/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

Here's one way of framing motivation - Most things I've read on cognitive science seem to agree on the fact that "you", your conscious self, is only one of many parts of your brain, and not even completely 'in charge'. You're receiving signals from different parts, sometimes competing with one another, sometimes very demanding signals that are quite difficult to override. The older and more instinctive they are, usually the 'dumber' they are, but also the more efficient. Much of your brain is doing things in the background you're not even conscious of.
In many cases, these parts of your brain cannot be outright forced, or at the very least it's MUCH less easy than it sounds. Imagine them like other personalities, colleagues of yours who will push back when you get pushy, or drag their feet when you're too demanding, or ignore you entirely because you're a nuisance. They need to be more subtly influenced, and negotiated with. You need to understand that some parts of your brain DON'T CARE about your aspirations, they just know that sugar is good, that you need to reproduce, that there might be a lion outside your door so you need to be careful. You need to make deals with yourself, you need to be able to make things 'good' for various parts of you, not just the conscious you, and you need to be able to understand, negotiate with and leverage these parts of your brain to create new habits and behaviors that align with your goals. It sounds weird to say that you need to interact with yourself, but it makes sense when you conclude that you have competing parts of your brain with different, sometimes contradictory, goals.
While "just do it" is good advice, saying it to someone with a chronic motivation problem is like telling them "just put the pedal to the metal" when they ask how to drive. Maybe they need to fill their tank, or maybe their engine isn't working, maybe they don't know the rules of the road. These things need to be addressed as well.

Good habits are the mother of all mindset changes.

Good habits are generally formed gradually, bit by bit.

Creating a system for habit creation has been useful for me. The psychology of 'gamifying' things is pretty interesting and personally I respond well to it. This might sound autistic because it is a bit, but I created a system for myself that generally motivates me pretty well: I have a spreadsheet that's kind of like a journal - basically I try to quantify things into 'points' - 1 hour of art is a point, so is reading 25 pages of a book, waking up early instead of sleeping in, 30 minutes spent learning a new language, etc. You can make it whatever you want and weigh points according to your priorities. I give myself bonus for doing things 5 days in a row. I also set quantifiable weekly/monthly goals (so "practice anatomy" is a bad goal but "do 20 anatomy studies" is quantified) and write them on this sheet, meeting them gets me 5 / 10 points respectively. I review how I did at the end of every month and then start again.

You can use your points to offer extrinsic rewards (like buying yourself something nice) or you might just find it intrinsically rewarding to do really well and rack up a lot.

The main value I see in having this is that I can look at a concise summary of all my priorities and quickly see how well I've been doing lately. It's easy to sort of not pay attention to your shortcomings when you don't need to confront them. It also just kind of feels good, it's like having a checklist and it's satisfying to check boxes off. It used to be if I had a few shitty, unmotivated days in a row it'd just compound on itself and I'd feel useless, but now when I see those failed days staring me in the face it motivates me to 'make up' for them.

>>2726958

Why not just say 'sternum to ankle'?

Another Canadafag reporting in, also Ontario.

Have you tried reflecting on what you're doing and changing something about your approach to art to see if you improve faster?

When did you start?

Is this just another excuse for a feels thread?