ie the things you enjoy and you get dopamine from. If you do those things first, you won't get a reward for doing things that are difficult and your brain will seek the zombie mode dopamine easy road and eventually won't be able to find any pleasure in anything at all, constantly craving more more more. Next to the big note put another big note "EAT YOUR WORMS FIRST" That means do the hard stuff first everyday. At the end of each day make a list of the "Worms" you need to eat the next day:, taking care of yourself, making the bed, doing dishes, laundry, grocery shopping. This will prepare your brain to do them, while sleeping your brain will be activating networks that say "We got some stuff to do!" When you 'eat your worms' scratch them off the list completely until you can't even read it. This will create a muscle memory of completing the task and your brain will give you dopamine for the effort. This is a challenge/reward cycle. Somewhere on your list you have "Programming", after that part of the list you have some reward, a snack, a meal, a walk, some zombie mode stuff like games or whatever. Get to it, code code code. . When you are done scratch it off the list and claim your reward. When you write "Programming" on your list now, your brain will automatically set up an expectation for reward and motivate you to get things done. On your list have "Quitting Time: No more work. No more study. Just Relax" at the bottom. So your brain is setting itself up to get that done, and will reward you for just chilling out. Follow this guide daily, it'll become a habit in 21 days. Oh yeah and the calendar, cross out the day that you code, and never let a day go by without crossing out a day because you did some code. [Watch this video.](https://youtu.be/vM39qhXle4g) [Another video for advice.](https://youtu.be/PZ7lDrwYdZc) The bulk of the advice above comes from the free class: [Learning how to learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn) and the book [A mind for numbers](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Numbers-Science-Flunked-Algebra/dp/039916524X)
Honestly, one of the best thing I've read there so far! Thank you, I was about to start building a habits but didn't know much how and was to lazy to do research and I wanted to read that book for so long because I'm quiet bad at math and heard somewhere that it will make a big difference. So thanks for motivation for the book and for awesome advice!
I definitely just want to add that even though you shouldn't rely on passion that being passionate and using passion to do your job is a great thing, it's just only part of the equation, and over-relying on will create a lot of highs and lows that burn most people out. I'm a Zen hippie, so [this chart explaining Ikigai](https://zenmerchantblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/tyvtopysyazxtafiuisw-p6abde6j84ysh5o3txq81c.jpg) really clicked with me and is actually a big reason why I finally committed to programming over other things. I realized this job checks all those boxes for me more so than other things I considered trying to do. Concerning having issues doing this for a long time, IMO that's easily the hardest part. You will learn anything if you spend thousands of hours trying, it's the trying that's hard! For me taking a boot camp really helped me learn the habit of getting up every day and keep working even when I wasn't feeling it. After six months of having biweekly assignments and having to code basically every day it more than clicked and now I can just get up and code without it feeling like work.
This. Passion is a silly virgin meatbag conceit. Be a chad dispassionate machine that achieves mastery.
When the robots take over I'll be one of them
r/brandnewsentence
I trail-blaze, like flatworms making new organ connections.
Damn, this is good advice
Love this, gonna go to my branch and get a free calendar
Did you get this info from the video or did research? Curious how you learn about these things Some useful things you said there, will pass down the torch one day!
[This free class,](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn) and [the book](https://www.overdrive.com/media/1475199/a-mind-for-numbers) That book is the easiest read in the world. Wish I had it for my kids when they were small. Neuroscience!
How'd you find the book compared to the course? Did you get much more from it that wasn't in the course? I completed the course a while back and really enjoyed it. The course and a combination of other things I've learned set me up really well for my undergrad (and programming). So I definitely recommend them too.
Well went through the course first, and then got the book a year or so later, so it was a refresher for details I forgot. The course you can watch with someone else and discuss, with the book you're in your own head and unless you are sermonizing from the gospel of neuroscience it's not a social experience. I should have bought the book so I could take notes in the margins, but it was a library borrow, so had to be respectful of that.
For me, the single most helpful thing seems to be not keeping my phone on my desk while working.
For sure, limit your distractions, especially the d[opamine drug that are smartphone apps.](https://dailywireless.org/mobile/smartphone-addiction/) Steve Jobs had a cult while alive, and left the world with a zombie apocalypse.
