I think hardware hacking is the coolest stuff ever. That is why we have so many people buying Raspberry Pi-s.
I guess the best way to keep your curiosity after X years of age is to start with a really challenging project that you know has steps of micro-success. Also, find a motivating community where you can chill, rant or discuss things with. That's why I am here, you are here. You need to have some level of familiarity with the domain of knowledge so, you know what you can achieve in what amount of time. There needs to be the idea of challenge, definite success and somewhat familiarity involved.
My example: I like the old school WSB community. If you know, the tesla-short era. So, I attempted to build tooling that they will enjoy, and I will have fun discussing. My checklist of accomplishments was things I knew can be completed in a few hours. The progressive dopamine hits kept me focused. I was doing great.
Why did I fail? Community itself become not the same. Fun discussions were harder to find. Market kept going up, meaning tools that I made is worthless because anything I didn't make sense because stonks go up. A Complex JavaScript project felt harder to write than I anticipated. So again, community, challenge and knowing your limits.
If you are looking for hardware hacking motivation, these two videos blew my mind. Joe Grand, crypto wallet hacking:
When WSB got extremely popular, and it was being spammed. Subreddit was flooded with spam and mods removed posts aggressively. It wasn't the place to show, "look what I made". Not blaming the mods, I just didn't belong anymore.
If you can achieve validation by yourself internally, that is incredible. But the average human needs other people to say, "Good job :)"
Finding a way to get validation from your projects is fantastic, a friendly community and likes on your YouTube videos or blogs can have immense impact.
I guess the best way to keep your curiosity after X years of age is to start with a really challenging project that you know has steps of micro-success. Also, find a motivating community where you can chill, rant or discuss things with. That's why I am here, you are here. You need to have some level of familiarity with the domain of knowledge so, you know what you can achieve in what amount of time. There needs to be the idea of challenge, definite success and somewhat familiarity involved.
My example: I like the old school WSB community. If you know, the tesla-short era. So, I attempted to build tooling that they will enjoy, and I will have fun discussing. My checklist of accomplishments was things I knew can be completed in a few hours. The progressive dopamine hits kept me focused. I was doing great.
Why did I fail? Community itself become not the same. Fun discussions were harder to find. Market kept going up, meaning tools that I made is worthless because anything I didn't make sense because stonks go up. A Complex JavaScript project felt harder to write than I anticipated. So again, community, challenge and knowing your limits.
If you are looking for hardware hacking motivation, these two videos blew my mind. Joe Grand, crypto wallet hacking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT9y-KQbqi4&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icBD5PiyoyI
This channel is also good, but it is a bit wacky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icBD5PiyoyI
Edit: Also validation.
When WSB got extremely popular, and it was being spammed. Subreddit was flooded with spam and mods removed posts aggressively. It wasn't the place to show, "look what I made". Not blaming the mods, I just didn't belong anymore.
If you can achieve validation by yourself internally, that is incredible. But the average human needs other people to say, "Good job :)"
Finding a way to get validation from your projects is fantastic, a friendly community and likes on your YouTube videos or blogs can have immense impact.