---
title: "Thoughts on Motivation"
author: Chris Hodapp
date: "2020-07-18"
tags:
- technobabble
- motivation
draft: true
---

"Motivation" is a topic I will sometimes talk endlessly on, and
reading [[https://www.danpink.com/books/drive/][Drive]] by Daniel Pink only made this more interesting.

It might just be the way I'm wired, but motivation can be tricky for
me to navigate when it comes to my personal projects.  I'm at the
whims of my own moods and energy levels, and of what time I have
available.  Sometimes I will have large blocks of time to work on a
project, but most frequently, it is smaller blocks of time - perhaps
15-30 minutes spread out in between other chores.

When staring into the void a few days ago, I started analyzing how
this seemed to work for me when I was trying to find a task from a
project that I could progress on:

1. How _inspirational_ do I expect this task to be?  How much will it
   motivate me?  How interesting is it?
2. How _nearby_ is this task?  How quickly can I *start* working on it
   and start getting results or feedback?  Do I have to go purchase a
   bunch of tools or supplies, set up a workspace, set up software for
   a development environment, or make a lot of design decisions,
   before I have even started doing what I think I want to?
3. How _relevant_ is this task?  As I progress on it, do I expect that
   this progress fits into some kind of bigger picture?

It seems weird to talk about - personal projects are supposed to be
enjoyable pastimes, not drudgery.  However, projects of technical
nature, particularly when they involve programming or new-to-me
mathematics (and my projects often involve both), can have some unique
hurdles - see [[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving][yak shaving]].  I might be able to understand at a
rational level why I have to do some boring work in order to get to
the "interesting" work, but I also know how quickly this work can feel
like beating my head into a wall.

This isn't about deciding whether a task is worth doing or not - it's
about trying to orient tasks in such a way that I'm motivated to do
them.  Not all tasks are "inspirational"; some are just grunt work.
Sometimes, a bunch of up-front work needs to be done to bring any
tasks "nearby", and this might take the form of an hour or two just
looking at artifacts of an old project and re-reading old notes in
order to re-familiarize myself with something I haven't touched in
months and seemingly making no progress - but putting myself in a
better position to resume work.

A few habits seem to help me with this.

- Keeping good notes on the state of a project, especially with a
  regularly-updated list of relevant to-do items.  When I find myself
  with a large block of time (often unexpectedly), especially after
  having neglected a project for weeks or months, having these notes
  can be indispensable for making good use of that time.
- Related: regularly writing down *small* project ideas as they come
  to mind - the sorts of projects that I could easily start, except
  that it would mean interrupting what I'm already doing.  When I've
  hit a point on something else where I feel like I can't easily
  progress, these small projects are easy to pick up and progress on,
  and sometimes will get me past whatever snag I hit or give a
  different perspective on it.
- Having a source of "easy" inspiration ready - things like websites
  where people showcase pictures and videos of projects I'll find
  interesting.  Sometimes they are just a source of new ideas; other
  times, when I'm knee-deep in details that make it really hard to see
  the bigger picture, they help remind me of why I find a topic
  interesting.
- Breaking decision paralysis by just trying to dive in and do
  something.  This is easier said than done.  Seeking out *feedback
  loops* is a big part of this, and they can take many forms - simpler
  tools that give quicker results (even if they're only drafts or
  prototypes), the aforementioned smaller projects, or just having a
  workspace already prepared that makes it easy to start something
  new.

If you've worked much on fairly involved projects, perhaps on a team,
you have probably had the realization of how the speed with which you
can on new ideas when you have such a workspace already prepared -
whether that's a lab bench with everything already connected and
arranged, or a software development setup with everything ready and
waiting - and your mind is in sync with it and with the project at
hand.  It is cases like these where you can hear an idea and begin
building and testing on it in a matter of minutes.

You might also be keenly aware that this context doesn't last forever.
If you are distracted from this for just a few minutes, perhaps you
can return immediately and still be this efficient.  If you are
distracted from it for several weeks, likely you're quite a bit slower
to find your old place.  If things aren't how you left them, that's
another issue still - perhaps you then are spending time just tracking
down what moved, or figuring out what changed, or fixing things.

# How 'nearby' affects ability to work (as projects drop from memory
# over time)

# TODO: Link this to 2012-08-16-some-thoughts.md
