Complexity cancels motivation
When you starting mulling around a subject, it's too easy to forget about simplicity and make everything complex for nothing.
What happens next is you start feeling anxious and unmotivated by any task,project, or idea. When you make a mountain of a molehill, everything feels laborious. Everything feels difficult, and demotivating..
- You start a app development project for fun, and suddenly it becomes a problem of being able to scale to millions of users, testability, and being production ready.
- You start picking up an instrument and all of a sudden you want to know everything about the gear pro uses, and how to perform in front of a stadium.
That's when you start thinking more about problems and less about having fun. This is when the mere thought of starting to work on the project feels dreadful. No more fun. Then you give up and forget about it, saying it wasn't for you. And it all happened because you overthought things and made them complicated. Overthinking kills momentum.
What's the cure then?
Maybe simplicity. Making things simple will make then fun and enjoyable again. When something is simple, doing it puts you in a state of flow. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, someone said. It is also the best motivator.
You have to be pragmatic, and aim for concrete, tangible stuff. We do concrete things.
So if there something you have to do, or have been wanting to do for a while, but couldn't muster enough motivation for, is it not because you see it too difficult? Just think about how you can make it simple. Sometimes it’s just about goofin’ around. See Winning right from the start.
If what you consider doing is already simple, and are still not motivated, maybe your Lack of motivation might come from learned helplessness.