2024-11-18 - Motivation
Haven't written a blog in a while, which is a good time to bring up an interesting topic - motivation. At it's core, motivation is just the thing that drives humans towards goals. If we were still hunter-gatherers, our motivation would stem from survival, security, or other similar needs. But, being in the glorious 21st century, these are not concerns of the layman. To avoid treading over the exact same territory that Theodore Kaczynski covers in his work Industrial Society And Its Future (which I would love to talk about another time), I will be brief. Human motivation no longer stems from these needs (in large part, for middle class people at least), we set up artificial goals for ourselves in order to fill the gap that working towards survival needs left. But, what drives us on these artificial needs? It depends why the goal was set up. For someone who plays videogames, the goal could be "having fun" or it could be "getting better," or it could just be "beating the game." I think that motivation towards creative projects is much stronger than motivation for other lesser things like mindless tasks such as gaming, or consuming media in general. In my experience, motivation for creative projects sort of waxes and wanes. Occasionally I will have large bursts of motivation, and I can work on something for 8 hours a day just running off of pure passion and creativity. But it doesn't always last. I figure that the problem is essentially lack of vision. For instance, when I'm working on a TF2 map, I can sit there and stare at my screen for an hour doing nothing, just trying to think of what to do next. But when I finally have a very clear idea of what I want to do, I can chug away and work until it's done. This sort of vision is very important for creative activities and making sure you can consciously form a clear vision helps when you get a roadblock. So called "writers block" is just this same problem, being unsure of what you want to write next. Regarding motivation for writing blogs, for me at least this desire comes mostly from having a lot of ideas in my head and wanting to write them down. I don't always have ideas buzzing around in my head, though it's nice to write when I do. I have quite a few topics I'd love to blog about extensively but I don't have a full vision in my head of what I'd like to write and cover, so I have held off on thse topics. In fact, motivation itself I think is sort of tied towards my life philosophy, which I would like to cover at a later date.