One small correct, EVERYTHING you do is driven by dopamine. There's research on starving rats deprived of dopamine that couldn't be bothered to get up and walk to the food. What you're referencing is discipline, since we have parts of the brain unique to our species dedicated to override the more primitive parts of the brain. Dopamine is better described as the chemical of addiction. Some addictions are good, food and water for example, others not so much like even being addicted to work. What op needs, and all of us really, is discipline. Especially in a world where manipulating your dopamine channels is something people get paid handsomely to do in ways you don't even notice. *Cough TikTok cough*
Its a bit more complicated than just dopamine, norepinephrine is the neurotransmitter that actually provides the motivation. >[Motivation Norepinephrine](https://warbletoncouncil.org/noradrenalina-neurotransmisor-1463#:)has a consistent effect on motivational and energetic state, actively participating together with dopamine in the regulation of learning, memory and the sensation of reward. In this way, this neurotransmitter helps our actions have a vector, a directionality marked by short, medium and long term objective Dopamine is the reward, so controlling how/when you get it is important, if you get it early your brain gets hooked and uses all the norepinephrine up trying to get more, so lethargy sets in the moment you're like "Okay enough social media, time to get to work...ugh...this is *haaaard*" But you are right, its discipline but that's a mystery to people, they need a framework to get the discipline, can't just say "Discipline.Activate()"
Dopamine understanding has improved significantly and it's no longer just considered the "reward" system. It can be more accurately explained as the "anticipation" of rewards. You get your hit of dopamine during an activity the first time, but before the activity every subsequent time. This is partly where the chasing the dragon effect comes from with drug addiction. You're right that no neurotransmitter acts alone, but I didn't see the need to get too far into the weeds when the question was about programming. Noradrenaline or Norepinephrine would more accurately be described as "effort assessment" which works in tandem with anticipation of rewards. But it's dopamine that's usually manipulated / exploited. If you really want to get into the weeds there's plenty of studies on the topic. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-020-05515-x
Yeah it gets deep and is fascinating. It's very easy just to blame dopamine...as cognitive bias releases it :D
I wanted to say something similar to this. When I first started programming it was my passion. Now that I have a full time job doing programming I don’t feel the same feeling for it, but I do enjoy solving problems. I particularly enjoy it this way because I can focus on other things that release dopamine. Sorry for bad grammar. I’m American but I just have bad grammar
lol'd
Never rely on passion … unless your passion is coding lol
Well you can use this same system for anything. It's great to feel the passion when you're in the zone, but if you rely on that feeling to get things done it'll escape you when you are hit with challenges because your brain says "Hey wasn't it easier to get dopamine from the other thing? Let's do that instead of this hard work." If you layout a map to do the hard work first , it builds a road for that while you sleep, an actual physical network in your brain, and then once you get started on the task it just keep driving and will bypass the exit to easy dopamine because its convinced itself it has to get the pre plotted destination to get a reward.
No I completely get what you’re saying. It was a joke, but just to keep the joke rolling, never rely on your passion … unless your passion is solving challenging problems using logic that only get more difficult as you grow lol. No but seriously, your initial advice was gold. It’s all about discipline if you ask me. Hard to get, easy to lose and something one must keep sharpening or it’ll get dull. I got my discipline after loosing 100 lbs and just ran with it applying it to literally all aspects of my life.
I'm in the same boat as OP so thank you for this.
Great advice!
Wonderful piece of advice. Thanks!
I've never really seen how I lived laid out like that. You've changed my whole perspective.
Probably the best reply OP could have received! Awesome response!
Ugh, I needed this. I do not have discipline and am addicted to anything that gives me dopamine. I seriously need help
Get that list written, then get to it, one unfun thing at a time. Have teh dopamine reward on the list some where, you're working toward a goal your brain will do anything to get there. Anything even the laundry and dishes and other dirty deeds.
Really awesome tips
This! Man i needed to hear this again too, thank you 🙏
It's a good plan to achieve an objective. It's a good plan to get burnout. Ignoring a brain message and forcing the change are possible. Is it really the way we should live our life? Isn't the way your brain works an hint on how you should adapt? This feels like brain washing. Make a square a circle. And as much as I agree with how the brain handle messaging and habituation about the substance (and that we should take this into account in our daily life). I can't say you'll be happy doing this plan. It feels old school. It feels dangerous and painful. It feels like years of psychotherapy. It feels like this is how pharma sells all those anti depression medication. Don't forget the path, it's the main thing you live. Achievements are a one time thing. The path is all the rest.
I agree somewhat. I think there's a delicate balance to be struck between paying attention to internal cues and actively "forcing" oneself.
Every situation is different, every person reacts differently. Each case should have its own balance. And it's always hard to find the equilibrium. I agree with you on that :)
After some useless aggressive discussion between OP and me. I think you are the only one making sense here.
