Staying motivated when things are not that exciting.

The tech world has developed a hollywood-ish image over the years. When you say work in the tech industry, everyone imagine a cool new start-up where hip youngsters dressed in the latest fashion thread, program by day and hit the clubs by night. They play video games at lunch and work on cool projects that disrupt big companies and change the world. Maybe that's how it is when you work at Google, Facebook, or some other company, however that's not what I am experiencing.

When I started working at my current job it was very exciting. Not because I was working on cool projects but because everything was new and challenging to me. I was assigned projects that I never thought I would be able to complete. The satisfaction I felt from seeing people using my tool was exhilarating. As time went by, my enthusiasm started to diminish. Two years later, my interest has hit rock bottom. When I get an assignment, I do it just because I can, there is no excitement in it anymore.

I still love programming and I try to do as much as possible outside of work. But it is very hard to stay motivated when you are working on your own. The first thought I had to combat this lack of interest was to start this blog. It helps me do something I have be avoiding for a long time: Writing. I figured this will make up for me dropping out of college. However doing things on my own can only keep me motivated so much .

Find someone, or people to keep you challenged.

A year and a half ago, a friend of mine and I got in an debate on how to get on Google first page. We couldn't agree on which method was the best, so we set out to each build a website and see which will rank higher for some predetermined keywords. Going home and working on this project gave me a blood rush. Two weeks later we each had a website and worked very hard to get it to the first search page. Since I will not show you the website, let me just tell you that I won the competition. Believe me! It is my one project that I am ashamed to show, however I have learned so much from it, and It did inspire my post on how to drive your users away.

Having someone to challenge you can be a great source of motivation. It doesn't matter if what you create doesn't generate revenue. As long as it is something you love doing and you learn from it.

For the month of May we have set out to start a new challenge. We were recently looking for a web service and almost all of the ones available are not far from being crappy. Only one of them is decent and it is expensive as hell. So we decided to build our own, each one of us. I will be posting more about it as the project takes shape.

Let's see if we are going to create a new crappy service or if we are going to create a tool that you might be using someday. No matter how it turns out, my goal to stay motivated will be met.

Stay tuned!

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