Last night I reread this entire blog, noting the projects I said I started. Millennium Goals. The Workbank. A more rigorous sleep schedule. Wordsmashing on the other blog. All of them gone, abandoned a couple of weeks after they started. I think I heard this problem on the edge of my vision. More recently I've begun projects but not talked about them, because I was afraid of publicizing a thing that was bound to fail. I promised I would update this blog at least once a week. My last post was almost a month ago. I don't keep my promises.
I've thought back to all my previous, long dead ideas. The Lightbulb Project. Dinner with Strangers. Foodmapping. Who knows how many writing projects. Exercise. None of these are part of my life anymore. I still find some of them exciting or important. That doesn't matter. It seems that if something has to last more than a couple of days or so, I abandon it. If I had to point to my biggest flaw, it's probably this. I can't keep interested in things. Even when I know the rewards far outway the costs.
This is as close as you can get to stasis. How am I supposed to change when I can't stay changed for even a week? True change is supposed to affect the rest of your life. I can't cause it. It just happens to me. I'm standing still and don't know how to move.
I've tried a hundred different tricks to keep motivated. They work for a bit but I drop them too. The problem feeds into it itself. It is unsolvable because I need it solved to solve it. Catch-22.
Of course it's not truly unsolvable. It's just that at this time in this place my methods of fighting it have miserably failed. Maybe I need new methods. Maybe I'm thinking about it in the entirely wrong way. Maybe I can't beat it on my own and need outside help to deal. Maybe it really is unfixable. Refusing to think that as it's unproductive.
I think the problem boils down to the following: it's not about keeping motivated in a particular project, it's becoming a type of person who can stay motivated in general. Right now I think my problem has little to do with losing interest and much more to do with losing steam. Thing is, I have no idea how to change that. There's gotta be some way to throw yourself off center such that for a drop of time the rules don't apply to a small part of you. That's the window.
I started this blog to make my projects public so I could be held accountable if they failed. That didn't work. I think it quickly morphed from "here's what to harass me about" to "lookit me im improving!" and "listen to my opiiiniiiiiiooooonnnnnns". Someone rightfully pointed out that to some extent I was more interested in appearing to change than actually changing. "The guy obsessed with self improvement." Well, I have to recognize that this is true. I also have to recognize that some of my problems are the type which I can't deal with privately. Between contributing to a public image I hate and not getting this problem into the open, I should choose the former. Better be seen as arrogant and be dynamic than be seen as normal and be static.
So yeah. Proposed problem: how do I change from being a person who can't keep motivated on {arbitrary issue} to one who can? And how do I ensure that I actually follow through on this? I want to hear your thoughts.
So i had been thinking about this same problem for some time now. I gave up this quarter which might account for how lethargic i have been, but that's neither here nor there and today is another day.
ReplyDeletefor me the problem boiled down to how do you make a promise to yourself. you want to change s.t you do something you did not before so you promise yourself you will make a change. the conclusion i came to was you cannot promise yourself anything, there is something intrinsic to the idea of promise which implies another person: i promise you, i don't promise me. but then if you cant promise yourself anything is there any way you can change, is it hopeless? I sure hope not. Personally i will do anything to keep a promise i make to someone else. So i thought i might promise someone else that i would change. The problem with this is it just amounts to tricking yourself.
Looking at your blog, and remembering conversations it seemed to me the way you have been trying to change is by tricking yourself. you want to do x, so you do y which is easy to do and has the byproduct of getting x done. This method of tricking yourself seems all good in theory but in practice we are not that easy to fool. you can not trick yourself into being motivated. You are either motivated or not, any sort of tricky reasoning wont change that and will eventually fail.
So far its looking bleak, you cant promise yourself anything, and you cant trick yourself into being motivated. Then how the hell do you motivate yourself. how the hell do you change yourself.
I don't know about you but I am egotistical enough to believe that i can just up and change myself, if i want to be different then by golly i will be. Problem is i am starting to realize i do not actually have that kind of willpower.
To make a long terribly written story short: I don't think we can change by ourselves. To change you need help. So i am asking for help. and I offer you my help.
And so I ask you:
Promise me that you will prevent me from snoozing when i wake up in the mornings.
I will promise to help you with one of the things you are trying to change about yourself.
That way we take an active roll in helping each together change. I think this might work. alone we fail together we got dis.
Another brilliant idea: COMPETITION.
ReplyDeleteWe compete as to which one of us can change for the longest period of time or something like that.