Tag Archives: lost causes

Tracking Motivations, pt. 2

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I am almost ready to prepare the book for printing. (UN — your copy will be sent to you immediately when the prototype is done, thanks for your willingness to participate!) I’m still finalizing the metrics I want to track for this project.

As I mentioned in part 1, the challenge has been in developing a simple way of objectively recording a rather subjective topic: our level of motivation for various things.

After some ruminating and many pensive bike rides, I’ve come up with what I believe will be effective at broad-stroking the level of motivation over time. The daily metrics should actually track the *RATE* of motivation, rather than the absolute motivation.The idea is that if you take a large enough sample size, patterns should emerge where periods of “doing” it is measured by spikes in motivation, and “thinking about it” is represented by a very slight increase. Not thinking or doing it will be represented (upon final analysis) by a slight decrease in motivation, until it decays entirely.

This metric would be based on two factors that will be very easy to track:

  • “Did I think about doing ____ today?”
  • “Did I do ___ today?”

Thinking about doing something is worth “0.25″ point, and actually doing it is worth “1″ point. This isn’t to say that “doing” takes 4x as much motivation as “thinking”, but I expect that the resulting graphs will reasonably reflect a pattern of fluctuation in motivation if the activity itself is periodic. Any items not mentioned, in final analysis, will lose 0.5 points until they decay back to zero. These values may all need to be tweaked in the end, but it really won’t matter for the purposes of tracking, since the test subjects will only be checking “Thought it” or “Did it”.

I’ve also considered that recording other incidental details — phase of the moon, number of hours slept, calories / meals consumed, and a quick assessment of mood “good, meh, or bad” for the day — may prove to be useful.

My goal is to have the journal take only 1 to 2 minutes per day TOTAL to ensure maximum “sticking-to-itness”. Indeed, the motivation to track your motivations may become a factor. :D

I’m still mulling over some of the fine details, but I expect to have a prototype up here in the very near future (this month). It will be available for free download, and printed copies will be available via Lulu.

Tracking Motivation

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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 →

Resolutions

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As I’m sure tons of other people are doing in the blag-o-blags right now, I’m blagging about my New Years Resolution(s).

I heard a report on NPR recently about making New Years Resolutions stick. The key, apparently, is to set reasonable, attainable goals, clearly define what they are, and be persistent (i.e. “slipping” is ok, provided you get back on the wagon.)

My resolutions this year are:

Continue reading →

“Odin” Development

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I’m beginning development on a project I am going to refer to here as “Odin”. For reasons mostly relating to intellectual property (until I can determine if this will be open-source or closed-source), I need to refrain from divulging details about the nature of the project, aside from that it could be conceivably be used as a pedagogical tool. 

I met with one of my Prof’s yesterday to discuss Odin, and he thought the idea was really cool, with a lot of potential. The problem, in my mind, is whether or not it is too ambitious. Odin will require some mid-level graphical programming and probably some mid-level math for calculations. (By “mid-level” I am thinking in that the range’s upper bound is upper level mathematics.) I’ve been mulling over the concept for a while though, and I have a pretty good idea in my head for HOW it should work, at least. Continue reading →

Simplifying pt. 1

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We’ve decided to start getting rid of crap. We’ve established four rules for each item:

  1. If it can’t be theoretically sold on eBay, it is to be thrown out or donated somewhere.
  2. If we were to move next month, it should be worth packing up and moving.
  3. Any item may be deemed “sacred”, which is non-arguable; But all sacred items must be added to a ranked list. (This list may have limitations imposed on it at a later date, hence ranking by importance)
  4. Once purging is done, equilibrium must be maintained (New items brought into the house must be met by an equal amount of riddance).

We went through our books and some other crap in the attic today. We have chalked up 16.328 cubic feet so far.

Some notable riddances:

  • The set of DIY encyclopedias (from at least 2 decades ago) that I bought for 2 or 3 bucks at the Library book sale a year ago. They’ll likely be going back to the library.
  • An unmarked video cassette tape that Melissa mysteriously unraveled without explanation
  • Two shark fin cable modems
  • A LaVeyan Satanic Bible & the Complete Illustrated Old Testament Bible
  • A large (7′) DVD rack

Melissa and I both think this round of purging wasn’t particularly painful — just carving away at the easy stuff for now. The difficult nitty gritty stuff is yet to come still, when we get to the basement.

*UPDATE*

  • Purchased 3.450 cu.ft. (kitchenware)
  • Purged 9.385 cu.ft. (table, baby cereal)

New total: 22.263 cu.ft.