Motivation

I feel like I've always got more things that I want to do than I have time to do them. I'm sure it's a common scenario. It's why I began this whole Project-A-Month deal; to force me to focus on one task at a time, give it a deadline, and to either complete it or fail at completing it. In the best case, I would complete a large chunk of the ambitious side projects that I've had burning a hole in my head. Worst case, it would shorten the list down.

I'm noticing a trend in my motivation level for various projects. Some of my projects, at their core, are about developing a skill. I want to learn Ruby on Rails, I want to learn the ins & outs of the new CSS3 hotness. These projects have the most long-term benefit. I'm learning skills that are immediately transferrable to other projects & realms.

You'd think the value these projects have would mean that I'd do them first. And that I'd enjoy doing them first. But I just can't get motivated to do them.

Then there's the other kind of projects. Write some songs. Make Statastic. Make some browser plug-ins. These might very well have the same impact as the above projects; writing songs is a good way of improving my guitar & musical skills. Statastic used some cool "HTML5" features that I had to learn. And I'm learning loads about how to build browser plugins. But somehow, these objectives are more compelling. These are the tasks that absorb my attention.

So, what's the difference?

Maybe I'm really a user first and a developer second. I have the skills and tools at my disposal to build anything. I very well could build for the sake of building, but I'd much rather build something that I'd actually like to use. The how it's built is a secondary question to what it is I want to build. If what I'm going to build isn't going to be very good, then who cares what it's built with?

This could very well describe my motivation for my work in addition to my personal projects.

Hmm...