On Motivation

[glenstein 0]

I think I've answered a problem (pretentious). It's always said in politics that every vote counts. But it's a hard sell because no one believes their *particular* vote counts. Even if an election is won a by single vote (say 50,0001 to 50,000), credit for that vote ends up going to the amorphous whole, so any individual feeling of credit is, at best, hard to pinpoint. That should be reversed. If you voted for someone YOUR vote was the one single particular vote that everything hinged upon. Not the whole.

 

Of course, you have to say this to every single one of the 50,001 people who voted, each of their vote was the "single particular one that decided everything". It's not logical, but it's as logical an answer as you can possibly give to the question "why does MY vote matter". A real concern that does discourage people in the real world. It's probably the best answer available for dispatching that concern. You should think it completed and produced the victory in its entirety. It is logical in the sense that, if your vote were to change

 

I think anything that takes a long time, that you have to do a lot of, imagine that the action you are doing right then and there is the final, capping one that makes unleashes/realizes the fullness of the total achievement.

 

This works for anything that has several long slogging components. For example, I was wondering how many situps I would have to do in a day in order to get 5000 a month (166.67). But why should the very last one, the last final #5000 get all the credit for everything that came before it?

 

I thought of this because supposing I were to actually do this situp thing consistently into infinity, any particular 30 day span wouldn't matter. Why start at one month? Why not March 15th to April 14th? That's 30 days. Why not April 20th to May 20th? Eventually after several months, every single day, every single situp would be completing a set of 5000, while it continues to be the first in a new set of 5000, the second in another set, the third in another....

 

No achievement as a whole should be focused on. you attempt to create the whole behemoth in its entirety all at once which is a ruinous, gaping feeling that has nothing to do with anything. It's discouraging and misguided because it leaves you grasping for the whole of it long before it actually comes.

 

But such a feeling, of achievement the actual effort necessary to complete it. There is no sense in trying to achieve 5000 situps in a single motion of effort because that doesn't even have anything to do with the actual situps.

 

Your immediate, unconnected effort, isolated of anything else, IS the achievement. It's exactly the substance the achievement is made of. You are spinning the gold, beautiful as it will be upon completion.

Edited March 14, 2007 by glenstein (see edit history)