[Question] Has Anyone Here Consciously Changed Their Passions?

[Spade]

I’m sorry if this question is a bit fuzzy, maybe my understanding of a “passion” isn’t the most coherent. But, I’d like to know if anyone has made a successful effort to get themselves to be passionate about doing X where they were not passionate about X before. I suppose you could call that “creating drive.”

For context: I have spent almost 25% of my life, maybe more, starting long term projects without ever finishing them. Often I find that whatever idea I’ve had or course of action I’ve plotted is conceptually cool, the outcomes look desirable, and hell, sometimes I even make decent progress—but I can never seem to stick it through. There could be any number of reasons for this, but I think that a large part of my plight boils down to the fact that I am lacking in passion, which would presumably drive me to overcome small obstacles and keep me from falling off the course.

So, I am led to ask; has anyone here seen success in deciding to be passionate about something, or making the decision to enjoy working towards a particular goal?

[Hastings]

I haven’t been able to change my passion, but I have faced a similar issue and found that if I occasionally take stock of my semi-abandoned long term projects, I often notice that I have passion for one of them again. As a result, several have come to something resembling completion over the years, and often over many passion-dispassion cycles. The key then becomes documentation and good storage and organization, to minimize the difficulty of starting up again. I feel that this has made my passion for projects more durable, because there is no longer a sense of panic if it starts to fade- I expect it to return if it is needed.

[Spade]

This is a very interesting approach, and one that I haven’t really considered. I fear that the temptation to start from scratch might be quite strong, but then I suppose that having very good documentation serves to blunt that problem in the first place.

[Hastings]

Ahah! I suspect that permission to start from scratch may be a large component of maintaining passion. Starting from scratch at will is pretty close to the exact boundary between programming I do for fun and programming for which I demand payment.

[Ape in the coat]

Are you sure that it’s lack of passion that is your problem here? You are apparently passionate enough to start all these longterm projects, even though you know that with all likelihood you will not finish them. Can it be, that what you actually looking for, is a way to keep commiting to a project even after the initial burst of passion has ended?

[Spade]

That certainly could be the case, but my reason for asking after manipulation of passion specifically is that commitment sans passion would likely breed disdain in long-term scenarios. But, I could be wrong, and it would certainly at least be worth trying something like Beeminder, I suppose. It just seems that, in this situation, want of a deep desire to finish isn’t great.

[Ape in the coat]

commitment sans passion would likely breed disdain in long-term scenarios

I think there is a delicate dance between commitment and desire and navigating it correctly is pretty hard to put to words.

Commiting to something you do not desire in the first place, will very likely lead to disdain. But if you desire the thing initially, and therefore commit to doing it, even after the initial rush has died down, you can enter a self-reinforcing cycle where keeping the commitment rekindles the passion which reinforces the resolve to keep the commitment.

I think, it’s not unlike romantic relationship. You do not break up with your partner the moment you experienced any negative feelings towards them. You keep working on your relationship, solve the problems that arise and therefore your feelings for each other become reinforced by this, and relationship become deeper.

On the other hand, if your relationships consist of almost nothing but the nagative, then no resolve to keep the commitment will save them. And neither it should.

[RHollerith]

No, I haven’t made a successful effort to get myself to be passionate about doing X where I was not passionate about X before—with one minor exception.

I try to factor my motivations into things that seem like complex function adaptations. For example, my motivation for coding projects comes from a strong desire for my being in the flow state and for being dissociated (which might or might not be the same complex function adaptation), but also the desire to “get ahead” or advance my status or position in society and occasionally from curiosity. Curiosity I consider a mildly good intrinsic motivation for me to have (but it does cause me to waste a lot of time doing web searches or listening to long Youtube videos). I wish to strengthen my desire to get ahead; my desire to be in the flow state or to be dissociated I strong try to discourage (because I need to learn ways to keep my nervous system calm other than the flow state and because I was addicted to flow for many many years). I try to encourage what small amount of intrinsic motivation I have to help other people.

So the “one minor exception” I refer to above is that over many years, my efforts to encourage some intrinsic motivators while discouraging others has had effects, the strongest of which has been that these years I mostly succeed in my policy of staying out of deep flow states unless I’m under severe stress. (To reach deep flow, I need to be fairly active, e.g., coding or doing math or playing chess online. My guess is that I’m also entering a flow state when I’m watching an absorbing movie, but if so, passive activities like movie watching never activate deep flow. I should probably mention that these years I never enter a flow state when I am coding AFAICT: my knowing that I’m a more effective at coding when I stay out of the flow state makes it a lot easier for me to stay out of the flow state while coding.) The way I understand motivation to work, by making that one source of intrinsic motivation less influential on my behavior, I am automatically making the other intrinsic motivators more influential. (And one of the major disadvantages of being addicted to something is that it is almost impossible to be intrinsically motivated by anything other than the addictive activity.)

[Spade]

That’s a very interesting outlook—I haven’t really considered action being a sum of motivations up until now. So, I guess my question then would be, what does encouraging/​discouraging sources of intrinsic motivation look like for you?

