Philosophy, motivation, and my guitar
I had no compulsion to play my guitar this morning. That made me wonder what I still see the point in doing. As I carry on through life things lose their lustre.
It could all be to do with goals. I no longer have any strong goals tied to playing my guitar. As a teenager it wasn’t unusual for me to stay up all night practising, sleeping every other day or having naps during the day. I wanted to be the best guitarist I knew, and I wanted to be in a band. They were strong goals. I practised a lot in my early twenties and learned entire albums by my favourite artists. I was teaching guitar as well, and I’m convinced that somewhere in my head was an idea that I would always be doing something with the guitar.
Not any more.
Four days a week I’m on a call at 6:30 am. On one of those calls I heard somebody who has been very successful say that people who want to succeed should ask themselves every hour, what they have done in the last hour to move closer to their goals. That seems like a very good idea to me. I have a watch that chimes at the start of every hour, and when it does, I ask myself what I’ve done in the previous hour to move closer to my goals. Now, things that are not related to my goals seem pointless.
I approached my guitar more than once this morning but didn’t pick it up. Doing so seemed a little pointless.
It’s a fact that I haven’t made progress in my musicianship for some time now. I’m aware that getting better at something makes it much easier to keep doing that thing. With musical instruments, you know you’re getting better if you pass more and more exams. I’m self taught. So I never had any exams. Improvement for me was demonstrated in situations where I played guitar with other people, or in front of other people. That raises another question; how important is feedback in our enjoyment of life? Related to that is the question; are some things intrinsically enjoyable in and of themselves?
Even if some things are intrinsically enjoyable, like eating sugary foods, they all seem to suffer the aggregation fallacy, the idea that if something is good, more of it is better. The only thing I can think of that does not suffer from the aggregation fallacy is money.
Getting back to my guitar. Would I still like to be a really good guitarist? Yes, that’s a goal, but I think I need some guidance and some lessons. A structured framework to measure my progress would be beneficial. I think I’d enjoy it. I took a short course of lessons online about four years ago. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and my playing improved.
My current goals are all aimed at solving what I see as my problems, apart from being healthier and skinnier which I tell myself is tied to the desire to be free of avoidable illness and pain, but is also partly motivated by vanity. I don’t want to be fat and unattractive. Would being a really good guitarist solve any of the things I see as my current problems? Almost certainly not.
So what’s the point? Should I do something because I just feel like doing it? There’s no reason not to, if that thing is not harmful. I could play my guitar just because I feel like it. But if I don’t see any point or benefit in doing anything, or I don’t feel good about it because I’m not making progress, will I even feel like doing it?
What am I even thinking about here? I think it’s motivation and values. I have certain values, based on those values are certain goals, and related to those goals somehow is my motivation. I’m sure that I value motivation.
It helps to know your values. A lot of self help gurus will tell you that. They like to push the idea that knowing your values will automatically unlock your motivation and have you achieving amazing things in no time. I think it’s a little more complicated than that. You might find that you have values which contradict each other. Then you get down to deciding which values take precedence over others.
You have to think things through. Learning to think well is enjoyable. How do you think better? Pay attention to your thoughts, concentrate, and follow through on questions and ideas. It’s very satisfying. It helps you to make decisions.
So far today, I’ve decided that I’m not going to play my guitar right now. There are other things I can do that are more important, and probably more satisfying.
