Monkeyblah.com is run by Peter 'X-G' C O Johansson as a fun project and a weblog, as a way of expression, distribution of creative works, and as a design experiment, and was first established in spring 2004 as a successor to his earlier weblog, Not Quite Elite.
Enthusiasm
Friday, January 7 2005 at 00:20
Rant
How do people ever get anything done? Once you've learned something new (preferably by practicing), you know it and it loses any appeal it might once have had. It's always like that; whenever you've spent a reasonable time learning how to do something, trying it out, you become so disinterested in it you never really want to have anything more to do with it. It goes for everything I can think of; programming (learning a new technique), art (trying out a new style), writing (exploring a particular theme)...
In all of these, the time it takes to learn something is always much shorter than the time it would take to finish the piece in question. So how do people ever get anything done? Once you're halfway done, you know what the rest of the work is going to be like, and who wants to do it then? Worse yet, what's the result of all this? That all products we have are made by people learning, with the experts not wanting to do anything simply because of the inexorable dullness and repetitiveness of it all?
Also, for those who haven't noticed, we'd like to remind that we have a forum now.
The learning element is essential for me as well, i to like the process of learning. I do have a reason for learning and i am only interested in learning things which will be of use to me in some form. So i guess the fun in learning comes from measuring how far you have come and how close you are to gaining the necessary knowledge to achive the "real goal(s)".
I do not see the fun ending however. When you have gained new knowledge you will have an endless possibility to use it in various ways. If you have learning something within the field of programming you can use it to create something which comes from your imagination.
The answer to the question of the post is harder to answer i think. I guess you need to be in a stress free environment to get ideas. You also need time to get things done. And i personally need to be happy and in a good creative mood.
Ahh, you have the programmers curse!
From your post it seems like you value the learning experience more than the work, hence when you've learnt something new you can't be bothered to finish the work.
Is it possible that you could not associate the learning with the finished work? That instead you could judge your work on its own merits instead?
If somehow you could find a way to do this you would be able to finish your projects.
The following is useless advice, so feel free to ignore it. Works for me, though.
Rediscover stuff. Works best if you have crap memory, like I do. Well, not THAT crap, really. I don't go around going "oooooh!" all the time. Not unless I'm over-caffeinated or the like.
And that's not really what I mean either. I mean, get excited about new things, go do them with enthusiasm before that enthusiasm dies off. Sustain that firey glow of excitement.
I'd suggest getting a girlfriend, but we both know that ain't gonna happen any time soon.
I agree, and hereby proclaim, with the power given to me by myself, that this rant is correct.