The title is really vague, so I’ll try to clarify my intentions here:
I am an ardent supporter of FOSS. It will be greatly beneficial for my life and especially my privacy to self-host such software. Yet, I cannot find much motivation to do so.
However, when it comes to hosting software for public use, I can usually give my utmost concentration and dedication.
This is not how I want my life to be. I want to be motivated for myself as well as for the community. And if that’s not possible, I need to trick my brain into bringing me into that kind of zone for myself.
What do I do? What would you do in this situation?
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Generally laziness helps.
If you host a system, then you have to dedicate resources to maintaining it, which quickly escalates to lack of interest.
If you pay someone to host it, you get to spend your energy on things that you’re interested in.
If you can find people to pay you for things that you’re interested in, but they just want fixed, you have a business.
So, be conservative in what you host and frivolous in what you outsource.
Note that this says nothing about FOSS. since that’s about a related but different concepts.
From a FOSS perspective, be frivolous (as in, do lots) in your bug reports and patches, be conservative in which projects you own.
Hosting FOSS on infrastructure is what I want to dedicate my life towards outside of work. I just need to find motivation to actually do things for myself (which will greatly help me) instead of looking for the dopamine hit when I think I’m doing something that will help the community
You can do both at the same time.
Start small.
Write a little bash script that fixes something that causes you grief. Put it up on GitHub with a README.md file that explains what it does, why and how.
Rinse and repeat.
Try hosting a guide on exactly how you did it. There’s never enough documentation, and it’s interesting to see what kind of workarounds / fixes you might find for any problems you’ll have.
This is a good idea. A public facing guide that gives me motivation to maintain it
Im not sure I would want to change this. Im not sure if its a type of person but im generally more motivated when it comes to others than myself and more willing to sacrifice if it only effects me. I would sorta like the world to work on this principle.
It would be nice to not be lazy for my own needs for once lol
One of these is likely to be true for you. Maybe more than one.
- You don’t know what to do, at least some part of it.
- You know what to do, but you don’t know what will happen if you do it.
- You know what to do and you know what will happen, but you don’t want that to happen.
If any of these resonate with you, then that might give a clue about what to try next.
In addition, you can act without feeling motivated. Some people like starting with 10 minutes of effort or a single step, because sometimes doing anything is enough to sustain energy and focus. It’s a way of using inertia to work for you, rather than against you.
To clarify, I’m talking about being motivated enough to host public facing services like Invidious and SearXNG, maybe a Monero node. But I’m lacking motivation when doing things strictly for personal use like a project tracker for my personal projects, a personal media server. Basically, since I’m accountable to no one, I don’t feel the light nudge I need to get to work on something.
In terms of hosting software, sure I can read about configuration. I tend to have the overall process planned out in terms of what to expect.
The main problem is, let’s say I give an hour a day on hosting a FOSS project. I could easily give it 4 hours if I were motivated, but I’m not. Because I procrastinate and waste time. It’s only during the later hours at night when I realise I have a deadline (need to go to bed) and my mind kicks into overdrive and I accomplish whatever I can in that hour.
That’s the behaviour I’m trying to solve.
I relate to these patterns, which is why I have tried to learn about the fundamentals of motivation.
What is the relationship for you between my prior suggestion and your clarification above?
I know what to do, what should happen (in theory), and I want to do it. But I waste my time away. Is there a way out of this?
Is there also something you don’t want to happen that seems likely to happen if you try?
For example, I work with many folks who struggle to leave projects unfinished, so they resist starting for reasons they don’t quite understand.
I definitely fear projects being unfinished, and the apparent “mountain” of work that might be the new personal project I want to work on definitely intimidates me
Aha, so that’s something in the way: it might be more work than it’s worth to you. Either the uncertainty interferes with you or the certainty that it demands much more effort than it’s worth interferes with you. Does one of these hit you more than the other?
I’m certainly familiar with both feelings with regards to different projects.
So… Let me address each of those, just in case.
- Can you just do some of it and then stop and be satisfied with the part you’ve done?
- Can you start, figure out that it’s more trouble than it’s worth, then undo and go back to where you were before?
I don’t merely mean “Are you able to?” but also “How would you feel about those outcomes?”
Peace.
It used to be that I didn’t really grasp the scope of most projects, and so after research I used to dive right in. These days I’m more jaded and try to make better long-term choices in terms of software (which is ridiculously hard because you never know, example: Terraform is no longer FOSS).
The extra work is usually in optimisations or security configuration, both of which I’d like to have done but apparently I don’t feel horrible enough to actually do it.
Yes, I have done both of what you said. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule for me, but it does make me a bit miserable, that I didn’t finish what I started. Sometimes, that acts as a catalyst for me to get back into it and actually try to finish it, or leave it completely after understanding that it’s beyond me.
Thanks for the advice.
But do you even need to do these things? Or is it just for your personal enjoyment? If it’s just for your personal enjoyment then the question your asking is very different.
That’s a difficult question. This is a hobby that I’d like to be more diligent in
Be wary of equating your enjoyment of hobbies with your productivity.
