81–90 of 105 posts
grit
anecdotally, one trait that all successful people i know possess is 'grit', which i define informally as the ability to buckle down and 'power through' seemingly tough/tedious/un-interesting portions of your work.
"It is a cliché in our business that the first 90 percent of the work is easy, the second 90 percent wears you down, and the last 90 percent - the attention to detail - makes a good product."
— The Graphing Calculator Story http://www.pacifict.com/Story/
When you first imagine a solution, of course it's great and inspiring and you want to dive in. But after time it becomes "work." Worse, your imagination can see more to add to the project - to make it even better! Meanwhile, the longer you work on one project your imagination starts to think up solutions to unrelated topics... and those are now better because they're fresh.
The simplest cure - recognizing this is a natural paradox for the creative process. This will reduce the massive downer to comes from not chasing every dream and at the same time provide long lasting satisfaction through respecting the few you picked and stuck with.
http://www.amazon.com/Dip-Little-Book-Teaches-Stick/dp/15918...
It's the common creative's problem of: what you can imagine vs. what you can produce (aka "moving the goalposts"). When you first imagine a solution, of course it's great and inspiring and you want to dive in. But after time it becomes "work." Worse, your imagination can see more to add to the project - to make it even better! Meanwhile, the longer you work on one project your imagination starts to think up solutions…
"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." Enthusiasm, like optimism, is a choice rather something that just happens to you. It requires a lot of forethought (what do I really care about?) and continual maintenance. You need to spend time discovering and remembering the fascinating parts of whatever you're doing, and the end-results you're shooting for. I was stuck in an awful job sto…
One solution is not keep a balance between 3 different projects and allocate time to each if necessary.
By splitting your free time between the 3, you diffuse the burn out. That said if 2 of them feel right and one annoys you, move on.
Why did I get bored and quit? I had tackled the most challenging problems of the project (the ones that initially got me excited) and what was left was the non challenging stuff. Maybe you are similar, you enjoy and require steep learning curves and challenges. Maybe one day that challenge will become completing a project
you will make an excellent contractor or entrepreneur. If it's challenge you seek, you will find it
How young are you? I blew through probably 15 projects in 4 different spaces and by the time I was a sophomore in college I had only completed 2. One was a c++ game, the other was a web site I ran for worms Armageddon. Why did I get bored and quit? I had tackled the most challenging problems of the project (the ones that initially got me excited) and what was left was the non challenging stuff. Maybe you are similar,…
I definitely am ambitious when it comes to challenges. Solving them does make me happy, but I am seriously feeling at the moment like my ideal job would be to sit in a room, have a bunch of budding entrepreneurs (or experienced businessmen) come to me with their problems, and spending an hour solving them!
There are many possibilities: * After a few months, the hardest parts of the problem have been solved. Since your skill level exceeds the challenge, boredom results. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) * Perhaps you are not motivated by the actual task, but by the sense of mastery. Once you've mastered a challenge, you are satisfied because you've learned something about yourself: I can do that! The p…