Japanese, motivation and being Henry Rollins.

I always loved this Henry Rollins Quote:

I don't have talent. I have tenacity. I have discipline. I have focus. I know, without any delusion, where I come from and where I can go back to.

Remember how insane Henry Rollins used to be? Before he found inner peace, he was the most vicious punk singer ever. That's me. Sitting quietly in front of my computer. Trying to figure out where I made a typo and why nothing is working. Viciously.

I am not the productive beast I like to think I am. But I am passionate and diligent. And above everything I am proud about having discipline.

I love working with "talented" people, or anyone that is better than me, because I feel motivated. Because all I want is to pick their brains, and 9 out of 10 times I notice that the so called "talented" people are just hardworking and consistent. That there is no magic or secret to it. And I always felt that working as hard, within my abilities, was the only sincere way of communicating that I respect them. Because words kind of feel like empty flattery, even when they are genuine. In a way, that's how I feel about having idols too. You look up to them, read about them, hear what they have to say. Enjoy their work. Hoping that maybe some of that coolness rubs off on you. Trying to be yourself a little better, because you want them to know you respect them.

I've had the talent vs discipline with people very close to me countless times. And I understand the doubts, and the impostor syndrome. But at some point in my life I think it stopped fazing me as much, because it seemed very clear to me that talent without work was useless. Not that I don't feel like an impostor anymore, because programming does a pretty good job of reminding you every day of how little you actually know. But I know there are things that I find reassuring, that keep me grounded. I know where I come from and where I can go back to.

And in short, this is how I know it: I can look back on the things that I've done, and I can look at numbers (whether it's hours, number of notes, books, courses).

Looking back on things you have done is one of the most reassuring things you can do, because they are tangible. Because they actually show that there IS a progression, that you are still growing, and most importantly, that if that has been the case, why would it stop being true now?

And I know all these things sound kind of general. But I actually do them, and I do them because they make me feel a little better and motivate me.

I started doing it when I was learning Japanese. I read books looking up every word in the dictionary (a digital one thank god!), and when I would finish the book I would go back to the very first page. At the start of the book I barely understood anything, after finishing it and rereading that very same chapter it was as if the fog had dissipated. And there comes the adrenaline rush of having learnt a lot very quickly. If you have felt it, you know. It's kind of an addicting feeling, and I don't know where it comes from. Maybe because you feel you are finally figuring out something that you found very hard. You like the feeling and it feels meaningful, precisely, because it was hard. That's an addiction that I think runs rampant both on programmers and language learning circles (if they are even different circles, sometimes it feels like most programmers are otakus. But who am I to talk?). That's one way to do it, you take yourself to the very start of this thing you found challenging and you make yourself very aware of how much you have improved.

The other way requires you to be a little bit insane and masochistic. As I've hinted before, you keep track of quantifiable things like hours of work, number of courses, books, objectives. You need to be the kind of person that enjoys doing this kind of tracking, and learn to be smart about because it can get quite messy. I am not kidding when I say that I used to time myself when I read in Japanese, and I had an excel sheet that had how many hours I had read each day, the average of hours per day, even the total number of words and my reading speed.

And you have no idea how happy seeing those numbers go up made me. With programming, I have come to do something a little different which is having a little task manager on my favorite note taking app: Obsidian (I talk about how I use it for programming here soon!). But it's the same principle, I know how many hours I have worked. I know how many courses I have completed each month. Sometimes it's much simpler and I take a look at my graph view, knowing that my small little galaxy will keep growing the more I learn and take notes.

(This is the same concept I am working on with my app Kinoko. Make the time logging easy, without dealing with Excel, which is a very ugly and annoying program to use, honestly. And having a visual representation for your hours of work inspired by the obsidian galaxy. I go more into Kinoko here.)

This is what motivates me, at least. I would love to hear from you.