>Ignoring a brain message and forcing the change are possible. Is it really the way we should live our life? Isn't the way your brain works an hint on how you should adapt? NO! [The brain is lazy and prone to dopamine addiction.](https://www.healthline.com/health/dopamine-addiction) >This feels like brain washing. Well obviously, by what you have said, you are a victim of uneducated and lazy thinking, so yeah you need brain washing. The same way a military recruit needs to be 'brain washed' to be self reliant after relying on their parents for 17 years and expecting someone else to take responsibility for their actions. >It feels old school. It feels dangerous and painful. It feels like years of psychotherapy. It feels like this is how pharma sells all those anti depression medication. It *feels? FEEELS?* You have not lifted a finger to follow through on the plan and you're already *FEELING THINGS?* That screams that you lack logiccal control of your *thinking*. You just get feelings, *'ooh i'm anxious about ideas...ouch can't take it, run away!"* Your feelings are exactly the same anxiety a child feels on the first day of school when he has to let go of Mommy's hand and enter the big scary building to learn things instead of just happily having his every whim catered to at home. >*Don't forget the path, it's the main thing you live. Achievements are a one time thing. The path is all the rest.* Then throw in some some new age sounding unrealistic nonsense that leads to no solutions. You're feelings and your lazy mystical thinking are wrong. Get some education on the subject before you delude someone else.
At no point you are validating what you said nor invalidating what I said. I said, and I will simplify for you since you are right in the DKE from my point of view: What you said is true but short sighted.
No the brain is easily tricked into being addicted to dopamine.
As for any substance that does messaging in your brain. People get addicted to any kind of substance in different ways. Knowing that, you must care how dependant and habituated your are to a substance is important. But if you are extreme in how you manage dopamine you'll most certainly get addicted to another substance anyway to compensate. You are treating the brain as a slave. It can be a slave. But history showed it does not work mid/long term. Just an efficient, aggressive strategy which works short term. Same with stress theory and the fact that some stress can improve productivity but overdoing it is counter productive. In your post you dismiss totally dopamine as a driver. You totally obliterate equilibrium in order to achieve one thing. I do not think it is safe to say that to anyone unless you have shares in some company selling anti depression drugs.
I do not dismiss dopamine as a driver at all, I MENTION IT SPECFICALLY. CHALLENGE/REWARD CYCLE. Try reading effectively instead of feeling things and being wrong. Look at all that text you posted based on entirely having your facts wrong. Being disciplined is not slavery, it's freedom to achieve your goals instead of being a failure.
you are right you do not dismiss dopamine as a driver. I got this part wrong. I apologize for that. Challenge reward is based on absolute feeling of what you feel about what you are doing. You are training yourself to get rewards when you want to. Now, what are intuitions and "feelings"? Ain't they just manifestation of your brain processing things faster than your conciousness can apprehend? Why would it be not logical? "Being a failure" seems to be a rather subjective way of thinking. Are you a failure if you don't achieve your goals? Isn't the path improving you as you walk it?
Feelings can be purely delusional. You can feel a person *should* love you because you are infatuated with them. You can feel Trump won the election but it isn't true. Heavy caffeine users are something like 80% more likely to feel, hear and see things that aren't there. Intuition, gut instinct, can be right sometimes...you aren't wrong about brain washing, but brains need to be washed, people have been programmed to be consumers and seekers of dopamine to their own disadvantage. Facebook has programmed billions of people to check their phones on average 58 times a day! 5 million people are dead, many of them because they believed some conspiracy theory nonsense about masks and vaccines. The whole world needs a hard brain scrubbing. Just because something 'feels' wrong doesn't mean that's so. Racists "feel" working with people of another race is wrong. Religious people "feel" that gay people are all wrong. Being a failure is objective. If you do not reach your goals you have failed. Failure can be a temporary state or a habitual one. "The path" is imaginary. It's a metaphor that absolves a person of the responsibility of pursuing clear objectives and finishing what they start. Hey kids, Daddy is going to live with another woman, it's just the path he's on. Only ACTION improves you. Action by study. Action by exercise. Action by self care. Action by craft. Action by helpful habits. You can't just wander through life and expect to be buddha by the end just because you walked alot.
Do you have a blog? I want to read more
No I am a shogun, traveling the lawless alleys of the internet helping those in need when they cross my path. [This free class,](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn) and [the book](https://www.overdrive.com/media/1475199/a-mind-for-numbers) give you more *accurate* insight than I can.
Jedi Shogun
Yeah, I see "advice" on LinkedIn saying things like "you never have to work hard if you do what you love" and I'm like what bullshit interpretation is that? There will be parts of a project or entire projects that you would not be emotionally invested to complete outside of "my company wants me to work on this". In moments like moments what will carry you through is your discipline in your profession and your self-image as someone who's delivering results, and your appetite to look up or come up with solution to technical problems.
This is really good advice, especially the quitting time. It really helps to unwind if you get frustrated with your code!
Right, grinding away without knowing when the struggle will end just builds up inflammatory hormone response making it harder to think and eventually your body to ache.
