I'm feeling frustrated because I know my next hyperfocus topic or project might be abandoned suddenly. Need your sympathy and support.
I'm feeling frustrated because I know my next hyperfocus topic or project might be abandoned suddenly. Need your sympathy and support.
So I got into organic farming. I bought an expensive earth cutter and actually got to rent a farming plot - about 100 m2. All that was last year. I still have that farming plot but to keep it, I have to keep paying for it as well as actually be there and care for crops. I still want to do it but I just can't bring myself to do it? And WTF do I do with the earth cutter? I live in a flat in the city ROFL
I also recently got into game development. I actually dove right into the basics and actually began writing code and functions that work for game prototypes. As in not only did I first follow tutorials, but I made my own shit by just looking up documentation. I still want to do it, but... IDK, I just need a hook to go back but I just won't? And it saddens me, I really want to continue on some ideas I have but its too much.
GAAAH.
And I have a carpenter's work bench coming soon and all these projects I want to do. But WTF will I do.
Pick cheaper interests is my only advice lol. If you have to purchase something for a new hobby and it’s over X amount, don’t allow yourself to buy it. My latest hobby is lock picking. Not expensive and I don’t feel guilty picking it up and randomly doing it every few days or so.
Also, get off of social media. The constant scrolling and mental bombardment of other people’s interests mixed with ads for things, is what keeps these kinds of obsessions going. Your brain basically gets overwhelmed with information and never actually slows down to enjoy and sink into anything. I’ve since deleted all social media, and started doing yoga every morning and night to calm my mind, and I find these constant brain overloads have reduced considerably.
welcome to my hell of almost 50 years
I’ve reframed it as less hell and more it is what it is.
I’ve decided I have no control over what’ll I’ll be interested in in the future and so I just go with the flow.
If I frame things as I must keep doing this to justify the purchase that’s a recipe for disaster. But if I frame it as I’m all about the journey then it not an issue to stop doing something and I might come back to it later.
Plus as someone who spent so long self medicating with drugs, I’ve spent more money than I care to think about on less constructive hobbies.
For those interested my latest hobby is rock climbing, although I tore a tendon and not been in almost a month so hope I still have the bug after physio. I’m back into Factorio too and want to start camping in the warmer weather.
Have you ever completed a personal project?
I don't have an answer for you, but I do have some sympathy. I know the struggle of never being able to stick with a hyperfocus exactly and it fucking sucks. If I was able to maintain interest in something for more than a month or whatever I'd be so much happier, and maybe also actually decent at something.
Thank you for your support.
What are some things that still stuck with you? Anything you came back to or that you held for a longer time that you enjoy doing?
I don't think anything has actually stuck with me. That's the whole problem really. I've maintained interest for various lengths of time but once I drop something it's so hard to pick the interest up again. Off the top of my head I can't think of a single example of being able to return to a previous hyperfocus and achieve the same level of obsession as when I was initially hyperfocused on it.
The one thing I've learned in terms of maintaining focus though is to never "look away". Don't tempt your attention with other things, and keep doing the thing every single day. If I go two days or more without engaging in it I risk dropping it, that's the extent of my attention span I guess. If I'm not keeping it constantly in my forebrain I lose interest so quickly. So I guess that's some advice? Not that I've managed to follow it myself, mind.
I rotate my hyperfixations so I keep coming back to them and try to relegate them to academic learning when they are impractical. I hope this helps and maybe try to combine common interests to build on each other?
I got a (old) sailing boat a few years back. At least I wasn't completely alone in that business, but the others weren't exactly the most responsible people either. We sold the boat after a year, and I feel that I dodged a bullet by a narrow margin. I have only some experience sailing and couldn't go by myself, also winter storage and things related to that are quite the hassle and it seemed that it would end up being my responsibility to sort those, among other things, out in the future.
Now I've got a motorbike and like with that boat I was at first very interested in learning stuff related to it, maintenance and everything, but it seems that I always need someone else to inspire me to keep going. Now I have to rely on my partner to take initiative. I'm totally happy fixing it and enjoy riding a lot, but can't f*cking do it alone and that annoys me so much. I feel like a failure for not being able to "follow my dreams" without someone holding my hand. I'd like to get a van to build it into a small place for myself, but I know I couldn't go anywhere by myself.
Now that I've realised this novelty-seeking tendency I try to not get too excited about new things (or at least make any investments) before I'm sure the inspiration will last. But then again I need something to be excited about to keep going. But to keep excitement going I need someone to share it with.
Maybe we need to collectively buy an island and establish a neurospice nation where we could arrange work and stuff so that there's enough rotation to keep things interesting and allow people to hyperfocus on those things that they enjoy but let them swap when needed XD
I mean, there's a whole host of reasons we should get an island, and make our own country while we're at it, so I'm totally on board.
I completely understand what you mean!
Personally, I believe that having an enthusiastic project partner or someone to share hobbies and routines with would greatly motivate me to pursue my interests more actively. While I do have a partner, she is quite content with her current lifestyle and doesn't share the same enthusiasm for exploring new activities. She enjoys her role as a parent to our child, which I also cherish, but I often find myself wanting to engage in various activities that she isn't as interested in.
One strength of having a partner like her is that she keeps me grounded and helps me stay balanced, reminding me of how people with more normative lifestyles approach things, which can be different from my more eccentric and active tendencies.
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I am all in on making that Island dream come through lol!
I've had (and still do sometimes) have this issue. I've been flexing my impulse control skills for a few months in not buying an enterprise grade server for my home. The advice that helped me was to step into the hobby slowly.
Get a middle range setup (I. E don't rent a farm, go volunteer at a community farm instead) for a while and only upgrade once I'm more invested and learning the limitations of my setup (example for you: I've volunteered at this farm all year and love waking up to do it consistently, Maybe I can rent my own to have more control over the crops).
This way if my hyperfocus moves elsewhere I'm not overly invested.
I've got over a decade of projects over various hobbies. None of them have been completed.
C'est la vie. You aren't alone in this, if that helps.
Don't get into keyboards, I have multiple keyboards, most expensive one I spent $300 to build, the one I am using now is $150, and I have a few others in that price range, and one that is half built
I almost picked up a $60 keyboard impulse buy for my wife today. Then I thought that she is using the $300 one, but she wishes the key caps were pink, maybe $60 is reasonable just for the key caps? No stop it
Similar things like fighting sticks, I don't want to talk about it
For paid hobbies, 3d printing isn't that awful, as long as you learn 3d modeling while your at it. It's a bit of a cost, after that the consumables isn't horrible, and I can leave it for a while and come back a few times per year, and it can mix with other hobbies.
I enjoy programming! It's free, and I can hyper focus on a programming project, and if I move on I can move on to another programming project.
I usually try to get at least a few YouTube videos in before going to bed after programming. Because if I hyper focus on programming and then go to bed, I will wake up in the middle of the night with a solution to a problem I had. While that is great fun, I have enough issues getting enough sleep as it is, don't need to wake up at 3AM and having to get over to the computer to write down an algorithm or something, then test it, then post about it online because I am so happy and proud and can't get back to sleep
My brother will get into expensive stuff, and then he can't finish what he starts, and his hp proliant server is still collecting dust in his spare bedroom.
My father would have projects that he needed to take up additional mortgages for, like buying a fish selling truck (why not ice cream ffs), or a boat, or shit. Or buying farming equipment even though he has a lawn sized lawn and not a field sized lawn, or a boat or shit.