Exploit Yourself For Yourself.

What Makes You Tick?

How do youu motivate and drive yourself?

How do you exploit yourself in order to motivate yourself?

One of my current goals and focuses is taking a programming course. Offered by StudyHall and Arizona State University, the program is an introductory course in computer science.

Every week I have homework.

Every week there are assignments and readings to complete.

Every week the pace of the class is relentless.

I’ve even got midterm exams 😣

Sure, I’m 100% confident this would be a much more manageable schedule if I didn’t work a 9-5 as well but given that I don’t, never will have the amount of time I had as a student without a job, I’ve got to figure out ways to motivate myself, prioritize learning, and channel my interest and motivation into meaningful investments of time.

Otherwise, the alternative, being able to relax in front of the television on my couch, is a very realistic alterrnative choice.

The reason I wanted to tell you about it is because it hits the perfect middle ground of incentives.

1. I had to commit money. Not a lot. But enough for me to feel the commitment and be motivated to brush off my commitment.

2. There’s some degree of external commitment. Someone else is expecting something from me. Even if I’m 100% sure no one is actually seeking me out or monitoring my progress personally, this level of accountability as an official student is enough commitment.

Sometimes your own intrinsic motivation isn’t as high as you’d like. At least mine isn’t. What I do instead is hijack my need to be accountable to others to push me over the finish line.

I think it’s important to know yourself and know what makes you tick.

Only when you know what you value, how you think and how you find motivation can you then manipulate yourself to accomplish what you want to do.

It’s present day you signing up future day you to do something.

It’s present day you manipulating future day you. For the sake of accomplishing what you want.

And to me, it helps me shape and design the life I like.

So, part of the reason this post is a day late is because I stayed up until 1AM on a workday trying to finish homework for a class I paid for because I know I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t complete the homework before the duedate.

And that is how I am learning how to program. And I enjoy it that way.