How I stay motivated as a solo creator

First, I&#x27;m easily distracted.<p>But, the real issue in working on something, for myself, that is engaging, and pushing back the &quot;WTH are you wasting time on this for?&quot;. It&#x27;s all very fleeting.<p>It&#x27;s not like I have some other burning passion to work on instead, some &quot;if you do this you&#x27;ll make lots of money instead of those toys you make thing&quot;. I don&#x27;t.<p>But, especially being older, it can be a trick at times to persevere, not say &quot;F it&quot; and fire up &quot;distraction du jour&quot; (HN, YT, video game, etc.).<p>My recent project, that I actually released, documentation, cross platform installers, and everything, took a year of calendar time (but not a year of effort, it was idle for some months). It felt good to get it out, put it in the hand of other (I think only one person has actually used it). But, that actually doesn&#x27;t deter me (sure, I&#x27;d like folks to use things, that&#x27;s why I finished the project to make it, ideally, easy to pick up).<p>But, still, there are those times when that hopelessness of &quot;why bother&quot; creeps in and takes the wind out of my sails.

My wife hit upon something that might be interesting to anyone reading this. I don&#x27;t think any of the comments here <i>directly</i> put their finger upon it.<p>Some possibly unimportant background: my wife used to suffer from depression, but in the last 10 years that has subsided, mostly through self-guided philosophy and practical stuff. What remains is social anxiety and a life-long history of avoiding working for&#x2F;with people. For reasons I won&#x27;t go into she has a huge problem with authority figures, so early jobs with unfair or idiotic bosses lasted a &quot;tableflip&quot; amount of time. She&#x27;s run a solo business for most of her adult life &quot;to avoid dealing with people&quot;. The double-irony is:<p>1. There&#x27;s almost no such thing as &quot;working alone&quot;. A successful business requires interaction, and if you&#x27;re solo, you need to do <i>all of it</i>.<p>2. She realized that without <i>having</i> to do something <i>for someone</i> she has zero motivation to do anything at all even though she loves what she actually does.<p>Without a client she thinks &quot;why bother?&quot;. As soon as a client contacts her, off she goes like a bee. And even though she consciously realizes this, she has never found a way to trick her brain into doing work for herself. Sometimes I feel like faking a client just so she can work, because once she&#x27;s going, her work is amazing and she loves what she does. She&#x27;s even done free&#x2F;low cost work for cash-strapped clients just so that she can work.<p>So what I&#x27;m saying is that she needs her work to matter to <i>someone specific</i>, but it doesn&#x27;t matter who.<p>I thought she was nuts, but after 20+ years of working for various companies I took a 6 month break from work. I had all sorts of plans for things I&#x27;d hack on. I finished <i>nothing</i>, except for the raspberry pi arcade cabinet for my nephews.<p>We all know that startups need to get their product into customer hands. We think that the client&#x27;s excellent feedback will knock the product into shape. But I think it might just be the fact that you have a customer who needs you to deliver. Having worked for a few early stages startups that had no clients yet, this effect is visible.

A crucial point the post misses is the distinction between motivation and discipline.<p>Ultimately it&#x27;s easy to work on things when they are fun and exciting; but motivation will only last for so long... once that happens it&#x27;s the discipline that needs to take over for you to keep progressing forward.

&gt;Working solo has its difficulties. For one, my income is somewhat tied to my productivity, and my productivity highly correlates to my state of mind.<p>Since going back to being primarily a maker after organizing my days around being a manager[1], and being an avid runner, I&#x27;ve redefined my relationship with &quot;motivation&quot; in a way that can be summed up succinctly by author Brad Stulberg: &quot;You don&#x27;t need to feel good to get going. <i>You need to get going to feel good.</i>&quot; I know that I am long-term <i>very motivated</i>, but day to day or hour to hour, &quot;motivation&quot; is a tricky word, because my energy and creativity waxes&#x2F;wanes.<p>Agree with the author that structure is the most important thing for me to work around this. Even though makers dream of an open schedule, on the days where I&#x27;m off my usual routine, it&#x27;s really tough to prioritize all the many things always on my plate. It&#x27;s even tougher trying to decide to peel myself away from work to go for a run that I know will help me focus better after. Making the decision can be emotionally and mentally taxing, whereas if I rely on the default that I just go out for a run as soon as I wake up, the rest of the day just flows from that without the decision fatigue. Time-blocking or even just very simple structure like the OP has has been really effective for me. This includes a hard stop time each day even if it feels like I&#x27;m on a roll— my younger self would often borrow against my future energy, and that seemed to rarely work out in the medium-to-long term.<p>&gt; This is combined with a lack of co-workers. Comrades in the trenches, if you will. And finally there&#x27;s the ability to not do anything, which can be quite nebulous and dangerous if not managed.<p>For anyone who is a solo-creator struggling with this, &quot;body-doubling&quot; is a term from the ADHD&#x2F;neurodivergent community that simply means &quot;doing a task in the presence of another person&quot;. Surprisingly, they don&#x27;t have to be working on the same task to help you feel like you have &quot;comrades in the trenches&quot;. If you&#x27;re interested, check out Flow Club in my bio.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;makersschedule.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;makersschedule.html</a>