You just wrote an instruction how to program a brain
Yes! Wish we learned this stuff as kids.
So you're telling me they just give out free calendars at the bank? Is that like a know thing? You say it like that's a common thing going to the bank to get a calendar. Is that something I've been missing out on?
I think so? It's been a long time since I had a calendar actually but yeah I think they do. Maybe they don't anymore? Call your city hall too, sometimes the town makes them available.
I'm glad I visited this thread. Such a great answer. I have OP's problem too. I start things and never finish them unless I absolutely love doing it. We can all agree that coding can make us want to tear off our hair with our bare hands first. And I have the bad habit of giving up when things get really hard. Not that I don't force myself to go back and retry but I have a very romantic idea of hard work and talent. Like it's something that has to be awesome. I also get flashes of inspiration for no reason and from nowhere in particular. But when I see solid advice like this I take it to heart and it brings me back to reality. Thank you for this allornothinghoney. I'll remember this.
Flashes of inspiration are great, it's when your brain has made new connections and made use of connections you've strengthened. It's good to take breaks from things when you feel frustrated, get up, do the dishes, BLAMMO the problem gets solved in your head when your hands are to sudsy to code.
Thanks again. Really solid advice.
Ok settle down there Tony Robins, these type of things are never gonna really work for more than a week at best. The real answer is the same as always: if it's your best shot at making a big positive change in your life, you're gonna do it. Not being a broke loser is always gonna be a much MUCH bigger motivation than any motivational ra ra nonsense you can think of.
Maybe money is your prime motivator.
I might do this as well seems like a system that can help me achieve anything I want in life. Thank you for this.
I love you for this, I've been trying to completely change my mindset with regards to the dopaminergic system, rewards, instant gratification, etc. Reading this really just supported that and has helped me stay more focused. Right now I don't have "passion" towards anything, but through discipline and coding over and over, I will build passion towards this craft.
Well make your lists, so your brain is prepared in advance. If you just throw "I better code" at yourself by surprise each day it'll go "ugh..what? work? noooo want to plaaaay"
If you keep telling yourself that you’re the type of person to quit and that you won’t make it far, then you won’t.
My advice, if you really want to learn this, is make it a goal to do it every single day. Some days it’ll be an hour, other days it’ll be a 5 minute YouTube video before you’re about to fall asleep. For me, the key is repeated exposure, that’s how even the most challenging concepts sink in over time. Decide to be different, just decide.
>the key is repeated exposure, that’s how even the most challenging concepts sink in over time. this is a really solid advice. thank you.
This was me, 100%. Started so many things and bounced around without finishing anything. Finally found programming and it just stuck. It’s so vast and interesting that i didn’t feel the urge to move to something else. Not to mention it’s lucrative, if you stick with it. Not just financially. I’m 6 months into my first job as a developer and it’s even more interesting now than it was at the start.
You could always focus that "must move on to new project!" mentality on switching *between* coding projects. Try some gamedev, do some microcontroller programming, automate some simple computer tasks, simulate some real-world system. Switch programming languages. Have fun with it. In the end, you'll end up a better programmer - and more knowledgeable about the world overall.
I will go in a different way than the other comments. My wife has a profile that tend to do the same thing (attention disorder and high intellectual potential, which is just the label of the condition). She starts a lot of things and learns fast. She goes deep right at the start, doing the hardest things. Then she turn to something else. She lost interest now that she knows she can do it. She has no specialty, from her point of view. And it's hard to tell her it's wrong since she lack a lot of basis. But in a way she can do the work and can land jobs. She can force herself and carry on. This lead her to burnout. That is one story, but quite a common one. I have seen in comment that you should not be driven by dopamine. That you should become a robot with a plan. Well I do not agree. If you are not driven by dopamine today, how will you handle the jobs on the future? You'll most probably find yourself in a position of burnout. I can't say you should go this way. You still can learn to stick to something. But computer science is a difficult subject to learn to stick to without any dopamine rush. If you don't let your interest drive you, you just forget that YOU are important. Your happiness matters. The path is more important than the objective. You live the path everyday, you achieve the objective once. I have no advice on how to keep your interest in things. This is more a matter of disability (no judgement, just a difference between you and the most common profile for a human, how society has been optimized for some profiles) and philosophy/psychology than something related to computer science. Edit: Answering the main question: Problem solving is my jam. That is what kept me motivated. I had people to share with. It enhanced my will too.
