Laziness

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Empirean
Posts: 26
Joined: September 24th, 2017, 3:23 am

Laziness

Post by Empirean » June 10th, 2018, 11:39 am

Hello guys, its a non-programming related topic. How do you overcome laziness? Lets admit it sometimes we get lazy but how do you get yourself motivated and continue to do stuff that is outside your daily routine?

I'm a lazy person and i do stuff fast cause I'm lazy but it has become a negative part of me. I get to the point where I'm just lazy. I love to code and i love to learn new things but i get lazy. Any tips? Looking for a friend.

(Is it allowed to be discussed here?)

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Alacaster
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Location: Spokane, WA

Re: Laziness

Post by Alacaster » June 10th, 2018, 4:33 pm

Whatever you want to do, make it necessary to complete, to complete tasks you are already in a habit of doing.

I needed to run to get into shape for 2017-2018 Cross country and track season.
So I took the single action of telling my father to not pick me up from school which forced me to run home. Now it's just part of my routine. It might be hard in your case try to find a way.

Also have a goal of something you want to accomplish and try to identify what you are doing besides accomplishing that goal. Maybe you're trying to do too many things?
You can't be betrayed if you don't have any friends.
Why live? Cause why not.

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Alacaster
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Joined: October 16th, 2016, 5:08 pm
Location: Spokane, WA

Re: Laziness

Post by Alacaster » June 10th, 2018, 4:38 pm

You should also know that there is a solution to being a procrastinator.

I find after many years of procrastinating and just not learning to code I just do it without a second thought and it's enjoyable but it took a long time. Maybe I'm just stubborn?
You can't be betrayed if you don't have any friends.
Why live? Cause why not.

Empirean
Posts: 26
Joined: September 24th, 2017, 3:23 am

Re: Laziness

Post by Empirean » June 10th, 2018, 5:21 pm

Thank you for the response Alacaster. I have read your response multiple times just so we are on the same page. Not letting your father fetch you from school is a great example. I wish I can come up with something to make my objectives necessary but I'm too lazy to think of one other than the obvious choices.

Allow me to share what is going on with me. I used to mod for warcraft 3 and I find it really fun to do. I also code games when I'm still studying. Those were fun times. I stopped coding games when I graduated since the game industry in my country is pretty much non existent by the time i graduated so I went to becoming a programmer instead. I'm trying to learn Unity by the way but learning the basics bores me. I know its the most important bits but I get lazy. Also when I thought of what I know it overwhelms me to realize that I still have to learn a lot now that they have a new way to code stuff. I need that little push. I really appreciate your response. Thank you sir.

Empirean
Posts: 26
Joined: September 24th, 2017, 3:23 am

Re: Laziness

Post by Empirean » June 10th, 2018, 5:23 pm

Also yes I'm trying to become a game programmer. Its my passion and the only thing that can make me happy at this point.

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Yumtard
Posts: 575
Joined: January 19th, 2017, 10:28 pm
Location: Idiot from northern Europe

Re: Laziness

Post by Yumtard » June 10th, 2018, 6:36 pm

This is what I do

1. wake up early
2. Make daily checklists of what to do that day
3. every sunday I meal prep for the following week so I don't need to spend time/energy on making lunch

Empirean
Posts: 26
Joined: September 24th, 2017, 3:23 am

Re: Laziness

Post by Empirean » June 11th, 2018, 6:29 am

@Yumtard i like listing stuff. It is by far the most effective technique that worked for me in the past. I'll start listing again. Thank you so much.

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krautersuppe
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Joined: September 14th, 2015, 10:58 pm
Location: Istanbul

Re: Laziness

Post by krautersuppe » June 17th, 2018, 6:44 pm

I would like to share my thoughts on this too.
I think there is some base amount of energy in the day that one spends throughout the day and it is
variable through ones eating and sleeping habits as well as environment(hours of daylight, temperature etc.).So what you eat and how much you eat matters and where you sleep and how long matters too.

Now about laziness to do mental work - I find it highly difficult even when it's scheduled. I would say that doing mental work(in our case coding) -and by that i mean learning something new or thinking about how to solve this or that problem - is extremely difficult and requires lot of focus(and thus not being hungry, exhausted from physical work or being busy cleaning,cooking,playing video games,watching some garbage online, scrolling down ones facebook page etc.).

Now let's suppose you are not hungry or sleepy(You can by the way use drugs to artificially increase your alertness - caffeine(coffee, tea, cocoa, mate) is a popular choice- i don't practice it though but many do).
Question is how can you be sure that you practice your desired activity?
Most effective for me is what I would call "developing a habit". That is - I set a moderate goal(for example I will code once in 2 weeks - and then slowly increase frequency. After I have increased frequency so much that i can't maintain it anymore - it either means I'm at my natural limit or am busy doing other stuff. If I then decrease times per week of the activity i was doing I find myself longing to practice it again- it's kind of artificial addiction.

How to set goals properly and work towards reaching them? I really don't have straight answer for this.Chili seems to be good at continuous effort(producing his series over period of several years) so I would like to hear from him on this topic. I think necessity or envy/admiration helps. Some people only do stuff for ensuring their sustenance. Some people only move when attraction of opposite sex is at stake.Some desire being important or self-reliant.
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Discord: dsu1, GitHub: https://github.com/DSpUz

albinopapa
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Re: Laziness

Post by albinopapa » June 18th, 2018, 4:56 am

I just take breaks for a few days to a few months. I start with something easy and gradually get going full steam again. Unfortunately, I rarely if ever go back to a previous project which is a downfall of mine.
If you think paging some data from disk into RAM is slow, try paging it into a simian cerebrum over a pair of optical nerves. - gameprogrammingpatterns.com

Slidy
Posts: 80
Joined: September 9th, 2017, 1:19 pm

Re: Laziness

Post by Slidy » June 18th, 2018, 6:55 am

I wouldn't force yourself to "do" programming, just go at your own pace. Take a break like albinopapa said if needed then get back into it.

Also personally I wouldn't try to just "learn" Unity, I find that style of just absorbing info really dry and difficult to do. Instead I prefer to take on a project related to what I'm learning, for example a game, and work on it. Programming/learning for me isn't all that fun, but the sense of accomplishment I get from making stuff or solving problems is. So just start working on a game that you want to make and if there are any gaps in your knowledge you'll force yourself to learn them to be able to keep going.

Giving yourself a goal is also really important. If you just aimlessly do stuff without any sort of target you won't be making good progress. Picking a goal gives you a clear aim to what you want to be working towards and makes it easier to actually work on it. If your goal is to "learn Unity" that's not a very good one since it's very general and hard to get done, but if your goal was instead to "make a 2D platformer game in Unity" that's a lot more specific and a lot easier to work towards, which is why I find working on projects to be the best way to learn.

If you really want to learn you can. You just need to get into the habit and learn to take it a bit slower.

Hope this helps :)

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