@stephsmith has a great guide for non-tech people searching for remote positions.

blog.stephsmith.io/non-techni…

I agree with Pete. It helps a lot to have non-screen pursuits mixed-in throughout each day. For me, those are mainly physical — which I think should be the emphasis for us who mostly sit/stand at a desk during the day. Running, biking, climbing gym, strength/mobility training, grappling classes are my personal menu. I don't do all of those every day, but I try to do a couple each day. Some are also my main source of socializing IRL, and that is also a daily necessity to keeping my mind right.

(This started as a comment to Marc's answer)

The dreaded "false starts"... 🤦‍♂️ Man, story of my making aspirations. Fixing this bad habit is currently my primary focus — just working on one fucking side project, all the way through. At this point it's less business aspiration, but more an exercise in mindset and self-discipline. My motivation always comes in waves, and is effected by many more variables than inspiration. When I hit an inspiration trough, I've been trying to shift focus to maintaining a solid mindset and self-discipline.

That goes especially for contracting/salary work. Inevitably you hit that point where you just want to be done working on someone else's stuff, but there is still a ways to go. At those points, I've found it helpful to turn on my inner David Goggins. A little tough love and hard talk with myself is often all it takes to catch a second wind. It's just that the motivation is coming from a whole different source than before. Inevitably, the inspiration will return again and drive me for a while, but it's good to have an alternative fuel source to drive you when those reserves are low. For me, that is to not be the lazy/procrastinating asshole that I know I can be at times.

I love the streak feature as a display of a person's tenacity to complete essential chunks of work to ship their product(s). It motivates me to see how dedicated and productive others are in that sense. But once I started to notice that there were people keeping a streak going with filler/partial tasks, or even task totally unrelated to shipping their product(s), I was more than a bit disheartened. My value for the feature, and the motivation it gave me both suffered.

I also like the Personal Record idea (@levelsio, @pawelkadysz, @nathanielchen1). Perhaps, it would ease the impulse to game the streak system. That way there remains a record of the accomplishment, without the anxiety about climbing back up the ladder.