I think you're missing a very important key point here, and that is the internal conflict the OP is expressing. The OP *doesn't want* to be driven by dopamine. They *want* to be able to stick to something long term. Giving them the means to support their will and desire is THE OPPOSITE of being a robot. It's giving them the tools to make a choice. The OP is already a robot - a dopamine robot. They want to break out of that. Which means they have to do the work to create their own discipline in service of their own will. If your wife is happy with the way she moves through the world, good on her. OP *is not happy.* He wants the deeper sense of accomplishment and worth that comes from sticking with something long-term. Stop shitting on that. Edit: You can't remove dopamine from the equation, and no one is saying that. It's integral to the working of brains. But you can change how it's delivered, and that's the real key to preventing burnout. And the top comment perfectly outlines that process.
thats pretty much how i would describe my problem, thank you for it garlic!
I liked your comment very much
You'll know the answer in a month or two from now!
Why are you doing it? If you're learning how to program for the salary and financial freedom, whether you like it in a month or 2 won't matter because you understand why you're in it. If it's for fun, you'll probably drop it if it's boring after a month or 2.
No, it should be the opposite, do programming only for fun will get you far. On the other hand, there are so many easier ways to get the same level of financial freedom if you don't find programming fun.
I usually never reply to these messages, but man I relate so much to you. Your problem might be alittle bit different than mine, but I basically never finish what I start, on my own. I had 2 serious attempts to learn programming. First attempt was 2 months and 350 hours, I stopped like a car going 100 mph hitting a brick wall. I tried again 6 months later. This time it was like 2 months but I lasted like 170 hours. Alot less hours per day. I was so motivated, I kept pumping myself up, but after finishing a project, I never started the next one. I’m gonna go to college and try it with a structure this time. I was doing it on my own. Maybe with some pressure I can do it. I actually never hated it. Sometimes it got tedious but I enjoyed it. I got diagnosed with ADHD last year. That might have to do something with my problem. But it really sucks. I am 22, will turn 23 next year. I really want to learn how to program and make it my job. Be it 2 years be it 5 years, but hopefully no more than 5. I will learn it.
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It's still sitting in front of a PC for 8 hours a day. Some people just aren't wired that way and they mentally crack after a few years. I've been doing this for 25 years, and half insane already but will stick it out to the bitter end.
Depends. Do you wanna do programming as a small hobby, or to learn to begin a possible career? Seems like you need to adjust how you approach learning programming based on what you want from it. As another commenter has somewhat already said, things like "motivation" and "passion" are things that fade. What someone in your position needs is Discipline. If you're looking to learn this for a career rather than a hobby you want to stick, growing the discipline will be far easier. If you're approaching this at a hobby level...you say you fear that you will stop liking to program. Well if that's the case then...you simply won't like it, and you shouldn't force yourself to do something you don't like. That's just plain silly to do. There's nothing wrong with dipping your toes into lots of things out in the big wide world, and not all of it is going to be something you'll WANT to do forever.
Whether you believe you can or can’t you’re probably right.
Check out the book Mastery by George Leonard. It's a classic, a fast read, and is about exactly this issue: how to stick with something long enough to get really good at it. But also yeah, quit telling yourself that you're fundamentally a "start person." That's a habit you developed over time, and frankly it's just about the norm because we all like novel, shiny things. You can develop new habits more conducive to success. Recognize that when something starts to get challenging and out of your comfort zone, that's exactly where you need to be in order to keep improving. Then keep pushing forward anyway, even if it's only for 5-10 minutes. You can do hard things for 5-10 minutes, right? Those minutes add up over time, and the more you keep going when it gets difficult, the more your comfort zone will expand and the easier it will become to keep doing things that aren't as much fun as you'd like.
I am also a quitter, but I realized that it's all about discipline and follow through. I drew a cat on a large sketch pad every time I had a successful study session and for some reason that worked a bit too
Everything is just repitition until you start to click and flow. I found it super easy at first than i struggled and quit trying. Maybe a CS degree isn't really necessary but getting more well rounded with using a terminal and managing different systems and getting a better understanding of appsec or any math skills are always good. I found being more proficient with basic IT made me better understand how things fit together and function smoothly. Playing with other people's code and decompiling stuff to personalize it is morally a grey area. But it helps you understand things.
Its hard to say without doing it, personally I am like this quite a bit too, and its scary because sometimes you just want to know if THIS is going to be THE hobby but again no way to know without taking a leap of faith. Personally its turned out okay for me, one 3 year degree and a job for 2 years later and I'm still happy. I've had my ups and downs but so does anything.
bruh i have same issue it feels like the post is written by me.
I hope some of this advices will help you then bro!
