Comment by elmerfud | Hacker News Reader

Comment by elmerfud | Hacker News Reader

Not everything is about passion projects, actually most of life is not about passion projects unless you want to be extremely poor (starving artists), you manage to be independently wealthy, or you stumble in to a job that can be it. If your passions align with most peoples passions then those jobs are rare and you're waiting for the people ahead of you to die so you get a chance at that job.

Really what you're describing is simple fear of change. You've spent your whole life studying and now you see the end where the bulk of your time is not studying any more. You can go on to make a career out of studying but again that is an extremely competitive field and if you didn't plan for that before now it can be difficult to get in to.

It sounds like you've fallen for the marketing trick to keep people unhappy. The idea that you have passionate about something in order to do it and to do it well. That kind of marketing is great to keep you unhappy and continuing to throw money in various directions to pretend that a passion project is what you need in your life. It's a lie. What you need is probably something you've never been taught, you need grit. Grit is what keeps your grades high even when you're unsure about what's next. Grit will make you the best intern that a company has ever seen. Grit means that you don't have to like the task in front of you but you'll damn will do the better than anyone else. Grit is the difference between someone who achieves while others whine it can't be done.

When you've developed grit you've found true passion. Passion for thing means that thing controls you and if that thing changes (which it always does) you're plunged in to depression. When you can redirect that so your passion is about personal achievement regardless of the task you've found the grit to continue and passion you want.

I think you may have misrepresented my message. I understand that not everything is happiness and joy in a craft, you need to eat frogs and force yourself through boring but necessary tasks. That, believe me, I understood. The whole discipline beats motivation but the problem is that why. You can force yourself to developp that grit/self-discipline but it can only last so long (in my case a few years) if at the end you find no joy on what you are doing. Grit is like hope in the desert, but you cannot live on hope alone, you also need oasis for the water inbetween.

>The idea that you have passionate about something in order to do it and to do it well. Idk why but in my limited student experience, this is true. The classmates with the best code, most experience and projects were the ones who were actually passionate. There is basically a 2-5 point difference between the people who wanted to be in the classes and the people who dragged themselves every morning.

I thank you for the time you took to write the message, and I see where you are coming from but it doesn't lead me to anywhere I didn't think before.

You're 23. Not to sound condescending, but I know it will a little bit, you're missing out on the life experience to properly judge the effect of grit.

Self-discipline is something that lasts a lifetime not one or two years and if you can't persist past one or two years you've not developed it and not understood what it is. Again I believe that stems from youth and it's not a wrong to have that perspective when you're young I know I had that perspective at your age as well.

Grit and self-discipline help you understand you do the things you must do because they allow you to do those things you want to do. You don't have to find a joy every thing you do you don't even have to in your job thinking that your job or the method in which you earn money must provide you some sort of self-satisfaction is wrong-headed thinking and has not been true for all of time and it makes no sense that it should be true today. If you're lucky it's true most people aren't lucky. So you do what you must to earn the income the level you need to be able to do those things that you enjoy.

There is a primary fallacy that people always say when they think they need some self satisfaction from a job they say money doesn't buy happiness. And while that statement in and of itself is true the way it's used is missing the point. Money allows you the freedom to find happiness in ways that you can not when you're poor. Money buys freedom. So you can do a job that you hate that makes you a lot of money but that's not your life If your life is to climb mountains that job provides you the ability to do that because now you have the monetary resources to travel the world and climb mountain and take the time off that you need. That's great understanding that I will do a job that I hate the best of my ability because it provides me the means to do the things that give me satisfaction in life.

Ok I understand the message.

How would I go about building this self-discipline and grit ? And how would I go about developping while not ending in a burnout state in the near future ?

How to train for grit?

Some context: at age of 40 I think I have the ordinary grit. That is, I can complete work that I'm not interested in. I can go the extra mile to write better documentation or go back to laptop at 7pm for some extra support or write scripts for automation.

However I don't have the grit to complete my side projects. I understand that even for passion projects 80% of the code is just boring stuffs such as boilerplate or patching up edge cases so I already have the mental preparation. But usually I burnout too quickly after solving a difficult algorithm. Here is an example: say I want to build a 2d rpg, I worked on the game for a while and then decided to attack the more difficult algos such as path finding and line of sight. I grinded for a few days and completed those algos. I'm happy with myself but then lose the energy to complete the rest of the game(about 50-60% I'd say), which is technically easier but architecturally complicated.

How can I obtain the grit to complete side projects?

quick reaction: the grit you have to complete work stuff maybe has to move to the side project. For example reverse your day: first 2 hours are for your side project. this likely will feel weird and shake up your current strategy, but that's the point!

as we get older we naturally come to focus on less and less whether due to raw physical capacity, growing responsibilities, and even just more sense. So i would suggest reframing the question as how to prioritize and focus my efforts, vs how do i add more capacity for a side project.

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