13 milli-blog - from w2w to w - on motivation
#update
parents:: milli-blog
daily note:: 2025-01-12
I've found motivation to be an interesting problem, implicitly for much of my life, and much more explicitly recently.
The question of how to get from want to want to actually want.
For instance, I want to want to read 20 books a year. I want to want to write very night. I w2w to read papers every day.
But for some reasons, for some things it's easy for w2w to become want and to ultimately become actions, while for other things the gap feels insurmountable.
Mixed example: blogging
- Sometimes I wake up and I want to write this blog. Other times not so much.
- When I do want to, why?
- Usually because I have a premise I'm excited about.
- When I don't want to, why?
- Maybe because of lack of premise. But actually this is never a barrier. I have a whole list of way too many premises, all of which I think are quite interesting.
- Perhaps because of indecision. Subconsciously, my brain has been mulling over what to write about and has failed to come to a quorum. I'm afraid of consciously making a decision.
- Mayhaps because of high expectations. I have this lofty goal in my head, that my subconscious knows I'm not going to be able to meet. And when I don't meet that goal, I'll beat up on myself. My subconscious is protecting me from that pummeling.
- Interesting that there's more to say about why not than why. Why is usually just simple: it's something that will help me improve, help me clarify my thoughts about X or Y or $\Omega$. While one of any different set of circumstances can be reason enough to not.
- This is the real paradox of movement: there's one reason to take a step forward, but a billion different reasons not to.
Positive example: running
- I've been running regularly since I was in 3rd or 4th grade.
- I think the explanation for this one is relatively simple:
- A well fueled liftoff:
- One of those rare things where social pressures and parental pressures align:
- You're cool if you're fast
- And my parents wanted me to run
- And immediate positive reinforcement by both the runners high and parental encouragement
- One of those rare things where social pressures and parental pressures align:
- Becoming an identity vs a goal:
- From what I hear, a trap that sometimes befalls potential runners is that they'll work really hard towards a goal--running a 5K, half marathon, marathon--and then find that, post goal completion, they've lost motivation to run.
- When I started off running, there wasn't much of a goal. It just became a thing I did every day because, well, that's just who I am. Daniel wouldn't be Daniel if he didn't run.
- A well fueled liftoff:
- Some notable omissions:
- I didn't list improvement as an explanation: because, well, there are whole stretches of my life where I don't really improve at running. And that's still fine and I still keep running. Because improvement itself isn't necessarily the goal.