Screw motivation, what you need is discipline
This seems to me to be a bit like saying "screw hammers, what you need are screwdrivers."<p>There's a brilliant talk by John Cleese that floats around HN every 6 months or so on how to be creative; if you haven't seen it yet, and you're interested in such a topic, please please please watch it:<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/89936101" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/89936101</a><p>If you agree with Cleese's premise, I think it follows that what you need is motivation for the open mode (the blue sky, blank sheet of paper period), and discipline for the closed mode where you put your head down and get the work done.<p>If you try to use discipline when your job is to daydream about possibilities (whether you realize it or not), you'll just steamroll over any insights, ideas, creative thoughts with a get-it-done attitude. Your forced march straight off a cliff will be legendary.<p>But then, when you've got a good idea fleshed out and you just need to execute relatively mindlessly, working only when you feel motivated will be extremely counter productive, and in my mind, is where a lot of the "the last 20% takes 80% of the work" feeling comes from. You learn the true meaning of the phrase "work expands to fill the time allotted", and if you're bootstrapping by moonlighting, this is essentially infinite.<p>I've been stung badly by both errors in my career, with the worst case for each leaving me burned out, disillusioned and seriously considering a career change.<p>As an aside, I know you have to write authoritatively and with a simple premise to get good traffic to a blog, but reality is usually messy and complex, with a wealth of examples and counter examples. So often it feels like we end up with (and please forgive the straw man) a series of posts in quick succession bouncing around the blogosphere like "getting the most out of your hammer" "hammers considered harmful" "screwdrivers as hammer replacements" "hammer techniques for dealing with legacy screws" "full tool belt carpentry drowning us in complexity". And which is right? All of them, and none of them, at the same time.