[RHollerith]

My answer to your first question was, I don’t know, but in the interest of comprehensiveness I mentioned a minor exception, which you asked about, so here is more info on the minor exception.

what does encouraging/​discouraging sources of intrinsic motivation look like for you?

It looks like making a habit of patiently watching for the desired change. My software environment is organized enough that I can usually arrange for my future self to re-read a written reminder. So, (years ago) I wrote a reminder to watch for any instance where I think my behavior and my decisions are being motivated by interpersonal altruism or I experience pleasure or satisfaction from having achieve an altruistic interpersonal outcome. Note that this did not result in incontrovertible evidence of a significant increase in frequency of altruistic behavior. But I certainly stopped my addiction to the flow motivator (over the course of many years, except I relapse when I’m under stress, but these years it takes a lot of stress) and am pretty sure that the patient watching strategy helped a lot there. (And “just watching” helped me make other kinds of internal mental changes.)

My mind seems to works such that if the only conscious effort I make to effect some internal change is to get into the habit of watching or checking to see if the change has already occurred, my subconscious sometimes seems to figure out a way to effect the change if I watch long enough (months or years).

There are much faster and more potent ways to increase motivation and drive for most people: avoiding all exposure to light between 23:00 and 05:00 every night; getting as much very bright light as possible during the first 3 hours of wakefulness; making sure to get enough tyrosine (a dopamine precursor); deliberate cold exposure; avoiding spending too much of the day in perfectly-safe pleasurable activities; doing enough things you find aversive or outright painful; doing enough risky things. But you didn’t ask about that, I don’t think: “passion” almost always refers to intrinsic motivation (i.e., basically something that feels good or that a person wants to do for it own sake rather than as part of a plan to achieve some other outcome), whereas the motivation for most of what I (and probably you) do is extrinsic. E.g., I take the time to cook a healthy meal not because I enjoy cooking but rather because I anticipate that eating well will pay dividends mostly in future years in helping me achieve outcomes that I haven’t even decided to pursue yet. I took stuff like that to be outside the scope of your question.

[Viliam]

My motivational hack is having people I can talk to about my project.

When it feels like I am the only person in the universe who cares about whether X succeeds or fails, I find it very difficult to continue working on the project. Even if it is something where quite naturally I am the person who should care most, such as my health or my finances.

OK, by why should actually anyone care about my projects? One solution is to find another person in a similar situation, and talk to each other about our projects. That’s one of the things friends are for.

[Spade]

I can certainly see the appeal of social pressure/​the potential reward of better social standing for sticking a long-term goal through. I’ve employed this tactic on a few occasions, and, at least with my current circles, it doesn’t seem to do much for me—or, at least, whatever improvement it offers isn’t enough for me to make it substantially farther.

I feel that I am expected to bail by default—I’ve done so many times—and that I’m not going to be changing worlds if I come through. With that said, I don’t think I’ve been as deliberate as I could have been in picking people to talk about my projects with. Maybe it is the case that if I were more strategic about it, I would get more mileage out of myself. Certainly worth a try.

[Viliam]

I can certainly see the appeal of social pressure/​the potential reward of better social standing for sticking a long-term goal through.

That is not really what motivates me. It’s that when I work on something alone, I feel lonely. If I can talk about it to other people, I don’t. Also, I find it easier to focus on things when I can talk about them.

I feel that I am expected to bail by default

Expected… by yourself, or by others? For example, I find talking to some people helpful, but talking to some people harmful.

One way some people can disappoint me as talking partners is when they immediately start predicting that I will fail. “You always talk about doing things, but you never finish any of them. This time it is certainly not going to be any different.” This hurts in two ways: on one hand, because it is uncomfortably close to truth; let’s say that I finish maybe 1 out of 20 things that I start doing. On the other hand, because it is literally false; I actually do finish 1 out of 20 things that I start doing, and I always hope that this is going to be the one, or that the ratio will start improving.

A glass 5% full is still not the same as empty! I may feel on most of days like a loser, but sometimes I look back and see an accumulated record of successes. If I told someone only about the successes, and not a word about the failures, they might actually consider me impressive. And when we look from outside at others, isn’t this kind of filtered view that we usually see? Both of these perspectives can be true simultaneously. I had to learn to stop talking to people who are predictably negative. (Which is different from betting. Yes, when I start a project, I would rationally bet that this project will probably fail. But the point is that some things are worth trying even if the probability of success is smaller than 50%.)

Another way of disappointing me is when the other person tries to takes ownership of my project. When they start giving unsolicited advice, and then get defensive when I don’t accept it, often because they completely misunderstand my motivation for the project (am I doing this for myself, or for others? do I want to achieve a specific goal, or to practice a specific skill? which parts of the project are the ones that I am looking forwards to do, and which are the annoying parts that I simply need to overcome?).

What I need instead is someone who would listen, be gently encouraging, maybe give an idea or two, but be perfectly okay with me saying no. Basically, something like a (Rogerian) psychologist. Someone who would remind me of what I said yesterday or a week ago, but would not express disapproval if I failed to do that or changed my mind. Shortly, positive motivation, not negative. Celebration of success (and partial progress), rather than fear of failure. Removing the pressure, rather than increasing it.