Ask HN: How do you stay motivated and focused for long periods of time?

I don't force it.

Most times when I'm doing something new, it's because I'm genuinely interested in the thing and so the problem isn't how to stick with it, but how to keep from obsessing about it.

If the new thing isn't inspiring passion in me, then when I get bored with it I set it aside and come back to it another day[1]. I've completed/learned many things this way, a little at a time, over a period of months or even years.

[1] If it's a work thing that I have no choice about, then I do the needful and just force myself. It's called "work" for a reason.

Motivation and focus are different. Your thing sounds like motivation.

For me, it was about narrowing down my scope of "hobbies". I have tried so many things and now (approaching 40 years old) I can be more certain about which categories of things are important to me and I am more honest about how many I can juggle: family, work, fitness, and maaaaybe something else a few hours per month.

As long as I'm still playing in one of those categories, I don't worry too much about any specific project.

E.g. For fitness, I may want to try to do 40 pull-ups per day for a month. If I only last a week before I stop doing that, I am mentally okay with that AS LONG AS I am still doing something else for my fitness.

Learning new technology and/or working on a new project is a monster of a task. And the way to make it manageable is as-always - break it up into smaller tasks. Every large task is just a bunch of small ones in disguise so break it apart and then work on manageable smaller tasks. You will also get a small dopamine hit after completing each smaller task which will keep you going.

"AI" is very good at helping you tear apart a big task into smaller manageable ones so you can get help there if you get stuck on how to make this happen. Godspeed!

You’re finicky, maybe you haven’t really found what’s right for you?

The mind is a machine, if you keep it tuned it will last you and allow you to grow. You should certainly have the power to make yourself do anything. Try that game. Make yourself do anything, one simple thing at a time.

What do you think you should be learning? Is that some complex lie you tell yourself to get you something else? If it doesn’t mean anything to you, it will naturally fall off the page.

Internally, it is a lot of prayer and meditation.

Externally, it is committing an amount of time I feel comfortable with to work on it every day. It can be one minute per day, but it has to be consistent.