As I have mentioned previously, I often struggle with task-completion and self-motivation with some things.

Example: After commencement, when summer “break” began, I had started to read some Bioinformatics textbooks. One of my Profs is lending me a textbook they’ll be using for one of the courses, and I started reading it and taking notes — purely because I find it interesting.

Then I got a new book (Reason 4 Ignite, which I previously reviewed), and obsessively started doing that every day. Bioinformatics got shelved for the time being, along with all the passion and sincere interest in learning it. The thought of picking up the book and reading it actually repulsed me — normally, this might give some pause, but it’s nothing new; I’ve been through it many times. I know that eventually, that interest will come back around with the same intensity; I just don’t know WHEN.

What was different this time, though, is that it got me thinking: What if I could track these interests somehow? If I could collect enough data, perhaps I could find some cyclical nature to my interests and develop some reasonable expectations of myself. Heck, maybe a predictable periodic function would emerge, and I could create a differential equation to plot my interest in differential equations. The question is, of course, how do you quantify interest? Continue reading →