"Making your own work is a good thing to do, even if no one else is interested in what you are making. To create is to be human."
Tattoo that on my forehead backwards.
Tattoo that on my forehead backwards.
But I got hung up about that too.
My solution - as always it turns out to be a bit of this and a bit of that. It's a personal very complex function that takes into account what you know, what you believe, what you value and what you feel. Very difficult to compute. Luckily you don't need to think about it at all. Your subconscious brain is already computing it all the best it can and presents you the result in the purest form: "I want to do X now".
It's pretty amazing.
Inevitable follow up - but I don't know what I want to do - do nothing. It works.
The point of frustration is that these motivators, which drive us to try to master something, can be tepid or inconsistent and therefore insufficient. You end up needing a sense of obligation, i.e. discipline. At least for me, getting anything done means creating habits, because 'desire' is a shot in the dark. There's a quote from somewhere that power is "acting in the face of uncertainty". Desire and motivation is a murky area to me, beyond obvious things.
When you watch yourself then you notice that you seem miserable just doing A but you felt great doing B. That's enough. Now it's part of the function.
Trying to force yourself to do something is like trying to lift yourself up by your trousers.
Ultimately it's you that eventually decide that you want to do it now, the rest is some unnecessarily complex story.
You want to do things you want in life. Forcing yourself to do anything is just a story.
If you eliminate wishful thinking, then wanting some goal in the future is the same as wanting taking to take some action now that you know is necessary.
Any time I catch myself thinking that I'm doing or about to do something that I think I don't want to do, I do a bit of debugging and untangle the story in my head.
Probably not explained clear enough. But basically eliminating wishful thinking and realizing that >> I only do things I want << did wonders to me.
Habits are still powerful given the above, but observing them I don't have habits which I don't want to have - I usually rather fix the story than behavior, so there's also that.
"keeping eye on the prize" and such - there is no cake (and I think that's great)
Everyone who's had to practice 1000s of hours has had to have discipline.
In the context of coding I just craved it, never needed any discipline.
With music most seem to learn like the author just wanting to create something and learning along the way rather than "now it's time for my 2 hours of ableton practice"
With instruments I think the situation is pathological. We teach everybody to learn the exact same things, scales, patterns and chords in the exact same way, and then ask them to be original. But you can just take an instrument and start making random sounds, better and better over time because there's tight feedback loop linked with your music perception. And sure, you won't be able to play what others have played - but you will be able to express yourself in an unique way.
I think most of those who did spend 1000s of hours on specific thing, did not require any discipline to do these things. They just wanted to do them. Even if they sucked at it.
I think this is a complete, utter fantasy.
I'm taking time to respond because what you say is what I've been thought, and I think it's just unnecessary mental gymnastics that may cause suffering. If it does not and it makes one happy, then whatever story works seems fine. But having two different narrations that end up with the same actions, I'd choose one which is less painful.
You are choosing to discipline yourself to be doing something. So you want to be doing this thing. If you allow yourself to truly question your whole life, then either you decide you don't really want to be doing this, or you understand that you do. If you bring out the contradiction to the surface, it just resolves itself.
Because this is a logical contradiction in your mind - I don't want to do this but I want to do this. If you want B and it requires A then if you eliminate thinking about them separately and treat them as one thing - B comes with A, then either you want it or not.
It sounds awfully like preaching, and I'm sorry about that. But since you took time to read it maybe you'll at least have some fun entertaining the idea in your head while really not wanting to do something. The concept brought me a lot of joy and made my life easier so I naturally feel like sharing it.
This does not preclude discipline. Here again, this is long-term. The motivation isn't necessarily there at every waking moment. A runner or bodybuilder for instance won't just take a day off because they're tired and don't feel like exercising. The "I want" assertion can be a matter of moment-to-moment whim, not careful soul-searching.
> I think it's just unnecessary mental gymnastics that may cause suffering.
I'm currently suffering from your mental gymnastics.
Part of this came out of the frustration of being a knowledge worker. I don't know how many contracts I've had to negotiate where someone is hiring me for some shit like GIS or Unity3D and they want a perpetual non-compete where I can't ever work on those things again. Like what? You came to me. If a carpenter makes you a chair you don't get to own his woodshop and it's not my fault that I found knack for computer in the 90s and now the whole world needs that shit.
For a while I'd get frustrated when I'd show people my project and they'd be like "I don't see how this can be a business." Now I kind of love it and lean in and troll the shit out of it. Also I'm getting pretty good at combining sounds, pixels, and GIS information in real time. Which no one on earth would ever pay me to do if I waited around for a paycheck to do it.
Also it's really nice prior art coverage when moving into new operations. Hunt bliss not vested shares. The more people that do that the better the world can be.
It felt great though; the learning along the way was invaluable.
Principle: be patient with yourself on this heuristic journey and keep improving.
Except that I wound up discovering an improvement for my immediate question that obviated all of the intermediate schema I'd build up.
Big shout out to Spatialite (https://www.gaia-gis.it/) and GeoAlchemy-2 (https://geoalchemy-2.readthedocs.io/en/latest/).