Add my 'motivation' draft post I forgot for a year (?)

content/posts/2020-07-18-motivation-projects.org

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+---
+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