Motivators

So during the long hours of repetitive coding what do you guys do/have on in the background to keep you motivated and focussed?
Personally I either try and have upbeat music on loud with headphones, or a tv show I’ve already watched on the second monitor.

I usually listen to strange music - recently I use looped soundtracks of Django and Great Gatsby. Sometimes I set myself a deadline, that helps a lot. Or do a list of all things that need yet to be done (very thorough) and strike through things when they are finished.

I post here.

Posting frequency is usually inversely proportional to coding efficiency.

It’s funny… when I code, I need complete silence. No noise, no interruptions, just to be alone in perfect silence.

Unless it is just crappy “instance the base class and do 15 pages of help” kinda coding… then I can do it with noise and interruptions.

But if I am figuring out new shit, or creating a new algorithm, I need 100% concentration.

Same here mate, pin drop silence :slight_smile:

Music and coding dont go hand in hand with me…

As for motivation to code…love of coding and “$$$”

I too need silence when solving hard problems.
Most of the time however I watch TV shows and listen to random music.

I am not sure what my motivation is, I just love programming.

When I started out it was hard to be motivated to do the “boring stuff”, I just focused on the “fun stuff”. This did however never lead to finished apps.
I somehow learned to appreciate doing the “boring stuff” and now I love doing these things to fine tune the user experience.

I need silence, but I can’t say no for some Infected Mushroom.

Classical music or electronic music that doesn’t have any lyrics.

When you’ve hit some boring stuff it helps to write down exactly what you need to do in detail so you can tick it off and see progress.

Trance music

Digitally Imported - addictive electronic music for marathon coding sessions…Sometimes I get so into what I’m doing that I completely forget to turn on music though and I realize that I’ve been sitting in silence for hours…lol…Productivity is equal for me either way.

Thanks for the tip, the Gatsby soundtrack is great. Listening to it now…

I’m usually in the Trance/Electronic camp as well. There’s something about coding at 2am listening to trance music that really makes me crank out stuff.

I often listen to Console.fm for song ideas, then make playlists on GrooveShark of my favorite songs.

Although I also have one playlist of female vocalists doing weepy songs that I keep going back to.

I have a lot of apps in a different niches, and one thing I tried for a while was to listen to music I imagined my target user would be listening to (over 40 jazz, teen, 60s classic rock, etc.). So I’d go to Pandora and create a station to get into the mood and picture that user. That female playlist came out of this experiment for a religious app I have where the users are almost all women.