Something I have noticed about myself is that I am seeminly capable of great things when I am excited about them. This is likely not a unique thing, but what might be more specific to me is the the gulf between me when I am interested in something and when I am just normal. Work that could take 15mins when I am very interested in something at least seems to take more like 45mins when I am not. Add a layer of dread around the work and we can add more time probably.
I have noticed this intuitively for much of my life and it has made me kind of superstitious. I have developed several funny quirks to help me try to control my level of interest. One for instance is that if I have an idea, I am hesitant to tell it to other people until it is fully developed because I am afraid that I will lose the steam I might need to write it down. I will be engrossed in explaining it to another person and then feel like any writing I do later is a boring recap. This habit has made me a bit cagey about talking about ideas at times and also maybe a little overly performance focused as well. Because if performance is what is most crucial for recognition then I should save my thoughts for that. My fear has been that otherwise my ideas and interests will die on the vine half developed.
Now I have a few other tricks to help with this as well. Another is to try to cultivate a mental image that is attractive for the act of doing some sort of work. If I can create a system of meaning for something that I am doing then I can have an easier time finding it interesting. This helps, but it makes me feel like a slave to my curiousity and other passions. I am not sure what to do to alleviate this difficulty as well.
I have experience with the just do it anyway approach and it does work. However, my experience of the quality of the work seems so much lower in those times. I say experience because the work I have done in those situations is often not too bad, but I do not feel that is connected to something important at the same time. I don’t have peace about doing it.
When something is fascinating to me it is like all of the questions and answers line up and I feel that I have something real to share with others. When something does not feel this way it feel like a plodding forward that is ultimately futile. I can still do work, but it is truly a labor.
Now I realize maybe what I should just do is be willing to accept both of these ways of working as part of life. What interests me though I guess is how I can be a bit less of a slave to fascination, and also where the fascination comes from and what kills it. This is even more interesting to me right now because I find myself having more interest in somethings than I have had for awhile. I wonder why?