How do you manage to keep working on a project once the “honeymoon phase” wears off?
Have you found anything that works for you, when finishing a project takes longer than the initial motivation rush will take you?
How do you manage to keep working on a project once the “honeymoon phase” wears off?
Have you found anything that works for you, when finishing a project takes longer than the initial motivation rush will take you?
Not quite what you’re asking, but I’ve learned that an important thing for personal projects is not to tell anyone about them until they’re basically done.
For me, getting to explain the thing and talk about why I’m doing it is a big part of what keeps me excited. If I tell someone about a project too early, my dumb monkey brain says ‘ok, good chemicals dispensed! That project is now dead to me’, and I lose all motivation to actually finish it.
Knowing I’m doing something cool and no one knows yet actually helps keep me going.
Beyond that? Having a clear plan, with concrete goals that define what ‘finished’ looks like, and clear concrete steps that will get me to that point. Literally a checklist. That way, continuing the work just means working from that list, rather than stressing over what to do next and getting bogged down in tangents and distractions.
Start with big tasks that feed into your project goals (‘add feature x’), and then gradually break them down into smaller individual tasks that can be completed in a single session of work. You don’t have to break the entire project down at once; I start each day by saying ‘what meaningful progress can I achieve today?’ and go from there.
This works for me too.
But, there is one exception that worked even better. Find someone who doesn’t struggle with maintaining his momentum and motivation, and work on the project with him. At least for me, not wanting to dissapoint and force myself to keep up with my roommate, who was kind of a workoholic and with whom we worked on a game, is what forced me to keep on working on it for 6 years, before we finally released it.
I would’ve given up after a year, once we handed it in as our semester work, but his team management that he managed to keep up for 5 more years is what made me keep on working.
So, yeah. Either don’t tell anyone, or be the second follower for someone is what works for me.
But, discipline is also what works wonders. When I was at college and used to regularly having to work on schoolwork/my own projects, I didn’t struggle aa much with starting or doing anything.
Once I fell out of this rythm and procrastrinated for few years, it’s now super hard to do anything.
Try to force yourself to work on it regularly, even if it’s just “every two days, work for an hour, without exceptions”. After few months of this, it will become way more easier, once it’s a habit.
It’s actually a known phenomenon. Talking about your goals gives a similar dopamine hit to actually completing the goal, so your brain has less motivation since it already got high.
I thought that did it for me, but whenever I talked to ppl was when I was breaking my routine and not doing work that day, and then I wouldnt get back into my routine id swap to the new one established that day