Maintaining the Motivation to Learn
I’m an ethical computer hacker, and I follow a lot of others in the same profession on Twitter. In many ways it is a demanding job because it requires constant learning. Every day there are new techniques and vulnerabilities to exploit. To be a reasonable ethical hacker, you need to be on top of all of them. This may sound exciting, but it can quickly turn from exciting to exhausting.
I’ve noticed a lot of tweets lately from people saying that they have no motivation to hack or learn anything new. They might have enough motivation to turn on their computer, but the next 5 hours are suddenly swallowed by Netflix. Another day passes without doing that thing you’ve been talking about.
If this sounds familiar to you, please read on.
Before hacking came into my life, for many years I worked as a trumpet player and teacher. I have a jazz performance degree (it’s pretty useless, but difficult to acquire). There were long periods of my life where I practiced trumpet for 8+ hours every day. Playing trumpet requires intense concentration, and it is physically exhausting.
For this reason, musicians have the same struggles with motivation as hackers. I had these struggles myself, and I saw them in my students. Motivation comes in waves. One month you can’t put the instrument down, the next month even touching it feels…
