I came into the office yesterday morning, and one of my workmates was here feeling sorta morose as he usually is want to do. That wasn’t particularly unusual. He’s fairly eeyorish… as in… eeyore off winnie the pooh… now I seem to remember eeyore as being quite a depressive kind of fellow.
Interestingly, this links in with the motivation trip I’ve been having lately…
The night before last, I sat there watching DVD’s, and looking things up on google, stuffing about without getting anything done - “WASTING” a lot of time, so to speak. I was procrastinating. I find that interesting. Procrastinating doesn’t seem to be so much about NOT doing the thing, but rather of getting in the way of just doing something entirely different for a while so that you can come back to the thing fresh, which is what you needed in the first place.
So yeah, I got to work, and my workmate is in this kinda grumpy mood, and he chances across lifesucks.info - well he typed life sucks into google and that came up - of course LOL. Reading this is one of the most strangely sort of bizarre things… I mean, you read it expecting to start feeling a bit morose, but you kind of feel like “Oh, cool, someone else has been down” It obviously leaves out all of the positive things in life, or at least colours them in drab gray… but I’m sure he’s got at least 5 points that almost everyone has felt at some time… which is very interesting, because the effect of the website is that it directs you OUT of any spiral you seemed to be in… because he’s MORE depressing than you could ever be. What a strange place to find a motivator.
Then I stumbled across this article about being eeyore, and that kinda lifted my spirits a little.
It sort of depresses me slightly to think that I’m just a piece of “something” blowing in the wind so freely that anything that happens can impact me to such a huge degree, but I guess that’s part of being human, isn’t it? The advantage of that is that I’m adaptable to change.
I’m not really sure WHERE I’m going with this post, only to express that motivation for doing things, and how the human being (/ event / machine / whatever you want to call it) deigns to co-operate in accord with itself is still very much a mystery to me, even after being on this earth for what I’d consider to be a fair amount of time.
I have a sneaking suspicious that success in this area may have something to do with swimming with the current and yet still going towards your goal rather than trying to directly get across the river, which would actually result in being washed away.
(Listening to 101 On the Run by Tigerskin - you can get this on iTunes Store)
There’s a great big sign on the wall across from the stairs at the gym that I go to which says “Motivation is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going”. This slightly offends me, because it stinks of not having been thought about at all.
I find motivation fascinating, and even more fascinating than motivation is the diversity of material that helps people - including myself of course - to be motivated. I find that I may want very much to do something, but until a certain je ne sais quoi is achieved or in place, I won’t actually take up the bat and do the thing.
This certain thing appears to be some form of catalyst. Successful people seem to know exactly what it is that catalyses and pushes them into action. It’s sometimes almost like one is waging a war with oneself… and other times, it’s not.
Friends have told me various things from time to time about this topic. One told me that he just goes with the flow of whatever seems to be “standing in the way” of getting useful work done, because fighting it often takes twice as long to get to the point where you’re “in the zone” than not fighting it.
I’ve always been intensely interested in my moods, my thoughts and just generally my whole EVENT with respect to this. Why is it so easy on some days, and other days almost impossible? We seem to be incredibly fragile beings, with our moods constantly in flux here and there… one day a chocolate bar will help, another day I don’t need any THING at all. Some days, reading a certain something will help, and other days it’ll be something someone says.
Generally, though, it’s my mood that’s in control. My feelings. If I’m in a “good” place, then it’s easy to connect to myself and altogether arrive at some destination, all parts of myself acting in concert. If, conversely, I’m a bit disjointed, it’s like a poorly tuned school band that just can’t seem to keep tempo, rhythm or tuning, and the desired effect is… well, let’s just say the “mark is missed”. ;-)
There’s an old eastern idea that likens the human being to a horse, carriage and driver. The carriage is the body, the horse the emotions and the driver is the mind. Today the driver would like to drive somewhere, but the reigns are a little too thin to convey to the horse that he’d like to go somewhere, and perhaps the horse isn’t trained very well, or is a little temperamental because he hasn’t been trained very well. Sometimes the carriage is not in good wear, and so the horse has a very hard time pulling the carriage. All of these variables and more are constantly in flux. It’s fascinating to see the various parallels with this idea, and let’s not even get to the point that the master, who is directing the driver from the carriage may not even be present!