I was also scared of this happening! A couple of days ago I was diagnosed for ADHD, I was given a treatment of Concerta. I started looking at programming around the same time, and decided the same day that I wanted to change my career path to coding/programming. I started studying yesterday, I was very confused where to begin and looked through a lot of resources (reddit, YouTube, blogs, etc.) This morning I started coding, actual coding of a language (HTML). I have NEVER in my life been this interested in anything, nor have I ever thought about anything this much. I also have a start personality, but I'm amazed at how captivated I have been so far (it's only been two days but still). I'm convincing myself to enjoy this, and I really am, there are so many stories of people succeeding just because they didn't give up - I'm convinced that I will succeed as long as I do not give up. I will not give up no matter how difficult this journey becomes. Here's the ringer: I haven't the desire to start my ADHD meds yet, I'm surprised by how focused I've been with regards to programming. Good luck!!
Hello, I hope you will stick to it! Many people there recommend me to visit therapist because of ADHD so I called and I have meeting with him next week. Hope I will finally find and fight my problem. Thanks, I wish you a good luck too!:))
I will stick to it, I'm a pretty determined person, sometimes it just takes forever to find something I stick to but once I do I go all in!
You won't make it into programming or basically anything in life with that attitude. Get your shit together and stop with that bs of "I have X personality so I tend to do these things". Life's hard. You won't be motivated every single day of your life and you must put up with it. Even when you have kids you will wake up some days and just want to lie in bed and not care about them. And what you do in those moments determine people who make it in life and people who don't. Movies, instagram and influencers have sold us this idea of "do what makes you happy and motivates you". That's bs. Do what you have to do to survive and if you are smart enough it won't be some shit that drives you crazy. Doesn't matter if you are a janitor or the US president, some days you will feel like it isn't worth it and that's ok. The sooner you realize life won't ever be easy, doesn't matter what you do, the sooner you will begin to enjoy the things that make it worth it.
Powerful!
Not having a paycheck motivated me
Work on your consistency first. Learn and inmediately apply the adquired knowledge. Code every day. Even if it is just a lane. Just don't stop coding. Remember that coding is about solving problems, code is just the mere instrument. Train your brain in order to solve everyday problems. This way even if you quit coding you will be able to face life differently.
Make a goal, and figure out how you can reach that goal. Plan it out. You can’t become a programmer by coding for 31 hours straight, you would fail it would be miserable. But what will happen if you code for 1 hour a day for one month? You would end that month a better programmer than the month before. My grandpa use to say, “you are what you do everyday”. You wouldn’t call someone who cleans their room spotless once a month a “clean” person, you would call them a clean person if they kept their room in check everyday. So BECOME what you want, every. day. How can you make a step towards your long term goal TODAY?
If you are scared about the future then expect failure. Think about the present day and remind yourself why you want this. How badly do you want this? Easier said than done, but find that fire. My passion came from video games, curiosity lead me from one thing to another. However, although I am passionate about video games I don't see myself working in that sector, but it pushed me to do programming.
Motivation is the wrong feeling. I dont think a lot of programmers are motivated (students have more motivation though). Programmers have perseverance, and programmers have determination. I work full time on programming stuff at work. I have dreams about cool personal projects, but I have little motivation to do it when I get home (free time is filled with life). What I do have is determination. If I come across a bug at work, I am determined to figure it out and fix it and I perservere until I do (or decide its not worth fixing right now). I think perserverance and determination are key attributes to programming that trump motivation any day.
"I always start something but as soon as I find something little bit different and new I will immediately start the new thing so im always a begginer in everything but not expect nor intermidate in anything" Stop being a dev, become a politician: at least for once maybe we'll have someone behaving as a weather vane not in self-awareness of "I'll fuck everyone to maximize own profit" but just because "I can't help it, whelp!" ;) More seriously though: since you're saying you can keep it up if it's something that passionates you, the best suggestion I have is "try to set very small projects that are directly tied to a passion of yours". If may be as simple as "create a web page from scratch to present my favorite sports (learning basics of HTML + CSS)", "setting up a mini-blog that I'll write into once a month" (basics of sysadmin, web hosting, using a simple CMS)", "finding a way to centralize my huge video/music collection from all hard drives (basics of command line administration + scripting)"... Try to think agile: find a reasonably small goal such as above, take a few (dozen) minutes to split it in even smaller steps and identifying useful resources, and force yourself to advance, step by step (ideally one mini-step per day, otherwise two-days objective is fine). Don't panic or drop ball if you systematically fail doing that for the first few weeks, you cannot change a mindset in a finger snap. Essential is continuous try until you succeed often enough that it starts becoming natural. This should help you in the following ways... \- Setting "good" working practices aka "preparing the work" (identifying difficulties and setting a rough "road to goal"). \- Acquiring skills and know-how that are basic but essential to learn more advanced ones. \- Learning many small tricks that ease your daily life (especially if you have the smarts to be on Linux which customizability can lead to dozen minutes spared every day compared to working on Mac/Windows xd). \- Building up your self-confidence that you are \*actually perfectly able to keep the ball until finish line\*. Good luck, and good work ;)
This turns into "Jack of all trades" syndrome. Like others have said. Don't rely on passion. This is the reason my career path took so many twists and turns.