After 10 years remote I’ve rented an office space to force myself to go in to work. If I don’t go then it feels like I’m wasting money. If I go and don’t work it feels like I’m wasting money. So far I’ve gone almost every day for the last 4 months and worked hard to justify the expense. I’ve done my best work because of it. Would recommend giving it a try.

&gt; I&#x27;m not on traditional social media so don&#x27;t have that eating away at my attention, but Hacker News is pretty good at derailing my day.<p>How relatable!<p>&quot; - Coffee and a walk with my partner - Gym for about an hour - Journal and write - Work block 1 (about 3 hours) - Lunch and chill - Work block 2 (also about 3 hours) &quot;<p>That looks fantastic!

&gt; For one, my income is somewhat tied to my productivity, and my productivity highly correlates to my state of mind.<p>What it highly correlates to is your health - mental and physical. I have a friend &#x2F; colleague who is a successful creator. YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. He does well. But the stress is endless.<p>Being solo, pardon the cliche, but he&#x27;s like a rat in the social media platforms&#x27; wheel. There&#x27;s no room for error (i.e., getting sick). Even his &quot;vacations&quot; are driven by what content he can create. The wheel never stops.<p>From time to time we chat about his &quot;business model&quot;. To me it&#x27;s not sustainable, or it is until it isn&#x27;t, and then the bottom comes up fast. I&#x27;ve suggested he start to think of himself less as a recording artist and more as the record label. That is., to somehow try to figure out how to be less dependent on being the only rat running (for dear life) in the wheel. He agrees. But in no time at all, he&#x27;s gotta get back on the wheel. There&#x27;s no exit other than to shut down, which is no exit at all.<p>The focus is admirable. But it can also be blinding, and perhaps eventually unhealthy. For as successful as he is, I wouldn&#x27;t trade places with him.

I absolutely love being a solo developer when I have the right client&#x2F;gig. Unfortunately, finding those opportunities can be difficult.<p>I enjoy the cyclical development pattern where I spend a LOT of time - not quite gamedev crunch time, but occasionally close - building the first main production iteration. Then I get to relax a little and balance adding features and reducing debt. And finally I reach a maintenance and support phase which typically requires very little time and effort. That last phase is when you&#x27;ll find me traveling, &quot;living the good life&quot;.<p>But even during the early intensive phases, having the freedom and authority to decide what tools to use, where to physically work from, and even what time of day to work is of such value that the heavy workload is less painful than big company in-office alternative scenarios.<p>As for routine, exercise is indeed a big benefit and contributor toward success. Some office work situations have good workout opportunities, but many do not. And if the daily commute takes a lot of time, then exercise is one of the things that tends to get cut or squeezed down to a level where it doesn&#x27;t provide much benefit.

I relate to this so hard. It can be really, really tough building software by yourself. I am planning on launching a much reduced version of something I have been working on soon just to get it out the door so I can iterate on it. Luckily I have a somewhat close friend who is doing the same thing who I can talk to about it.<p>Having a schedule helps, but sometimes I just sit down with the best of intentions, get brain fog and say fuck it and lose a day.<p>One of my best &quot;tricks&quot; is if I feel like I am facing a wall on something, to work on a different task, even perhaps a non coding one that I know I have to get done at some point.

I can&#x27;t remember who said it recently during the SAG strike - but they&#x27;re fed up with being called a &quot;creator&quot;; the corporate-invented term is tiresome, non-descriptive, and feels devaluing - emphasizing their output, not their craft or them as a person.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theaggie.org&#x2F;2020&#x2F;10&#x2F;23&#x2F;for-the-love-of-god-stop-calling-me-a-content-creator-im-not-at-all-content&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theaggie.org&#x2F;2020&#x2F;10&#x2F;23&#x2F;for-the-love-of-god-stop-cal...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;unpopularopinion&#x2F;comments&#x2F;14sqoig&#x2F;the_term_content_creator_is_dumb_and_we_should&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;unpopularopinion&#x2F;comments&#x2F;14sqoig&#x2F;t...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;braindoggies.medium.com&#x2F;i-hate-being-a-content-creator-237a3b250d06" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;braindoggies.medium.com&#x2F;i-hate-being-a-content-creat...</a>