So, when I find myself in this predicament of not being able to direct myself at all, it’s a strange finding. Also, likewise, when I find myself in the state of everything flowing, it’s an interesting finding. I’m left with a question, which keeps lingering, much like the subtle fragrance of a flower - you’re reminded of it when it is there, and you know it, but when it’s gone it’s very difficult to remember the smell of the thing.
I’d be very interested to know what helps others…
(Habit, conversely, is all about MECHANICS, I find - the human machine, like all physicality, finds it easier to repeat things that have been done before than not… the interesting thing about that sign on my gym is that it doesn’t actually say anything about motivation, really, but it pretends to be pithy)
For some reason lately, the brashly fervent creator of Rails, David Heinemeier-Hansson, (who I think is awesome, by the way) has been directing readers of his blog Loud Thinking to the “fact” that Rails doesn’t have too many women-folk in its scene.
One of the women-folk who *is* in the Rails world and who I really love the writing of, is Amy Hoy. Of course, who can NOT like her immutable style, also? :) She appears to really appreciate quality. I especially loved one of her recent posts, simply quoting a small section of The Sentence is a Lonely Place by Gary Lutz.
Gary manages to masterfully direct our attention to quality as we read his words. In just the same way that carefully selected paper and typography bring my attention to the moment and make me “take more care”, Gary Lutz words seem to transcend the mere collection of syllables by the fact of their combination. He describes it himself in is piece. It’s wonderful.
I’m quite thankful to Amy for sharing it. It’s like waking up on a “good day” when everything feels like it’s going to go right. :)
Thanks, Amy.
I really like Apple products. In the office where I work, it’s silly, but it’s commonly known that I don’t keep very abreast of current affairs, unless it’s related in some way to my iPhone or Apple in general. Sad, probably, but true.
In the world of Apple rumour-mongering, internet-hyping and Apple’s insane distortion field (or is it only relegated to Jobs?) there aren’t many calm level-headed voices.
I have to say, though, that pretty much my absolute favourite writer around all of this info has to be John Gruber of Daring Fireball. It’s almost as though he actually thinks about what he wants to say before he writes it. Like - imagine that - a considered approach to writing? Impressive! ;-) I think that this may potentially be the difference between amateur writers and professional writers, and it’s nice that it’s obviously becoming more valuable again since newspaper journalists seem to have lost so much of their reputable veracity from former “epochs”.
He always manages to bring a sensible set of predictions, nay even a sensible set of words set together to form a coherent and cohesive whole, and he presents it in an informative and interesting way. His latest suite of comments addressing the iphone rumours are very much continued evidence of this. He’s looked at what has happened in the past, done some abstraction, put a good bit of nous into it and arrived at a sensible solution that it’s almost impossible to refute the likelihood of.
He’s cool :)
Props, John!
I really like the tech that we have these days. Compared to the past, it’s fast, flexible, and the software can do such awesome things.
But some things irk me. Things like… I’d like to have all peripherals able to be “slaved” to any computer in the house. Thus, if I want to hear my music coming out of my iPhone on my little brother’s speakers, it should be ultra-trivial to set this up.
I should be able to watch any of my movies on any of my screens, easily and simply.
I should be able to use any of my computers in the house (and/or outside of?) on any of my screen/keyboard combinations.
The technology is pretty much there that we should be able to have wireless connectivity to this degree, especially on a LAN.
Why is it almost impossible, for example, for me to use a disk that’s in another computer’s drive?
It’s about time the inflexibility walls came down, I reckon.
I have quite a large DVD collection.
Some would call it a colossal DVD collection. I’m not so sure, though. The number is presently around 1000. That’s not a huge number, if you ask me. It’s good, because there’s always something to watch, or for friends to borrow if they’d like to.
DVD’s are great compared to how crappy VHS tapes used to be…. in some ways. I get kinda pissed off that my “non law-abiding friends” who copy their DVD’s can remove the “obligatory” “don’t copy this DVD” warning that appears at the beginning of every DVD, and yet I, a legitimate purchaser of the DVD have to sit through the bloody things. How bizarrely ironic. Most of them have these days gone to the trouble of making sure you can’t get around watching that bloody awful thing every single time you stick the DVD in if you’re a legitimate user. FAIL!
