I've realized in the past couple of years that I'm rather seasonal about my interests and pursuits. What I mean by that is:

• I'll get really into a project and want to do it for a couple of months, and after that will want to move onto something else.
• I feel like committing to something for a lengthy period of time (like over a year or two) is already quite daunting, no matter how quickly I know time passes in the moment.
• I get annoyed when I'm in the middle of some minor, time-consuming thing (like a job lol) and then something grabs my interest and I can't drop the thing to pursue it.

I thought I was just wishy-washy, but I'm starting to feel out a pattern to all of this. It's not all bad – I can get a surprising amount of stuff done in a "season," and by virtue of patterning my seasons after my current interests I usually enjoy the process. Because it's fun, I don't need a lot of time before I jump to the next thing I want to do. (It's a never-ending list.)

The times I've struggled were when I was still doing something but mentally was already "off-season," and everything suffered for it, including my readiness to get back on track - I would need time to recover from doing something I didn't like.

And while reading David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs," I stumbled across this section:

[M]ost people who have ever existed have assumed that normal human work patterns take the form of periodic intense bursts of energy, followed by relaxation, followed by slowly picking up again toward another intense bout. This is what farming is like, for instance: all-hands-on-deck mobilization around planting and harvest, but otherwise, whole seasons taken up largely by minding and mending things, minor projects, and puttering around. But even daily tasks, or projects such as building a house or preparing for a feast, tend to take roughly this form.

In other words, the traditional student’s pattern of lackadaisical study leading up to intense cramming before exams and then slacking off again—I like to refer to it as “punctuated hysteria”—is typical of how human beings have always tended to go about necessary tasks if no one forces them to act otherwise. Some students may engage in cartoonishly exaggerated versions of this pattern. But good students figure out how to get the pace roughly right.

This excerpt made me feel validated and inspired. While I've never had trouble in school, I'd like to become a "good student" in the core sense of the word: Rather than aim to get a good result without a care for how chaotic and unsustainable the process is, I want to make sure my learnings and pursuits are rewarding in the long term, even if I'm not doing them all the time.

TL;DR: It makes sense to learn to work with the system I know works for me, rather than force myself to pretend I'm not the way I am.

Some things I'd like to do:

Estimate length of season based on interest levels, and use that as a time frame. Although I probably shouldn't set a hard deadline. Knowing me, I'll use that as an excuse to be excited for the next thing, or start worrying about the current thing not being done on time. I'd like to just be able to say "I'll probably still be excited about this until X time" so I can plan how ambitious I'd like to be about it.

Don't get caught up in planning. Sometimes I'm excited about something but I spend too long planning how to do it, and then the "reward" feeling goes away because I don't feel able to start without a concrete plan. With my Neocities, I just went right in and published shit right away even if it wasn't done. The feeling of having something (imperfect but) published was rewarding, and so I didn't lose interest.

Learn to do necessary evils swiftly. Work tasks, things like that. I want to record how much time I spend on certain things, so I know how much time to carve out for stuff I don't care for, or maybe learn to whittle it down to a shorter time. I'm here to enjoy my life, not prepare weekly update slides.

If the necessary evil is unending, devise a way to enjoy it or minimize the pain. Regular habits bore me so much. I have to keep track of my finances every week? I have to wash my makeup brushes? Ugh. I know some people have trained themselves to love things like working out daily, but I hate having things I have to do every day/week/whatever. I don't really have a solution for this yet - I'd like these mundane things to feel more like brushing my teeth or eating dinner (which I do everyday without complaint).

Stop saying yes to things I don't actually want to do. Big one. Do I want to do it because it's validating me somehow, or because I actually like it? I need to solidify in my head which things are "I love it because I am good at it" and which things are "I love it so I got good at it." I even made a form called "should I participate in this thing" to get me to vet my pursuits a bit better.

a snippet of the form in question

There are definitely more habits/lines of thinking I could stand to pick out and problem solve or optimize for myself, but it's late, so I'll leave it at this for now. I'm not a big fan of the Rise And Grind 💯😤💪 mindset, but I am a fan of maximizing the amount of time I spend doing things that are fun and enjoyable. I'll think about this a bit more.