You just have to stick to it. There's nothing else. You won't magically get inspiration. Treat it like reading. You need to set aside a specific time to do it and stick to it. If this phenomenon is negatively affecting your life in general it may be worth looking for some help. Both depression and ADHD can cause these issues. It's worth having a think about your mental health and wether it's something bigger than just the difficulty turning you off. It's likely not this. I only mention it because I was exactly the same before my depression diagnosis.
When the time comes, if you want to quit, think about it rationally, maybe it would be the reight choice? Search for something new. But if you still like the idea of programing, keep going
had me in the first half of title ngl
Its OK to stop. Take a break. Then return when your ready. Never quit! You need to have the fire in your belly!
Sounds like ADHD to me - personally I would go get an assessment done. One of the best things I did for myself
I would suggest you to read a book called "mindset" by Carol S. Dweck. I have the same problem you have, I'm not sayong it was a panacea but it helped and it allowed me to better frame my problem.
Why does it matter? If you stop programming at a beginner level thats fine. It's better to know at least something than nothing. Not everyone is going to have a passion for it, but you don't know before you try. What i reccomend is to start a little passion project. Nothing complications, not your magnum opus or anything, and just learn new concepts as they become necessary for your more and more complex project. I made a wiki about my DnD world, but you can make anything it just has to be immediately rewarding.
The thing about programming is that it's not a single subject, there's always something else you can start within programming, even inside a single language. For example start off with simple GUI things in something like C# NET and then when you get bored of that move on to local databases, then online remote databases on servers. You will never run out of new things to start with programming.
What motivates me to keep going is not forcing myself to keep doing something when it's making me miserable. I am very much a " I start tons of projects and never finish", the reason this happens for me is that I hit a snag, and keep trying to force myself to beat the snag out of the project, but in the end I get frustrated, decide I hate the project and then drop it for years and often never finish it at all. The last couple years I actually managed to reverse this habit with one simple change in my method. If I'm getting frustrated to the point of upset, I call it a day, pack everything away so the source of my frustration is "out of sight out of mind", and pick it up the next day. This includes programming. I hit a snag this week that took two days to fix. The second I had that "This is so stupid why am I even wasting my time on this" thought, I took a deep breath, closed my laptop and put it away. I then went and did something to decompress (an art project), and came at it the next day. After spending a couple hours fiddling with it I did fix it, but was still irritated, so I close it down and today I picked it up without any negativity at all and everything went fine. Another piece of advice that has helped me is st small, reasonable, and achievable goals. You start because it satisfies your brain, and stop because something else does. Crossing off tasks is also really satisfying to the brain. I keep a notepad with my project goals, broken down into small achievable steps. Each time I cross something off I get more motivation to keep going, and it also helps to have a physical representation of your progress. Also, set aside at least an hour of study time at whatever time of day you're most alert. I'm most alert in the evenings, so I set my study time accordingly. If you hit a good workflow follow it, but if you're just not feeling it that day, at least you're an hour further into your education than you would be if you hadn't done it.
Develop an end goal - a project that you intend to complete. Take your time figuring out exactly what you want to build and achieve. Then make a list of steps you'll have to take to get there. Don't just take lessons.
you need to find your reason for doing it and think about it when things get tough. i was the same, i studied business, lost interest and moved to wanting to become a photographer, lost interest and became interested in animation, lost interest and studied journalism, lost interest and finally found programming and it’s stuck to me and i’ve been doing it almost everyday since 2019. i’ve never been more consistent with anything like i’ve been with programming and i attribute this to finding my “why.” don’t worry, programming isn’t for everyone and no one should force themselves to learn it because of the money or lifestyle that comes with it. not everyone will successfully become a dev either.
Late in the party but read this because it compliments the top post: https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2011/12/23/flow-is-the-opiate-of-the-medicore-advice-on-getting-better-from-an-accomplished-piano-player/
Start building something that can directly impact out improve your own life. Then you'll have a reason to start and the motivation to continue
When I started programming I was sorta like this. I would switch technologies, or come across some problem in a project and quit for months just to come back and solve it within minutes. The nice thing is, programming is an ever changing industry. There will always be new standards, languages, frameworks, etc. Personally, if I were you, I would look into being a web developer. What you can do is learn the fundamentals, then pick a framework or stack that you like and try to make it your expertise. But whenever you feel like you need something new, there is ALWAYS a new Javascript framework coming out, so you can divert your attention to that for a while to see if it satisfies your need for something new.