Nothing motivates more than empty bank account. It&#x27;s beyond imagination how much person is able than do in 8 hours

Also a solo creator. I&#x27;m not making money from it, but I would like to eventually.<p>My motivation is two-fold:<p>1. I am a perfectionist and can&#x27;t leave things undone.<p>2. My creation work is my sanity preservation against my actual obligations.<p>Needless to say, my motivations won&#x27;t apply to 99% of people.<p>Everyone is going to be different. Find your motivations, but don&#x27;t assume they&#x27;ll be the same as some viral blogger.

I think it’s interesting that the author has the following mindset about non-solo jobs: “You&#x27;re going to work. The choice has been made. The structure around that work, and the underlying purpose are set by others and you just need to make it happen”.<p>This is not always the case. For example, I work in a midsized consulting firm at a fairly senior level. While I have a line manager, he’s only there to give me corporate news and policy. He not only doesn’t tell me what to do, he often doesn’t know what I’m doing.<p>What happens is there are a pool of account executives who I have grown to know over the years. We talk regularly, and if there is something I could work on (pre-sales or a project), we talk and figure if I’m a good fit and have bandwidth. Unless I have almost no work I can be choosy about what to work on. Yes, clients and the account guys can mold my deliverables, but I have a lot of sway in that as well.<p>This also lets me figure out my own hours, within constraints if engagements of course. Since I have kids in school, this gives me great flexibility to schedule work around family, instead of vice-versus.<p>So while what the author describes as regular jobs may be common, it is not the only model.

&gt; I stay active on a Slack community of devs and creators in my country, as well as go to meet-ups and events in interesting communities<p>How does one find these supposed Slack groups and meetups? I live in a major metropolitan area, but the meetups I&#x27;ve been able to find have been underwhelming.

&gt; When you&#x27;re working solo, however, there isn&#x27;t a specific thing you have to do. No pre-set route to take. If I decide to not do any work today, no-one will notice..<p>I believe the above statement is the single, most common denominator among all indie hackers (or, solopreneurs) and I have to admit that it is too challenging to master and get around it.<p>&gt; I&#x27;m not on traditional social media so don&#x27;t have that eating away at my attention, but <i>Hacker News</i> is pretty good at derailing my day. So is YouTube to a lesser extent.<p>Same here..

My biggest problem is that yak shaving kills my motivation. I tend to choose tasks that will teach me something, so I don’t already know what will be entailed in building the thing. I do expect a certain amount of peripheral work, but when those peripheral tasks start getting deep and wide, it starts to feel like my goal is out of reach.

I recommend going to some meetups and meeting other solo founders&#x2F;creators. I recently went to a Microconf meetup (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;microconf.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;microconf.com&#x2F;</a>) and met 30-40 other solo creators and had a blast.

Been working on my own, writing software since 2005. Currently having a bit of a motivation slump. But I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;ll push through, the same as I&#x27;ve pushed through all the previous ones.

Solo creator&#x2F;dev&#x2F;preneur here, too.<p>OP mentioned a Slack channel for creators in his country. I&#x27;ve been looking for a similar channel.<p>I&#x27;m in Arizona in the US. Anyone know of any similar channels that I could join?

Best way to stay motivated is to ship often and regularly, and get feedback from (potential) customers as often as possible.<p>You can be the customer, which helps. But other customers, ideally paying customers, is motivating assuming you have a goal of making some money.

To pay the bills, food in the fridge, kids: school, food clothes, organized activite s gas &#x2F; electric for the car (if you need one) your software subscriptions (if any). Health insurance (if one is needed where you live). Pay taxes<p>and so on.

Having a routine and being intentional with downtime probably matter the most. You can even do a thing you absolutely hate with that while feeling lonely and not understood. Many people do. It&#x27;s called a job.

Hard earned and useful wisdom here, thanks for sharing.

I like the idea of meeting others in my field. Any tips for finding this in SF? I&#x27;m building a dev tool

How do you generate income - income enough to survive?<p>- rifd 1&#x2F;23 after 13 yrs - 25 yrs exp

How do you generate enough income to survive?

I do not approve of the use of the term “creator” here when they may believe they are creating but they are actually working inside a box (machine) or job parameter which inherently is derivative.<p>As in, I can whistle a song I created on the guitar because I pull it out of thin air - can he do the same with his “creation” as it were?<p>Stay in your lane.