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Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

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Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#111

Post by nukst »

glouwbug wrote: post #72
LoveMortuus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The following quote helped me a lot: "The professional knows that the mundane physical act of sitting down and starting to work, sets in motion a mysterious process that produces inspiration. The amateur waits for inspiration, the professional knows that it will come after he starts. The professional therefore acts in the face of fear, when the amateur fears a big creative endeavor he waits for the fear to disappear,…

Oh boy, I enjoyed that. Everytime I sit down to face a nasty problem I get a little sick, but as I start working a flow slowly starts to build, and before I know it the Starbucks I'm at is empty. I wouldn't consider myself a professional, but I know how to beat my own inner dialogues it seems

I can relate to that.

Sometimes I'm dealing with a problem that is really complicated and I tried to solve several times without success... I can feel the resistance in bed, when having breakfast and before I sit on my chair and fire up vim to go to that very block of code. It also tears me apart to go to work and leave it unsolved.

Resistance drags us down really, really bad. It makes it difficult to go back to working on a problem.

Not a professional here, but boy this is the point where amateurs quit and that's exactly where I feel the urge to quit too... but somehow I just don't. That's where it clicks "I have to find a solution to this somehow!". Maybe it's a bit of ego but I don't drop something I started[1] and when I finally find the solution, it's almost orgasmic. I feel like I'm the biggest man in the world, and that's my drive to keep moving[2].

--

[1] Unless it becomes crucially destructive and is clearly harming people, but I guess you get what I mean.

[2] I don't want to make it over minimalist because there's a lot more to it, but I'm referring to this specific motivation building block (I believe motivation isn't just an isolated urge to accomplish thing, but rather several `blocks` that together compose this `will` to do things).

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#113

Post by joeberon »

Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

I definitely think that attitudes like "only do what you love/is automatically motivating" is a huge source of imposter syndrome, depression, and anxiety in me as a grad student

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#114

Post by [deleted] »

Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

[deleted]

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#115

Post by lisper »

throwsprtsdy wrote: post #83
Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

To be precise, the author isn't simply saying "Do what you love", he's saying "Do what you love in your leisure time ". I think that's an important distinction. He's not giving diligent work short shrift, just trying to exclude drudgery from leisure time specifically.

And he's not saying "do what you love" either. The word "love" appears only once in the article, and that is inside a quote. He's saying "do what you can't stop thinking about." That is not the same as "do what you love."

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#116

Post by crearterandom23 »

technothrasher wrote: post #46
deepGem wrote: post #35

Being totally honest here. I don't find any work that I totally can't stop thinking about. There is always something that I need to get done that I don't relish, that I don't enjoy. Here's how it goes - there's an idea that you think is really nice, you start talking to people then you are hit with reality - no one gives a shit about your idea. Some do, but most of them are like meh. There comes the first punch and y…

It sounds like you're too goal oriented. Leisure activities can be simply about enjoying the activity and don't have to lead to anything. If you like to work on an idea, work on it. When you're annoyed by having to put a front end on it, just don't. You've played with your ideas, you've hopefully learned something and enjoyed passing the time. Now you are free to drop it like a hot potato and move on. I spend my work…

You can always out source it and work the interesting part of the idea in the time available.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#117

Post by taauji »

LoveMortuus wrote: post #57
Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

The following quote helped me a lot: "The professional knows that the mundane physical act of sitting down and starting to work, sets in motion a mysterious process that produces inspiration. The amateur waits for inspiration, the professional knows that it will come after he starts. The professional therefore acts in the face of fear, when the amateur fears a big creative endeavor he waits for the fear to disappear,…

I have observed that most of the times, when I am not motivated to work, it is becasue my sub-concious mind is unable to correctly traverse the behavior tree and find a route from 'the non intuitive task' leading to the 'sexy results' I am after. My concious thinking mind has already done that.

But your sub-conscious brain being able to link the results with the efforts is not a precondition to start working. It only facilitated the process, and does not act as a deciding factor.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#118

Post by zelly »

Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

Agreed. The focus on the interior world (feeling) versus the exterior world (results) is one of the reasons recent generations have not innovated

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#119

Post by deltaveedaddy »

Yall, let's be real.

Realizing your dream into reality will entail hundreds if not thousands of hours of suffering, in some form or another. It will cost you, there ain't nothing coming to just drop your dream lifestyle into your lap. Even if you have skin in the game, you will lose battles and you'll be forced to remember the war, you'll be tested boundlessly, endlessly.

That being said, whatever you are fixated on, that may be a good place to discover what direction to work in. If you dream of writing a groundbreaking video game, I can promise you that you'll spend a lot of time coding it all, but you must also consider your rent, your car note, your family, etc.

It ain't simple, but you CAN dream your dream. And if you feel, you SHOULD.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#120

Post by hinkley »

Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

A lot of my friends are children or grandchildren of Boomers and have been spending a lot of time lately asking and not answering the question of how they got like this, and so I’ve been trying to answer that for myself. Below is my barely half baked theory as it stands today.

After the War, there were kids everywhere. So, so many kids. They had to open schools. Whole industries about kids exploded into existence. But as one of those kids? There must have been ten other people wanting to be what you wanted to be and half of them were better at it than you could hope to be. That, my theory states, fucked them up badly.

When they had kids, they pressured us into being unique snowflakes, to be exceptional. It was too goddamned much pressure, and that fucked us up. So the next cohort started congratulating their kids for doing absolutely nothing at all. Which fucked them up worst of all.

So, like, we are very sorry, but we were just trying not to pass our neuroses down and ended up giving you different ones. Same as our parents.

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