Some thoughts on my motivation

2020-08-27

This is the third time I've rebuilt this website. At first it was a static site being generated by a overly complicated Python script hosted on an OVH cloud instance. Next it was dynamically generating pages with Markdown using options provided by the Caddy server. Now it exists as a static website generated with slapdash Ruby script from Markdown, hosted on Github pages. This seems like an unreasonable amount of effort for a website which has a grand total of one post, about McDonald's Wifi of all things. I think this weird application of effort illustrates how my motivation tends to manifest.

Over the two or so years since my last post here I've ended up learning a lot about myself and what motivates to do things. This introspection is not exactly sudden, but properly entering the workforce is one of the main prompts for this. I won't share everything but I have learnt, that even for things I really want to do, I tend towards brief bursts of motivation combined with perfectionist behaviour. Obviously this creates situations where being able to make solid progress on a project or a goal becomes nearly impossible, as the regular and consistent effort required is non-existent.

Being able to fix these shortcomings is something I want to actively fix, as I now realise it is very much preventing me from doing the things I want in life. I guess accepting these flaws is the first step to solving them, and this post can be part of that (I think). Even writing this post I find difficult, as I have to constantly remind myself that every post here does not have to be good. Each post does not have to be carefully curated, providing insight and information, or even be useful to the reader. This is just text on my persona website. Who cares?

Going forward, I want to be able to complete things. This is the bar I am setting myself. I am willing to throw deadlines at myself and forego my care about quality as long I can get concrete bits of work or effort put into things. After I can start completing things, I can start making them better, which is an improvement I want to see. As a start, I've decided to revive my old renderer project. Lets see how that goes for now...