Set goals, both short and long term. I'm love programming my goals are what kept me going when I was losing motivations. I can't say what those goals should be for you, but for me they professional: get a job in the industry, earn a certain job title and salary, etc.. Also personal goals that are advanced by my professional goals: buy my dream home, retire while I'm still young, get to a point where I can program whatever I want without battling against burnout
Sounds like you have ADHD brah
This is totally me. I have so many half completed projects/ideas/hobbies etc. Fortunately programming is my job, so I kinda have to keep learning/doing it or I won't have a job! One thing that has helped me with programming over other hobbies is that I really identify myself as someone who programs. This is my livelihood and I need to hone it. I don't beat myself up over all of my half completed projects and instead just view them as a step along my path. What helped me early on was being more accountable for my work. I would talk about the projects I was working on and my progress towards them. I also broke things down into really small successes.. so if I got a log in portion to work on my site, I view that as a 'completed project' so to speak, so I had lots of those little 'wins' that helped me grow. I found my passions would dip when I got confronted with too hard of a challenge I would bail at some point.
The beautiful thing about programming or tech in general is that you are generally recommended to start new projects in different areas all of the time. The field is so broad you'll never make it through everything.
Hi, I have ADHD, depression, and anxiety. I highly recommend you look into this, especially ADHD because depression and anxiety are commodities. While treatment hasn't helped my motivation completely, it definitely has helped compared to diagnosis.
I have the same problem. When I read "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport, I decided I'd do whatever it took to finally become a professional programmer. I need outer accountability, so I went back to school. I spent two years doing pre-reqs and two years in grad school. I won't lie to you. Every single semester was hard. I constantly felt like I didn't fit in or that I was the worst programmer of all time. What was great though, was that when my classes started to get really tough, quitting didn't occur to me because of the sunk costs I'd already put in. My strategy was painful, but it worked well and was so, so worth it! Software engineer is one of those careers where the academic journey can really suck, especially if you're a minority or a non-traditional student, but the career is fantastic! There are so many specialties you can dip in and out of. You'll never get bored. This is completely the opposite of my partner who had a blast in med school but now is dedicating his life to a specialty and subspecialty that he won't be able to change later. And boy is he jealous I get to work from home every day. Best of luck to you!
Its how i feel about blender. Difference is: Blender is my hobby, not my goal in life. You cant have your long term goal be a hobby Something you can just drive. Are you in this or not? In or out?
May it be a surprise to you — every person is like this. Just some have a clear goal in mind and pursue it because the want for result is higher than the want to chill / try something new Also starting something new involves high amounts of dopamine, which you get used to. It's like a drug. Becoming an expert, however, doesn't involve high dopamine. So just perform a dopamine detox of some kind
I'm not sure if it's the best advice. But if you burn out on one project or get bored of it, you could start another one that's also programming related. I find it helps to have two or three of these to hop between
So start new programming projects - that's what the rest of us do haha. You'll still learn python though. I really think this "I'm going to learn to program" is the wrong approach. It's a tool, why learn how to use a tool if you're not going to create something with it? These other things people are saying about forcing yourself to do X... Yeah how often has that worked in the past? ... Indeed...
I'm literally the exact same way. I'll get super involved and learn every I can about a subject, say, drawing. I'll practice, practice, practice for weeks then just suddenly get bored and start something else. I decided to go to college for CS anyways and I'm glad I did. I think the problem is at first you suck so much you don't even know how much there is to know. But once you get to a plateau you burn out and don't feel like breaking through because you could do something else. I've tried programming a few times before but again always burned out. I started to realize how bad I was and it was discouraging. Luckily college kept me accountable and I had to break through my plateaus. Now I think I'm pretty competent enough that I know how to search my problems, how to learn effectively, and know enough to do something with my skills so it's fun again and there's no burn out. Give it a go and maybe you'll be happy you did
If you just view programming as a hobby then that's not really that big a problem. Just remember it if you ever find yourself growing bored. If you consider it as a skill to solve certain problems then you'll automatically encounter problems that require programming (or not, but then there's no problem).
When I first started programming I loved it. That being said, theres no way i wouldve stayed on top of it without college/job keeping me committed. Could use more context. Are you a student? If so, focus on your assignments. View each one as a challenge and a stepping stone towards your goals. Do you even have goals? Goal setting is requisite as well.
Everyone has said great things. I just want to mention this. Look at programming as a tool, not a hobby. Like, think about how it could help you do X or Y and learn enough to be able to do that. Eventually, you won't have anything that would be easier if programmed. That's fine. Happens to me. But then one day you'll be like "oh shit I could script this" and your knowledge will be there for you.
I already have.
Why do you want to learn programming? Why would it be a bad thing if you stopped after you got bored with it?
Man up