Here's a reminder for me to expand on an idea I'm working on.
Its about more motivation stuff.
The thing is, I hate doing my physics lab report. If it were my own experiment, then I wouldn't mind doing the process, because it would be creative experience, and therefore I would have adrenaline to drive me as my brain makes new neural connections, so it would be a pleasure to do it.
But its not a creative process, because I've got to follow it step by step. And its just mindless. And its taken me about 5 times longer than it should have taken me. I get no adrenaline to drive me from learning new knowlege.
The trick of linking up my goal heirarcy with reasons keeps me focused on it with intellectual motivation, but its just a really really slow process. And there's really not a strong motivation. Its a "Milikan Oil Drop" experiment. It is pointless, well because, this experiment has been done probably 1000 times before. So there's nothing new. We already know what the freakin charge of an electron is. And I already know how to think well. I already know everything that there is to know from this lab. I gain nothing. Pure nothing. I know all the math and theory already.
Even the tone of the lab instrutions are "blablablabla... just do this because you have too.. blablablablabla...., and we're not saying why this even matters at all (so that maybe they'd create the motivation for me) but just do it because we say so...", with the tone of a professor who hate his own job.
But its just that I have to do it anyway. I can't drop the class because its required for me to graduate.
I've also tried outlining, like with microtasks, and a little trick of mine (maybe I'd call it nanotask) of write what I'm about to do, much like a stack of a computer, so that I basically plan as I go. I've tried time boxing. But its still slow. The constant transitions make me have a negative mood. I think that those are just slowing me down. I've not isolated myself. My friends are around. There are tones of cute women around here. I've been running 30 minutes everyday (which makes me feel absolutly great). I've been eating healty too. I've been get 7.5+ hours too, and have been taking naps after particularly intense concentration. All hydrated up. Been keeping the trance/dance music going too. Been keeping both the left and right side of my brain stimulated.
I've been doing everything... but its still slow. Too much fragmented/unrelated, unending pointless crap. Trying all I can to give the lab report a point. But there are just soooooo many sub tasks that are pointless that you can't really find a inspiring purpose for each little subtask.
So there only a few things left that I could try:
Absolute hate.
The hate let me blast through it well. It felt good to hate it. I just really in an angry mood and just said out loud " I really f... hate this". The emotion of hate let me get through the lab report just fine. Gave me the rage to continue. At some points, I even started to enjoy hating it. And so then it wasn't so bad to plow through it, or it was still bad, but the hate let me get it over faster than other wize.
(though not too much, I watch myself to maintain a good level of hate, cause too much hate would lead to despair... you kinda have to balance out the hate. and also, as soon as I stop working on the friggin lab, I jump into my big smile happy state again...)
Maybe the pain of constant transitions from one pointless subtask to another caused the hate, but I was in a mode of just being passive, and when I did not feel hate, I was not able to go quickly, so the task just dragged on forever. So its more productive for me to do hate.
Though I know that if I always rely on this method, it will just wear me down... and the rage will wear off, and I'd probably be in a really bad state, and complelty reverse all the progress that I've been making internally, and that it totally goes against my belief that the point of life is to exists and to enjoy it. And it will also make me stupid, because the stress would kill my hippocampus in my brain after a few weeks of this hateful motivation, and that would lead to a horrible downward spiral. And I'd probably turn into Hitler or something. No fun.
But then I was inspired by a small little paragraph from JohnPlaceOnline (I could probably find stuff from Steve's articles... but... just happened to stumble on his article here:
10 Ways to Overcome a Motivational Roadblock Quote:
1. Process Orientation: Instead of focusing on your goals, try extracting joy from each individual task along the way. In other words, focus on the process instead of the product. You may find that many of your tasks are enjoyable (or can be made that way) if you stop worrying about their overall purpose.
2. Set a Goal: Conversely, it’s also important to have goals so that you know where you’re heading. This tip may seem to be in conflict with the previous one, but it’s not. Goals (like losing weight, graduating college, etc.) are important in the sense that they help lay out what tasks we should pursue.
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I was like huh. " You may find that many of your tasks are enjoyable (or can be made that way) if you stop worrying about their overall purpose. Try extracting joy from each individual task along the way"
So just gave it a try, maybe even just to make fun of it. Not worry about the purpose of doing the purposeless/pointless subtasks of the dry lab report.
And then what I did was to extract and focus on the physical movement of moving the mouse around. Like "wow... ooohh yeaa... moving the mouse to click on the icon... yes.... oh yea...." in a totally exagertated way. I got fun out of just making it rediculous. like a the amazement a little kid might have first learning how to play with a computer, and moving the mouse around.
Another example it says :
"Give the title of the laboratry exercise, the date you did the exercise, and your partner's name. Identify the page numbers of your laborartory notebook for the laboratory exercise" (and then there are 8 other more tedious little points about it). So then I was like "oh yea.. giving the title to the report... wow... look at the little mouse move... weeeeee!!!! ...wow... soooo amazing!!!" like I was making fun of the stupid thing.
I kind of over did this for awhile, making fun of each little pointless subtask... so then I had to go in the opposite direction from fun to pure hate. And then when I started to hate it, I made fun of it again. Push and pull. (I still have to test this out some more.)
So hopefully this method wont wear out, and wont lose the novelty. I'll have to see if I can always get through pointless things like this in the next couple of weeks. Any time something is pointless that I have to do, I'll just make fun of it (in both senses, making fun of it that it is just so utterly stupid, and having fun with making fun of it).
Some more points I want to include later after I experiment with this more:
-emotions let you do stuff
-link this idea to the heirarchy, and how your brain chooses to do things
-link in what fun vs hate does