Interests as Orbits

I watched a video recently about (mislabeled) laziness and how some people aren’t built for the “consistent and organized” lifestyle. I find this subject really interesting because I have noticed the effects of consistency and know how powerful they can be. But at the same time, I have also noticed my motivations and interests ebb and flow. It’s one of those situations where I know I should do something, but I’ll let it stew in the back of my mind until it bubbles to the front. I never thought this approach was inherently bad. It could be better, but it always worked itself out eventually.

Anyway, the narrator in the video explains a very similar concept in which she doesn’t do something because it doesn’t interest her, then she becomes (very) interested and hyper-focuses on the subject, advancing very quickly. This made me reflect on my own project habits, and I think I follow a similar but less intense style. For me, I’m always absorbing meta-information about things that exist and pique my interest. I’ve gradually built up a collection of subjects I know interest me, but instead of pursuing consistently or intensely, I find my progression to be orbital.

Let me explain.

It’s sort of like planets orbiting a star. I’m the star (of course) and my interests are the planets. The closer the planet is in its orbit of the star, the more interested I am in it. What I mean is that my immediate focus on a particular interest is periodic. Sometimes I will work on a project for a few months, shelf it for a year, then pick it up again. “Planets” in this analogy can have different orbital periods, elliptic shapes, and can even fall out of orbit as well.

In this weird analogy I made up, “consistent and organized” people would have perfectly circular orbital interests, “short burst of high intensity” people would have highly elliptic orbits (slingshots?), and I think I fall somewhere in between. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it visualizes the experience of ebb and flow I have witnessed in my own life. It also does a decent job of capturing the feeling of security that even if I’m not focusing on something right now, I eventually will.