Absolutely. But I want to do it, and yet I procrastinate. This has got to be a serious flaw in personality to procrastinate in doing a hobby
You cannot procrastinate something that has no deadline. Have you been diagnosed with any mental conditions like ADHD or depression? Your experience sounds similar to mine and I have ADHD.
You mentioned that you are able to pursue these tasks when they benefit a community. Maybe try to find a small group of folks with similar interests and do this together?
No ADHD AFAIK.
Well, the stuff that I procrastinate on is inherently private and likely shouldn’t be allowed access to for people outside. In doing so, I only stay accountable to myself, and we can see how well that has gone
ADHD.
look at yourself from the 3rd-person perspective.
treat yourself the way you would treat someone else.
I think I’m pretty dumb. A third person would be very contextual; a third person who is a guru in FOSS, or a random person from the street?
All I really want to do is to find motivation to host FOSS, both for myself and the world
It will be greatly beneficial for my life and especially my privacy to self-host such software
You should go the Docker route. If you selfhost for yourself you can even use a Raspberry Pi or any common “mini computer” available. Just make sure to install a large enough SSD. 1 terabyte should be fine if you don’t want to use OwnCloud or something like this.
(And now you have something to learn! 😀)
I use Kubernetes, and TBH the problem isn’t the know-how (I can just learn what I don’t know). The problem is a lack of motivation for doing it solely for myself; I know I should do it but why on earth can’t I muster enough motivation to actually sit down and configure??
Something new to try/learn always motivates me.
Reading theory always has me excited but configuring it in practice makes me slink away in laziness lol
It’s always nice to have some motivation from doing things for others. Depending on the service, you can always host for others AND for yourself. It’s 10x as much work but you do get positive feedback (sometimes…)
Yeah but some things are best consumed privately, and a media server is probably one of them (because I’m not going to do any requesting pipelines like sonarr/radarr etc)
Does “for myself” mean “for profit”, as in a job, or do you mean community work?
If it’s the latter, and you have a passion for hosting instead of developing, that’s totally OK.
It’s not a job. I just like hosting software for other people
Then what makes you feel like “creating” is better than “providing”?
I have no idea what you mean
Oh wow, I have a reading comprehension issue today. Apologies.
Why not both? Presumably you aren’t hosting for others what you wouldn’t host for yourself
Maybe find a middle ground, like sharing the hosted service with just one or two persons, like a close friend, family member, etc. Could be someone you live with or that you can give VPN access to your network. That way is more private and mainly for your self, but also has some sense of doing it for others to motivate you.
Unfortunately, I have no one like that.
Dude, if you say you want to do it you would have already done it. So, it’s either deep down you don’t wanna or it’s something else.
So if you want it we are waiting your urls 🤙
Yup that’s the problem, my mind is screaming at me to do it but I feel lazy every time I touch the configs. It’s like I lose motivation.
Maybe I should take a long break
Or you might feel failure or bad critique? Look within you.
I mean there’s no strict deadlines for personal FOSS hosting projects, so I don’t think so.
Maybe I’m just lazy
I also work well under deadlines but perform horribly without them. Upon reflection I realized a lot of my motivation is related to not disappointing others and/or embarrassing myself. Neglecting personal projects makes me feel like shit, but it’s missing the public humiliation factor so it won’t get me moving. A possible solution is to create deadlines for yourself and share them with people who will hold you accountable, or to whom you at least feel accountable. I also try to imagine how I will feel in a week, month, or year down the road when I still haven’t done THE THING, and realize that it’s only going to get worse the longer I go. This isn’t 100% successful but it does work sometimes.
This isn’t that rare. It is half the reason people hire personal trainers. The military also uses this technique, by framing failures as letting down your comrades rather than yourself.
This is a tricky thing to balance because using negativity and self criticism can become destructive. My grandma used to have a coal burning stove for heat. She said it was awful because too little coal and it would go out and was really hard to re-light. But too much coal and it would explode and blow coal dust all over their little house. I feel like self hate is kind of like that oven. Unfortunately nothing else has ever truly worked for me.
Also, I should add, one thought that brought me some self-forgiveness was the evolutionary roots of laziness. If you think about it, as an organism, if you’re well fed and in a good location your best bet is to chill under a shade tree until something comes up. As humans we are kind of cursed with extra simulation cores in our brain that can constantly iterate every single permutation of the future, and that leads to anxiety, but laziness is actually a virtue from an evolutionary perspective. So cut yourself some slack now and then.
I see. I think it’s the same case as me, I need realistic deadlines to really focus.
Unfortunately, I don’t have anyone that I can say this to. Any automated methods to induce such a feeling?
Hmm, interesting question. I would say social media but it’s toxic for so many other reasons. Perhaps an online virtual assistant? Or maybe charge yourself a monthly or weekly fee into some account until you complete the task? Since it’s purely for yourself, whatever act “costs” you should be enough. A friend of mine was a huge proponent of making physical lists at the beginning of each day. He would then move any uncompleted tasks to the next day’s list, and the act of physically writing it was enough for him. He insisted it be on actual paper. This guy was super accomplished so it must have done something for him.
