Tag Archives: Motivation

Acquiring Passion

The question is simple, how do you develop motivation?

There is so much I want to do, so many projects I want to accomplish.

I have a small business idea I’ve been slowly working on, but whenever I start working on it, I just stare at the page, until I start soemthing else.

I’ve got a genre-fiction novel I’ve started (and a few other ideas I’d like to write about), and I enjoy the writing when I’m writing, but can enver find the motivation to being.

I’d like to get in shape, work out, but whenever I start a work-out routine, it fizzles after a couple weeks.

Victor Pride answered this a month back:

It is only when you have fire for a project that you cannot quit, there is no option to quit. Rather than trying to force motivation you should only work on projects that fire you up. You’ll save yourself a ton of time and heartache. If you’ve got to force motivation then you should just go ahead and say “no”. It’s only when you can’t stop working on something that you are going to get the benefit from it.

When you’re fired up about something, take it to the extreme.

There is no need to “find motivation”. The motivation is already there. Your motivation just may be different to someone else’s motivation. I see a lot of people who are motivated to watch television and eat potato chips all day. Fine for them. Is it fine for you?

An honest, true, but somewhat depressing answer. There is nothing in life that really fires me up like this, but  being motivated to watch television all day is not fine for me.

I am generally apathetic individual. I don’t really have passion for life or much of anything in it. I occasionally get a really brief flurry of passion for this or that hobby, computer game, or such, but never one that lasts longer than a couple weeks and never one for anything important.

But, that’s a problem. I shouldn’t be this apathetic; I desire to have a passion for something.

So, that leads to a new question, how does one develop passion?

How does one truly begin to care about and pursue what one knows one should?

How do I find the passion to become the man who has the kind of life I desire?

Projects and Motivation

I mentioned earlier that I’d write about some projects I had planned, so here it is.

One thing I want to use this blog for is just keeping myself motivated in these projects. I have a couple ideas for projects that I hope might create an alternative income stream at some point, but I never get around to working on them. So this blog post is mostly for me to clarify my thoughts and to help motivate me to work on them. If you want to read, feel free, but there’s no analysis here and I don’t know if it will be worthwhile to anybody else; I’m writing this solely for myself.

Website Project #1

About half a year ago, I identified a major gap in one of my hobbies that could be filled through the creation of a social website. I’m pretty sure there’s demand for the project from those within my hobby, as I’ve seen much interest expressed in something similar throughout the hobby’s websites. I’m also pretty sure that there would be a chance at significant revenues as a primary advertiser for the hobby for whoever filled the demand.

On the other hand, I’ve seen a few other sites that tried to fill this demand, but none of them achieved the critical mass of users necessary to make the projects viable, so none of them meet the demand.

That’s the problem. The website would require a lot of work (a year, likely more, of my spare time) as I would need to a lot of programming in php, which I don’t know, but I know I would be capable of doing it. I also know that if I could attain a critical mass of users the site would contribute significantly to the hobby and I could probably monetize it for a decent revenue stream, but I have no idea how I would reach the tipping point when I’ve seen a number of other similar sites that have failed to do so. I started working on it somewhat half-heartedly a few weeks back, and getting a good start on this project was, until today, going to be my goal for the 30 Days of Discipline.

Website Project #2

But today, I had a better idea. I purchased Bold & Determined‘s Spartan Entrepreneur’s Guide (I’ll review this at a later time). I don’t think I’m going to follow his plan as is, (I’ll explain in my coming review), but his ideas on affiliate marketing got me to thinking and I had another idea for a different sort of website using affiliate marketing. This website would require less work upfront, but I could create the framework in a much shorter time-frame and roll out the content over time, unlike the first project which is more or less an all-or-nothing affair. I have to do a bit of research on this to make sure the possible demand for the idea hasn’t been filled, but an initial scan looks positive. So, I’ve decided to change my goal for the 30 Days to creating the framework for this site.

Blog Series

For the blog, I have three longer series I’d like to work out, and if they are well-received, maybe roll them out into clef-published e-books a la Worthless.

The first series I’ve already started: An Economic Analysis of Marriage. Over time, I’d like this to be a complete guide to helping young men considering marriage to calculate the potential costs and benefits of marriage.

I’ve been writing the first post of the second series for over the last few days, and it’s almost completed. Hopefully, it will be out this week. The working title of the series is Biblical Alpha Males, and that’s all I’m giving for now.

The third series is still in the conceptual stage, but essentially, it will be guide for omega males.  As I’ve mentioned before, I was once an omega male, a loser; I’ve since worked my way out of this, but it was not easy. I figure if I create a guide based on my experiences it might help other Omegas in the future.

Novels

I’ve also had three ideas for books that I would like to write at some point:

The first is an idea I have for an epic fantasy series. At this point, I have a strong concept and have developed a story arc that would span at least 5 books. The concept for the series came together last summer as two mediocre ideas I had been playing with in my head came together to make one idea I think is great. I’ve thought about it quite a bit since then. I really want to create this. The only problem is motivating myself to sit down and write. I started writing about half a year ago, and have been writing here and there over time, but I find that while I can just think about the story for hours on end, actually putting words to paper is much more difficult. I’ve almost completed the first chapter and plan to continue on.

The second idea came from an idea I originally had in high school. It’s a near-future sf techo-thriller. I wrote about five chapters in high school, but realized how juvenile, derivative, and inadequate the plot and characterization I was creating were, but the germ of the idea stuck. Since then, I figured out another theme to add to it, which really makes the idea work. I started writing it again about 2 years ago. I finished one chapter, then ran into a major problem: the novel requires a large amount of research on current British culture and socio-economics. The project was dropped as I did not have the time to research this and the epic fantasy idea began to take over my creative thoughts. It does have a working title though: Rivers of Blood. I hope to get back to it at some point; if I do it right it could be major; the idea is good.

The third is the least developed. It’s a mythological fantasy novel based around the modern world. It would require a lot of research on Norse Mythology, but could be interesting; it would probably end up having to be a series, but how long, I have no idea. It’s far behind the other two ideas in priority, but could turn into something at some point.

Over time, I plan to occasionally post status updates of my projects on here to keep myself motivated to continue.