{"id":4707,"date":"2020-12-22T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2020-12-22T15:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/?p=4707"},"modified":"2020-12-22T09:31:16","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T15:31:16","slug":"motivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/writing\/motivation\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeds of Motivation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!--\n2020-12-22. Created WiB post after epiphany in the JNL.\nBegan thinking about motivation, after feeling more motivated to bake when I started thinking about what to give JQS and ERS.\n-->\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>If you&#8217;re bored, do something for someone else.<\/p><cite>Helen Nelson (Age 92) on knitting 30 scarves for the homeless during the Covid-19 Pandemic<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Dateline: December 22, 2020<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>I shy away from that advice because focusing my energies on others is, too often,  a way of avoiding my own work. Putting other&#8217;s priorities ahead of my own feels noble, doesn&#8217;t it? And that sense of do-gooder satisfaction obscures my evasions. Or I pretend it does; more often I harbor resentment. &#8220;I can never do my stuff because&#8230;&#8221; And the list of blame I lay elsewhere is long and endless: work, school, children, parents, house-keeping, yard work, paying bills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"cont\">Doing something for others can be a form of procrastination; however, it can also be a source of motivation. As usual this year, I&#8217;m slow to get into &#8220;the Christmas Spirit&#8221;. I didn&#8217;t feel much like baking our usual Christmas treats. But then I promised to deliver Christmas dinner boxes to two people. Suddenly, I&#8217;m in the kitchen wondering what else I could bake. What would make a good box of treats. It is easier to do things I don&#8217;t like if I&#8217;m doing them for someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"cont\">So why is it so difficult to focus on my own projects, when I am able to do difficult projects at work that are much more involved and can take months to complete? Why was it easy to write up a lot of quick posts on Google+ than it is to blog, anymore?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"cont\">What is necessary to get me beyond the pondering and day-dreaming stage to the stage where I combine my thoughts into a coherent whole? I think the essential ingredients for motivation are three:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Audience<\/li><li>Deliverable<\/li><li>Deadline<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The missing ingredient in most of my personal projects is having an audience. I identify action items and set deadlines. But with only myself to please, the work often outweighs the satisfaction of any deliverable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"cont\">My one big successful project this year was typing up my mother&#8217;s notes about her own mother and creating a book with photographs for her. I worked hard to get it done because I knew there would be a handover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--\n2020-12-22\nStill lacking the conclusion. If I work only for myself, is having an audience of my future self motivation enough? And if it isn't, how can I make it so.\n\nWasn't there a project management question related: What happens if it DOESN'T get done?\n-->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Audience \u2022 Deliverable \u2022 Deadline <\/p>\n<div class=\"belowpost\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/writing\/motivation\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[323],"tags":[351],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4707"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4707"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4726,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4707\/revisions\/4726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}