because a Reverend can't be wrong.
Designed by Mena Trott of Movable Type fame, written by Pete Rojas, writer for Wired, Salon, Red Herring and The Guardian, and backed by Nick Denton, comes Gizmodo: a weblog dedicated to everything related to gadgets, gizmos, and cutting-edge consumer electronics.
Gizmodo aims to provide news and reviews of all the gizmos and gadgets every good little geek could ever dream of. They seem to be off to a good start.
I lack all internal motivation. There I said it.
I lack the internal motivation most people have. The same motivation that makes normal people get up and go to work, clean the house, wash the laundry, buy the groceries, make dentist appointments every six months, and remember birthdays.
When I have something new, challenging, or different, my own curiosity is enough motivation to cause me to read, and learn, and digest. But after a while, I fall back into the same rut. I don’t want to do anything.
Motivation, at least for me, can come in many shapes and forms. As one of my major character flaws, very rarely does this motivation come from within me.
Take, for example, something as simple as doing the dishes. Sure, I could do them. It wouldn’t take more than 30 minutes and the sink would be clear and the dishwasher would be happily churning my dishes into a state of cleanliness. But I have no internal motivation. Is anyone coming over tonight? No. Am I making anyone else’s life difficult by not doing the dishes? No. Is my life negatively impacted by not doing the dishes? Slightly, but not enough to over come the inertia. In many cases, even having company coming over doesn’t motivate me to do the dishes because it doesn’t affect them. If there were someone else living here that were willing to share in the burden of the dishes, someone that wanted the dishes to be done, I would be motivated by their desire, as well as my own, and the fact that the work would be distributed.
Look at my job, as another example. When I first started this job I worked 12 – 16 hours a day. I was motivated because the work was new and exciting. When I finished it, people were excited. It gave me a sense of accomplishment. I soon learned that the work would never go away, people would never be satisfied, and the work was the same thing over and over again. That was okay though, because I had a partner. Someone who challenged me and one-upped me. Soon he grew unmotivated, and then left altogether. And now what’s left? Five years later I’m here and I work but only when I have to. I save everything until the day before and then do it as quickly and as hackishly as possible, just making it by. I don’t learn anything unless it’s required, I don’t teach anything unless I have to, and I do everything as quickly and clumsily as possible.
I use my spell checker for everything. Yet, on one of my computers, I have accidentally installed the British dictionary as opposed to the American. It complains constantly that I’ve spelled “color” and “favorite” and “rationalize” incorrectly. I could fix it in about 1 minute, at most. Have I bothered? No. I’ve been doing it this way for over a year now and I have no motivation to change it, as it doesn’t affect anyone but me, and I’m just fine with it the way that it is.
As a final example, look at weblogging software. I know that, in a matter of 2 – 3 days, I could author my own weblogging application that would do everything I want and need in the exact manner that I wish it to be done. Yet instead, I use Movable Type because it’s close enough and it requires no motivation on my part.
My lack of internal motivation is bad. I’ll assure you of that. In order to make myself feel better, I can think of ways in which it is good. For instance, not having internal motivation means that I wont do anything that doesn’t in some way or another benefit me or another party greatly. It means I wont waste any time on things that don’t deserve them.
On the other hand, it means I have a sink full of dirty dishes, and a dishwasher full of clean ones. It means I have 30 loads of dirty laundry and one clean load sitting in the dryer. It means I curse at Movable Type and my spell checker every time I use it.
And I’m okay with that. Okay. No I’m not. But I’m not motivated enough to do anything about it.