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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

This attempts to disassociate fuel from acceleration. Your dissatisfaction is the fuel. You can't dump fuel and maintain the same potential energy. If you manage that it would be the motivational equivalent of a reactionless drive. As is, our propulsion is found in our discontent. Most of us can burn it a lot more efficiently though.

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It's very subtle.

There's a difference between emotion-based coping where you try to fix some perceived problem and a more intrinsic drive that aspires to make a change. The difference lies mostly in what the primary source of energy is.

Negative stimuli is a nice way to bootstrap an effort but it's not as durable or the same as internal motivation. I've tried to make many changes on both types of fuel and the only thing that is suitably durable for very long term projects is intrinsic motivation.

I think "it would be cool if ..." is a better long term motivator than "it sucks that ...".

"it would be cool if ..." runs into "but effort" and dies, while "it sucks that ..." is something that gnaws at you

Effort seems to be a quite malleable kind of experience. It can be enjoyed or despised depending on how you've trained your impulses around that certain kind of effort. This further speaks to using the "it would be cool if ..." narrative.

Trying to build upon "it sucks that ..." seems to create a bunch of weird self sabotaging behaviours in my experience. Since I tried moving away from that I've found it easier to motivate myself to do things that aren't immediately rewarding. And perhaps more importantly, the journey there seems more enjoyable.

And I think it makes a lot of sense that using a carrot instead of a stick on yourself produces more consistent behaviour. You move towards a carrot and you flee from a stick. You can flee in most directions.

Changing the way you think about yourself takes a lot of time though. Impulses are deeply rooted.

> carrot instead of a stick

But wanting the carrot and not wanting to get hit are both kinds of discontent. The donkey is dissatisfied at not having the carrot so it pulls the cart that would otherwise be still.

There's a lot of overlap with ideas in Terror Management Theory. A lot of TMT is denial of death & not facing it, but also some people have a far more head on approach, motivate by watching the candle burn. Theres a variety of new page browser extensions that show life-left clocks of various sorts, for example.

I haven't read deep in, but even a couple long form pop write ups has been an affirming experience to go theough, has made me feel less alienated for trying to walk the line with my dissatisfactions (instead of opting for available happinesses or contentednesses). I know others grapple similarly, but somehow having some name some theory that talks somewhat to this desperate dissatisfaction fuel really helped me equalize pressure & handle this stress a bit better.

Going with that analogy, there are a lot of different fuels you can use. Using dissatisfaction or self-loathing may be an effective fuel, but it tends to be like putting NOS in your engine. You can go really fast, but you are likely doing long-term damage to the engine or risking catastrophic failure. Perhaps a good strategy for a 30-second street race, but not a good one for a cross-country road trip.

Most things in life are more like the latter than the former, and most people eventually figure out that it's better to motivate yourself using compassion for yourself and others instead of anger.

That being said, most people who accomplish much do seem to mix some amount of nitrous in their tank. Just don't overdo it.

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