What motivates you?

[touchh]

Anyone ever feel unmotivated as crap?

Lately I've had a ton of ideas for projects and stuff I've wanted to work on, but every-time I start them I end up just feeling uninterested and not finishing. My most recent project was a alarm system, I got as far as finishing the code for the keypad scan and got bored with that..

I see all these cool projects posted on hackaday, dangerousprototypes and the likes, and I always wonder, what the hell motivates people so much? I have interest in a lot of things, but have finished very few things...

So, how do you motivate yourself?

[8086]

I used to have this problem, but then I realised I end up with a load of half finished shit, and very little to actually show for it. Many unfinished projects is a lot less useful than a few finished projects.

I realised this and made a decision to finish whatever I start, however boring it may become during the process, and however unmotivated I feel. I think this is an important skill to have, whatever you do.

[Conrad Hoffman]

Winning motivates me. That can be as simple as solving somebodies problem, making a few bucks or just figuring out something clever. If it makes you feel better, I find that opportunities to do those things are fewer and further between than they seemed to be in the past.

[Psi]

Trying to do an entire project as one task gets boring quick.

Break the project down into parts, that way it's more manageable and you get satisfaction from finishing each bit.

You can also have two parts of the project going at the same time, so when you get bored with one you can switch to the other for a while.


Quite often i will split a MCU programming task into sections and code each separately. Only at the end when i have each working do i join them together into one piece of code.
That way the code only becomes large and complicated at the end when i already have working systems.

[amspire]

I think you have to be careful not to beat yourself up about it if you do have  partially finished projects.

You probably did achieve something, like doing prototype tests on a bench to see if an idea works, or learning to lay out a circuit board - there is always something. It is not as good as a finished project I admit, but sometimes you get what you needed to get from a project, and there is no real point in finishing.

For me, the thing I dread is getting really unmotivated with a project at work. Sometimes it is me. Sometimes things happen outside my control that just totally kill all the momentum in the project.

I do admire it when I see someone who seems to have amazing abilities to get a project done quickly, without the slightest sign of a burnout. I remember at school reading "The Black Cloud" by the famous astronomer Fred  Hoyle. In that someone, with about one night to spare, designed and built a computer out of box of valves that was able to learn and decipher and alien's language, and was able to perform real time bidirectional translations with no sign of an error. This allowed the heroes to tell the alien to rack off rather then destroying  the Earth, and so the alien racked off.

I want to be able to invent, design, build and program a super computer with true artificial intelligence from scrap parts overnight too.

Richard

[Mechatrommer]

I realised this and made a decision to finish whatever I start, however boring it may become during the process, and however unmotivated I feel

accomplished professionals are very good at doing this, actually, thats their speciality... doing boring stuffs. btw, related... What makes you excited?

[Rerouter]

The thrill of working out new things, albeit that i mainly revese engineer to repair things or modify them, than create from scratch myself,

but even in those cases, i always try new methods, so as to keep myself interested in it,
expecially looking at old test gear, some of them used logic gates and op amps how they where never intended,

[siliconmix]

i have loads of unfinished stuff.i take parts from the unfinished bits coz i'm to tight to buy more.if i get bored i look at simple but effective designs that other people have made like Reverend Thomas Scarborough and that inspires me to play again.

[AntiProtonBoy]

What motivates you?

Serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine... the usual stuff...

In all seriousness, I think having positive feedback from people about your work is quite a powerful motivator. This might sound a bit egotistical of me for saying this, but doing things to prove myself and to see people appreciating my work gives me a hell of a lot of encouragement. In the recent years, I have lost contact with most of my peers due to various reasons (distance, them breeding, etc), and I'm pretty much in the same boat of doing half-arsed jobs and leaving things unfinished. So yeah, if you have nothing to show for due to not completing your project, or there is no one else to appreciate it, the whole thing suddenly seems less exciting.

[McMonster]

I've noticed the same problem with myself some time ago. I have like 5 great projects now at different level of completness starting from a general idea to schematics and a single breadboarded prototype waiting for MCU code. Splitting tasks works so far, I use to switch between two or three projects, doing a small, but noticeable bit of a project then switch to another and to the same. I've also started to set up my own blog just for the sole purpose of showing off my work, so that hackaday and other sites can post a link. You must also find some discipline for the most boring tasks, tell yourself "I will finish this part of code today" and do it. My problem was always with starting, once I've do first step the rest goes on smoothly (and morning quickly). And don't fear dead ends, they actually open up room for another interesting approaches.

Also remembering all your great ideas in detail is important, so I make notes wherever I can. There's nothing as unmotivating than forgetting important how you wanted to do important part of a project and having to reinvent it. Unfortunately I really suck at drawing, my "skills" in this area are almost legendary among my family and friends.

[SoftwareSamurai]

I would offer the idea that if you don't finish a project, perhaps it's just not that exciting to you. Often times I start a project with great enthusiasm and interest, but as the project starts to take concrete form, I discover that it's actually not that exciting, or that it lacks that something special to hold my excitement.

In these situations, there's only two possibilities:
1. The project is truly not that great, and rightfully should be abandoned. 
2. The project actually IS truly great, but you're actually a thinker, not a do'er.

I confess: I'm a serious thinker, but I'm trying very hard to be a do'er as I get older. I need the money. 

[deephaven]

Do something amazing, something difficult. I could suggest lots of projects but it has to come from the heart. It has to come from you. You need to live and breath this project. You want to go to bed and not be able to sleep because you are just seeing this project in your imagination, and working things out. It won't be easy, but that's the point. You might not know how you accomplish certain aspects of the project so you have to search the Internet, ask here and buy books if you have to.

[Kilroy]

I find the brevity of life a powerful motivator.

[PA3BNX]

Hello All Out There,


What motivates me is a project that I think and see that is possible to do

and I must make progress every day with.

My Radio Direction Finding projects take almost 10 years now.

I never got bored with them and I can improve then over and over.

I the mean time I did learn better programming.

I see now results that are better then I would ever have been able to imagine !

I know it's not an easy project I am doing but it's fun.

I would like to have more competition hi...

My goal is and was to make the RDF dopplers cheap/easy to build from standard parts
/ precieze fast and have a lot of options like real time mapping and interfacing.
 
I am even thinking of how to do all the doppler and gps stuff on  a I=pad or Android
platform.

Thats still far away from my capebilities but not unreachable.
 
Thats all folks.

Do one thing and enyoy the learning curve.
 

[Zero999]

I also find it very hard to get motivated. Most of my time is spent helping others with their projects over the Internet.

[bullet308]

At present, my best motivator is the fact that my present job requires me to basically sit in one place and occasionally help people for hours upon end, which leaves me with just enough free time to go completely bonkers with boredom.

So, I built myself a little portable electronics-lab-in-a-bag that I carry to work with me, loaded with breadboards, Arduinos, switches, resistors, some basic tools, a multimeter...Once I could not find time to play with any of that stuff. Now, I am actually making some progress in figuring out all of this stuff!  :-)

[PeteInTexas]

Anyone ever feel unmotivated as crap?...So, how do you motivate yourself?

Medication 

No, seriously, alcohol.  It worked for Widlar.