Okay, so I suck at dealing with certain sorts of motivational programs. In another persona I write fiction. Fiction writers have this quaint concept BIAW - Book In a Week. It's not really a book in a week. It's a group of writers who get together and commit to some writing goal in the beginning, and then cheer each other on, or boo and hiss. Whatever. It's SUPPOSED to be motivational. The idea is that committing yourself to a public goal like that is supposed to motivate you to actually do it, since you will (theoretically) be ashamed of not meeting your goal. Or be inspired by the achievements of others. Or something.
I tried joining these sorts of BIAW programs on multiple occasions. And then I noticed something odd. I was writing MORE when I wasn't enrolled in some BIAW program than when I was. Sigh.
Apparently I'm not inspired enough by the idea of not achieving what I said I would in front of other people. It actually has a *cough* negative affect. I blow off a day, and then I start resenting the whole thing. It becomes a chore, a drag, some irritating task that I'm "supposed to" be doing. It's not fun anymore.
And the Perl ironman thing has started to have the same feeling for me. Not the fault of the idea. The idea is great. It's just me and the idea that don't get along.
So in an attempt to actually fulfill the spirit of the Ironman challenge (as opposed to the rules - ewww, rules, I hate rules) henceforth I'm not going to even TRY to meet the rules for achieving the various IronPerson levels. Instead - *gasp* - I'm going to blog about Perl and programming when I feel like I have something to say. The habit has started - and that was the whole point, after all.
Now the only remaining question is ... can I think of some clever riff on Ironman for my personal perl blogging program? Um ... the MarshmallowMan? I know! the StayPuftMan!
Now that I have an inspiring symbol and everything, I can stop. I'm happy now.
2 comments:
I know exactly what you mean.
I have been feeling the same way, the challenge of the Perl Iron Man being a weight of some sort. Without even caring too much about it, there was always a deadline looming over ("sorry honey, can't watch a movie with you, I need to post tonight!"). This was looking a little bit too much like work. Since I missed the first deadline, I stopped caring so much and now... I only posted once in the past month. Not so good but I don't see the point of being stressed for doing things that should be fun.
>It becomes a chore, a drag, some irritating task that
>I'm "supposed to" be doing. It's not fun anymore.
Exactly.
Aaron Schwartz wrote an excellent article about this: Procrastination and the mental force field
Post a Comment