Keeping myself going

(Reposted from old blog)

A common problem amongst people of my mindset is they never finish a project unless it has an actual concrete deadline. And unless the agreement imposing said deadline also imposes routine maintenance, many of those projects get shelved shortly thereafter.

I have a problem that is similar is presentation but otherwise entirely different. I can’t finish projects, deadlines or not, because I have serious motivational issues. Now before you start jumping to conclusions, it’s not depression or anything weird like that. I’m totally happy, and I’m not stressed, not struggling with school (any further), relationships in life are all awesome. Literally, nothing to be torqued up about. I just can’t finish things. I often sit down at my workstation and just kind of stare at it. Check my email a few times, write some notes down, maybe IM someone. Go to the bathroom, eat a snack, build an ark….you know how it goes, anything but whats at hand. And it’s not even that I’m not interested in it. I am actually more apt to do my homework than my personal projects, now tell me that isn’t weird…

So, I’ve of course analyzed this to death and I think I’ve got a few leads on the cause:

• Diminishing returns, the projects get steadily complicated until it becomes an uphill battle to progress, and the frustration and lack of progress makes me not want to keep trying it, even though it’s still interesting
• Fear of “big” steps in the development cycle, worried it’s going to consume my entire day and not get finished.
• Fear of failure, as long as I can recite my planned work in my head, I feel like I’m smart and have a handle on it, it’s kind of ego-deflating to get stuck, which is a common occurrence when my projects leave the (relatively small) realm of my personal skills.

So, here’s what I got for combating it:

• Don’t work alone, cause I know I feel damned stupid staring at it doing nothing with someone watching me. Even if the person comes along just to watch me and not help me, it’s still better than being alone. I don’t feel so welcome to procrastinate with someone watching me.
• Do it in discrete chunks and when they’re done, stop. Get the LCD wired up. Stop there, eat a snack, then move on to next item at convenient pace. The chunking seems most effective, because I can go on little spurts of motivation to complete the project. Though it seems to be terribly impairing the speed at which I work.
• Read as much as I can before doing it, so I am as familiar as I can be, with a good plan for how to proceed. Making sure to have all available parts is nice, it also prevents me from half-assing other parts of the projects
• Start early in the day so I can build up momentum without running out of time.