‘Doing’ is a trait you can level up.

Something I’ve always struggled with is sticking to my interests, there are so many random niche things I’ve been exposed to, gotten interested about for a week or 2, but then ended up dropping it cause I either just forget about it or lose interest, or simply never seem to ‘adopt’ it as a part of my life. This applies not only to hobbies, but ideas and philosophies and frameworks too. How many times have we been exposed to an excellent idea that would benefit us immensely if implemented in our lives, only to barely apply it and drop it soon afterwards.

It ends up making us wonder: why do we end up like this? All while while other people seem to be able to just get exposed to something and actually stick with it. Instead of just sitting there thinking about it to only get good at all the ideology of it, they actually USE it, and it actually BENEFITS them, they actually DO stuff. WHY??

I’m sure we can both imagine the 2 different types of people and how we lie somewhere along that spectrum, kinda wishing we could be more of the later.

The good news is that well… you can do just that! You can become more of a ‘Doer’ by simply training the skill. Here’s how according to neuroscience studies (Filtered through Dr K and subsequently through yours truly):

The 4 steps to becoming a doer.

1. Triggered Situational Interest

Phase one is out of your control. It is simply when something in your environment triggers your curiosity.

Sometimes in this stage when we get curious about something we get hit with some sort of negative emotion, usually in the form of embarrassment or feeling bad about ourselves cause we’re not good at the newly acquired interest, and a lot of us just run away from it immediately, but the thing is… the most important step in phase 1 is continued exposure to the interest.

YOU DO NOT NEED FEEDBACK HERE. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE AMAZING. IT’S OKAY TO BE SHIT (for now 😉)!

In order for feedback to be useful, you need to actually have CONFIDENCE in the subject at hand as well as a laid out map ready for for the feedback to dynamically interact with. (More on this in later paragraphs)

2. Maintained Situational Interest

We don’t have to worry about dealing with the negative emotion, we just have to expose ourselves to the interest in any way. This can be talking to people about it, watching YouTube video on it, reading about it, etc.

Sure, you’re not necessarily getting better at it, but you’re still exposing yourself to keep MAINTAINED Situational Interest

You still want to expose yourself somewhat. BUT DON’T SWEAT IT!!

After this we go from external interest to internal

If you try to go too much in depth at this stage, before you have your own ‘meta’ or knowledge map formed out, you may actually find it boring or disengaging, since you kinda won’t have much to attach onto, and there will be no pleasure like that which you experience in stage 3 and 4 where your ideas dynamically interact.

Dynamically engaging with ideas is FAR more engaging than statically absorbing them, and I believe this is what helped me learn so much faster than my peers in school. (Instead of just statically absorbing information and formulas coming through, I actually worked through the proofs myself)

3. Emerging Individual Interest (THEORY CRAFTING)

Now after consuming all this content and exposure, the crucial step is to process it internally.

That is not watching more videos on it, that’s not asking for advice on it, that is the type of processing that you do when you’re laying in bed at night, going through different scenarios, trying to figure things out for YOURSELF

To develop Intrinsic motivation, you need to reflect on what you just learnt.

THINKING IS NOT INTERNAL!!!

4. Well Developed Individual Interest

For anything you want to develop intrinsic motivation for, you need to reflect on what you learnt, and ask yourself questions about it.

This phase is characterised by 2 steps:

Step 1: Appreciate the contributions of others:

  • Once you’ve done your own theory crafting, you can APPRECIATE other people’s theory crafting.

Asking for feedback?

In phase 1 feedback can be BAD for you

Notes:

  • Curiosity is not the same as intrinsic motivation
  • Curiosity is a DESIRE for external exposure.
  • The problem is we don’t know how to transition from stage 2 to 3, how to turn that excitement into internal deeper curiosity and intrinsic motivation
  • If you don’t dynamically engage with the new info you’re picking up, your brain will get BORED (the excitement will wear off before you could build a strong enough knowledge base to develop intrinsic curiosity)
  • How you build Intrinsic motivation is through DYNAMIC ENGAGEMENT ( Reflection, Theory crafting, asking questions)
  • Once the intrinsic drive is there, we can grow it.
  • If you increase your points in one area of life, the ability to do so will help you level up all other areas of life.
  • People who learn this process, do good at EVERYTHING

Now obsession is a CHOICE, you no longer have to ever drop a hobby again

Further Resources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSBGYoS6z68 (This is the primary source of ideas and inspiration for this post, strongly recommend you check it out) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mARuuW2BGeE