(Disclaimer: I’m just reporting on my own experience, and think people will vary a lot in this sort of area, so none of the following is even slightly a recommendation.)
In general:
Personally, I seem to just find it pretty natural to spend a lot of hours per week doing work-ish things
I tend to be naturally driven to “work hard” (without it necessarily feeling much like working) by intellectual curiosity, by a desire to produce things I’m proud of, and by a desire for positive attention (especially but not only from people whose judgement I particularly respect)
That third desire in particular can definitely become a problem, but I try to keep a close eye on it and ensure that I’m channeling that desire towards actions I actually endorse on reflection
I do get run down sometimes, and sometimes this has to do with too many hours per week for too many weeks in a row. But the things that seem more liable to run me down are feeling that I lack sufficient autonomy in what I do, how, and when; or feeling that what I’m doing isn’t valuable; or feeling that I’m not developing skills and knowledge I’ll use in future
That last point means that one type of case in which I do struggle to be motivated is cases where I know I’m going to switch away from a broad area after finishing some project, and that I’m unlikely to use the skills involved in that project again.
In these cases, even if I know that finishing that project to a high standard would still be valuable and is worth spending time on, it can be hard for me to be internally motivated to do so, because it no longer feels like doing so would “level me up” in ways I care about.
I seem to often become intensely focused on a general area in an ongoing way (until something switches my focus to another area), and just continually think about it, in a way that feels positive or natural or flow-like or something
This happened for stand-up comedy, then for psychology research, then for teaching, then for EA stuff (once I learned about EA)
(The other points above likewise applied during each of those four “phases” of my adult life)
Luckily, the sort of work I do now:
is very intellectually stimulating
involves producing things I’m (at least often!) proud of
can bring me positive attention
allows me a sufficient degree of autonomy
seems to me to be probably the most valuable thing I could realistically be doing at the moment (in expectation, and with vast uncertainty, of course)
involves developing skills and knowledge I expect I might use in future
That means it’s typically been relatively easy for me to stay motivated. I feel very fortunate both to have the sort of job and “the sort of psychology” I’ve got. I think many people might, through no fault of their own, find it harder to be emotionally motivated to spend lots of hours doing valuable work, even when they know that that work would be valuable and they have the skills to do it. Unfortunately, we can’t entirely choose what drives us, when, and how.
(There’s also a scary possibility that my tendency so far to be easily motivated to work on things I think are valuable is just the product of me being relatively young and relatively new to EA and the areas I’m working in, and that that tendency will fade over time. I’d bet against that, but could be wrong.)
Awesome! For me the size of an area plays a role for how long I have a high level of motivation for it. When you’re studying a board game, there are a few activities, they are quite similar, and if you try out all of them it might be that you run out of motivation within a year. This happened to me with Othello. But computer science or EA are so wide that if you lose motivation for some subfield of decision theory, you move on to another subfield of decision theory, or to something else entirely, like history. And there are probably a lot of such subareas where there are potentially impactful investigations waiting to be done. So it makes sense to me to be optimistic about having long sustained motivation for such a big field.
My motivation did shift a few times, though. I think before 2012 it was more a “This is probably hopeless, but I have to at least try on the off-chance that I’m in a world where it’s not hopeless.” 2012–2014 it was more “Someone has to do it and no one else will.” After March 28, 2014, it was carried a lot by the sudden enormous amount of hope I got from EA. On October 28, 2015, I suddenly lost an overpowering feeling of urgency and became able to consider more long-term strategies than a decade or two. Even later, I became increasingly concerned with coordination and risk from regression to the (lower) mean.
8. Emotional motivators
(Disclaimer: I’m just reporting on my own experience, and think people will vary a lot in this sort of area, so none of the following is even slightly a recommendation.)
In general:
Personally, I seem to just find it pretty natural to spend a lot of hours per week doing work-ish things
I tend to be naturally driven to “work hard” (without it necessarily feeling much like working) by intellectual curiosity, by a desire to produce things I’m proud of, and by a desire for positive attention (especially but not only from people whose judgement I particularly respect)
That third desire in particular can definitely become a problem, but I try to keep a close eye on it and ensure that I’m channeling that desire towards actions I actually endorse on reflection
I do get run down sometimes, and sometimes this has to do with too many hours per week for too many weeks in a row. But the things that seem more liable to run me down are feeling that I lack sufficient autonomy in what I do, how, and when; or feeling that what I’m doing isn’t valuable; or feeling that I’m not developing skills and knowledge I’ll use in future
That last point means that one type of case in which I do struggle to be motivated is cases where I know I’m going to switch away from a broad area after finishing some project, and that I’m unlikely to use the skills involved in that project again.
In these cases, even if I know that finishing that project to a high standard would still be valuable and is worth spending time on, it can be hard for me to be internally motivated to do so, because it no longer feels like doing so would “level me up” in ways I care about.
I seem to often become intensely focused on a general area in an ongoing way (until something switches my focus to another area), and just continually think about it, in a way that feels positive or natural or flow-like or something
This happened for stand-up comedy, then for psychology research, then for teaching, then for EA stuff (once I learned about EA)
(The other points above likewise applied during each of those four “phases” of my adult life)
Luckily, the sort of work I do now:
is very intellectually stimulating
involves producing things I’m (at least often!) proud of
can bring me positive attention
allows me a sufficient degree of autonomy
seems to me to be probably the most valuable thing I could realistically be doing at the moment (in expectation, and with vast uncertainty, of course)
involves developing skills and knowledge I expect I might use in future
That means it’s typically been relatively easy for me to stay motivated. I feel very fortunate both to have the sort of job and “the sort of psychology” I’ve got. I think many people might, through no fault of their own, find it harder to be emotionally motivated to spend lots of hours doing valuable work, even when they know that that work would be valuable and they have the skills to do it. Unfortunately, we can’t entirely choose what drives us, when, and how.
(There’s also a scary possibility that my tendency so far to be easily motivated to work on things I think are valuable is just the product of me being relatively young and relatively new to EA and the areas I’m working in, and that that tendency will fade over time. I’d bet against that, but could be wrong.)
Awesome! For me the size of an area plays a role for how long I have a high level of motivation for it. When you’re studying a board game, there are a few activities, they are quite similar, and if you try out all of them it might be that you run out of motivation within a year. This happened to me with Othello. But computer science or EA are so wide that if you lose motivation for some subfield of decision theory, you move on to another subfield of decision theory, or to something else entirely, like history. And there are probably a lot of such subareas where there are potentially impactful investigations waiting to be done. So it makes sense to me to be optimistic about having long sustained motivation for such a big field.
My motivation did shift a few times, though. I think before 2012 it was more a “This is probably hopeless, but I have to at least try on the off-chance that I’m in a world where it’s not hopeless.” 2012–2014 it was more “Someone has to do it and no one else will.” After March 28, 2014, it was carried a lot by the sudden enormous amount of hope I got from EA. On October 28, 2015, I suddenly lost an overpowering feeling of urgency and became able to consider more long-term strategies than a decade or two. Even later, I became increasingly concerned with coordination and risk from regression to the (lower) mean.