How do you find the motivation?

[Sourcer]

I'm always starting a new kernel, reaching point X(it's different each time... X can be GUI development, VFS, advanced memory management like buddy system, etc...) lose motivation, and quit.

Then i start develop other projects, and do the same.. lose motivation in the middle of the project, quit, and go on to another project. Anyone else has this disease? i find it very hard to finish a project.. even though i'm very enthusiastic in my mind about possible features.


How do you guys keep motivation up?

[zaval]

Maybe that VFS is so demotivating, I don't have it and don't loose motivation.

I think it's the matter of self discipline. If you stay "enthusiastic about possible features", as you say, you should remind yourself and set up yourself you want to continue to have them done. Fantasize about how cool your system will be. Or just imagine the process of how you are getting further and further, how it will look like etc. Go and look at the "screenshots" thread here, it's very motivating.

[~]

I use my nails, restoring the health of an organ (hearth, brain) as a clock, and I create a work cycle where when my nails start breaking or an organ starts to fully heal due to my care, I stop what I did. I set goals for the start of each work cycle, and surprisingly I always get great things achieved, and I always fulfill my goals by the time the work cycle's clock ends and I almost never notice that I'm achieving my goals (the clock is something bodily and natural like the time all my nails reach their full length and start cracking).

I also do it as a compensation for my female Siamese ktten friend who literally saved my life and has never stopped making me feel supported, educated and healed. She took me from a death situation to becoming a programmer who wants to know from the lowest to the highest level, from scratch, mainly by myself, from the point of view of operating system development, which contains absolutely everything about programming, developing software and hardware, data, math, actually any human, animal or physical/logical activity as a shield based in technology and nature for a well living.

[Octacone]

Just imagine yourself in a distant future, browsing the web, moving some files around on your very own OS.
You really have to be passionate about something if you want it to succeed.
If you really can't focus onto something just distance yourself from the thing and start working on something else, and when that gets boring get back.

[Antti]

Just imagine yourself in a distant future, browsing the web, moving some files around on your very own OS. You really have to be passionate about something if you want it to succeed.

In my opinion (great emphasis on the "opinion" word), motivation should be kept up with intermediate goals. Being passionate about individual parts and building the foundation of the bigger scheme. OSDev can be a journey and not just a destination. Perhaps most memorable things happen during the journey? The present moment, and using the things you already have or will have very soon, should be an important source of motivation.

[max]

I use my nails, restoring the health of an organ (hearth, brain) as a clock, and I create a work cycle where when my nails start breaking or an organ starts to fully heal due to my care, I stop what I did.

I wonder if I will ever understand a word of what you're talking about..

[~]

I use my nails, restoring the health of an organ (hearth, brain) as a clock, and I create a work cycle where when my nails start breaking or an organ starts to fully heal due to my care, I stop what I did.

I wonder if I will ever understand a word of what you're talking about..

Go now to write down formally a document that you'll keep for some weeks or months, but first choose a good long-term clock, like your nails or hair, that will indicate you when the cycle finishes the next time you cut/shave them, so reset the work cycle clock by cutting/shaving them.

Now just write down the goals you wish to reach for this work cycle.

After that, just update the work cycle log periodically with the date for any achievements.

At the end of the work cycle, write at the end of the document what you actually achieved, no matter what it is. If you compare your original goals, you'll find you have achieved a lot of what you wanted, probably without noticing during the cycle.

If you build a directory with a formal collection of logs and data files for your work cycles, you will always be able to measure and give reasonable time to your goals, which will also be coherent with your metabolism, and thus will have a time base that really fits yourself.

[Solar]

Usually people use a clock or calendar for measuring time. Makes your statement much more accessible as well...

[sandras]

I say, set your goals low.

[~]

One of the things that I see kept everyone's motivation the highest was starting by learning to program standard PC hardware, and then sharing the results with everyone to make things much more entertaining. It was sharing, learning and doing interesting things with everyone's help, and releasing interesting information and full programs with code, that made things capable of keeping programmers motivated, experts or beginners.

One of the things that keeps me activated at the highest and most purely practical level of thinking is learning how to compile existing open source programs and demo snippets around. Once I get not bored but tired in the short term after learning to compile new programs, I find that I get the strength/enthusiasm/concentration/impulse/whatever, to advance at operating system level. You can see how I learn and explain to compile existing programs like Firefox, in my videos:
https://www.youtube.com/user/AltComp126

I set my goals logical.

I have a set of goals for a reasonable time, I know what I can do and what I want, and how much time and effort it takes daily and hourly, so I just prepare my workspace and actions to achieve those goals.

As soon as I feel the enthusiasm and the inspiration of ideas to implement right away, I get to learn new things. That's when I get to start developing a new major project all of my own, with original code, like a GIF renderer, a text recorder to log keystrokes, assembly skeletons that require no linker to produce EXEs...

That's how I advance. I retry things all the time that in the past I didn't know how to do just because nobody told me exactly how.