Warum Ich will not finish learning German

.. or why I never finish (almost) anything

The internet is full of cheap articles with titles like “The X Reasons Why You Never Finish Anything” written by people with no background in psychology or sociology whose only credentials are “I have been writing on various shit since two years ago”. These nobodies than proceed to explain to you why you are lazy, afraid of success and generally a flawed human and that you can change yourself if you just follow their advice.

Generic internet advice has the same value as daily zodiac horoscope advice.

So why is this article any better? Because I am somehow expert on the subject? Yes, because I will write about why “I” never finish stuff, and I am old enough to be expert on myself.

From time to time I would usually get a “brilliant idea” about “what I want to do in life” and then spend next 2-6 months investing time and energy in it and inevitably after some time it would all simply stop. All enthusiasm for the idea would disappear, and there will be a short period of relaxation until I find the next “big one”.

Here is a sample of my most recent preoccupations: * learn German - (lasted for 6 months) * become Erlang expert - (lasted for 6 months) * make and sell my game - (recurring theme in my life, usually 6 months long) * become a Baduk master - (current level: 6k, after one year of playing) * start blogging - (this one was easy because “starting” stuff is my problem :)

Ich kann, weil ich will, was ich muss.

I am currently obsessed with increasing my math skills in linear algebra, statistics and logic, and the reason I am doing it is because I “felt” like I have neglected math for a long time, which is to say I have no good reason at all, because I don’t need advanced levels of math in my daily job. Oh and I also started writing an SF novel.

Yes, I realize that the probability of me being insane is not strictly zero.

So why do I do all this? Why don’t I just pick one thing and stick to it? Well we first need to realize what all this things are: hobbies, and hobby is something you do along the way to chase away boredom. People that keep one hobby for their entire life are extremely dull. What kind of mind collects old coins for 50 years (I did it for total of 5 months). Some of our hobbies have a chance to become something bigger in our lives if we give them enough time. But in order to give significant amounts of time and energy to something you need a good reason backed by emotional investment. And this finally answers the question what all this starting and stopping of interests in our lives is all about. It is a search on the tree of life for things worth doing! Some people do depth first, some breadth first, some A*. But the search strategy does not really matter, what matters is your utility function. Have fun and try not to get stuck on a local maximum.