One day, I’d like to have my entire DVD collection on iTunes, or some kind of other place that involves as much ease-of-use at finding movies as music does.
Why not collect with iTunes Movie Store? Well, mostly because of the inflexibility. I can’t play it anywhere other than on an iTunes enabled Mac or PC. Bloody annoying if you want to take it over to a friend’s house who doesn’t use iTunes… or (and this is a great one) how about if you want to get some content onto a DVD for a friend - you want to buy him something for is birthday, say, and he can only play DVD’s.
FAIL! So irritating. Add that to the fact that our current storage capacities just don’t cut it for having a DVD/Movie collection of this size and you have a really annoying failure.
There’s more, though. Haven’t you noticed how if you put a DVD into iTunes it doesn’t ask you if you want to rip it like it does with Audio discs? Why this mis-match? Probably due in large part to the same reason why I get those “You’re burning your future if you copy this disc” messages on the discs I buy.
Basically, I find it irritatingly ridiculous that for people who do the “WRONG” thing, life is about 1000 times more easy than those who do the “RIGHT” thing. I’m pretty sure this has always been the case (copy protection on software is a good example here).
For what it’s worth, I love Apple’s take, which tends towards giving people exceptionally awesome products/things at a good price such that they not only don’t feel compelled to copy it for other people, but in fact that they feel compelled to either recommend to others that they buy the products themselves, or BUY AND GIVE THEM THEIR OWN COPY.
I myself have given about 5 of my iPods to friends/acquaintances because they’ve needed one more than I needed it. I think it’s a nice thing to do. (Mostly iPod shuffles, but still).
We’re supposed to be in an age of technology. More like an age of ridiculous limitations at the moment (and it’s not being imposed by the technology - just by our own fears).
Computers are bloody awesome. I’ve been using them for years, and I make my living using them. Strange way to start off a post titled I hate computers I guess.
Computer touch pretty much every single aspect of our lives as humans. This is fairly obvious. Any endeavour that humans have is enhanced and made easier by using computers to assist effort.
However! (and this is a really big however)
We really haven’t begun to scratch the surface of proper integration. What do I mean by that? I mean we have the technical possibility to do so many things, and we keep improving technology, but perhaps rather than improving the speed and power of these devices, we should actually be looking into the integration first.
I think an example is in order here: I have a wi-fi network at home. We have a mac mini for watching movies on and basically for the living room, music, web, you know. It’s a bit of a luxury, but it’s basically our stereo and dvd player all in one, and for looking up internet stuff if we need to without cracking open our other computers.
Now, this mac has iTunes on it (obviously - all macs do), and it has some of the songs I’ve purchased from the iTunes music store, and some music we’ve loaded on from CD. My brother has three computers in his room, one for work, and two for play (PC for games and stuff, and a mac he’s refurbing). I have an iPhone and he has an iPod touch. I have my laptop for work. This is a lot of devices. They’re all connected via wi-fi.
I have a simple idea. I want all of our music to be on a big hard drive sitting on the lounge computer, and his music to be a synchronized sub-set of that, and mine also. Our iPods should be a synchronized sub-set of that, too (or any computer we decide to drive it off).
This just isn’t very possible with the way things are set up.
FAIL!
Saw Kindle reviewed on the iPhone today and I was like “score”, but it turns out you can’t get it if you live in other places than the US. Failure, thy name is non-internationalized products. (Not that I can talk, all of my products are only available in English).
… actually it wasn’t that long ago, and it wasn’t in a different galaxy… so it really wasn’t that far away… but yeah… in the tradition of all blogs that have come before me, obviously I haven’t been blogging in ages.
This is to be expected now, right? Human nature and all that?
LoL.
Anyway, I have to say that Cafe Sofia makes probably the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had in my life - and consistently! They’re in Erskineville, NSW, Australia in case you wanted to know. Of course, this is according to my limited experience of lots of coffee shops all around Sydney.
Hang on why was I blogging, though? Um… oh yeah…
Anyway, I’ll blog again real soon now :-) (Spoken like a true developer)
Just a quick post to tell you that you know NOTHING of the crunch ;-)