The Fleetingness of Motivation

The meaning of life is this:

"That everyone has a purpose"

Excellent post. I implemented a new system for planning tasks and tracking progress in them, worked wonders for a fortnight, haven't used it since. This was in October '10. It made no sense to me for a while, then I read about your aiming for 70% thing and it seems a bit clearer: I tried to organise my whole life into a list which wasn't practical.

Now the system has been adapted and seems to be working better (though even saying that last week was completely duff in some respects!)

...I did not seek to blind anyone. I have a background in philosophy, which is why I am familiar with the concepts of internalists and consequentialists. Talking about them is what I do almost every day, so it is ingrained in me, and I am sorry if it seemed to indicate something else. I suppose for me talking in those terms is like talking in religious terms for those who pursue religion. I also did not try to offend you, or anything of the kind. If it seemed like that, I apologize. I think it is impossible to prove or disprove God, so I do not want to base too much on the existence, that's all. I think the discussion is going a little far, so, yeah. Let's stop for now, if you are okay with that.

I appreciate you putting forward your view point so eloquently. But I hope the rhetoric is not blinding anyone. The example I quoted about vengeance, was a little harsh, but the mere intention was to underline the NATURAL tendency in human to recognize the right & wrong irrespective of some life-framework being suggested/put forward (not by a mere mortal in this case).
You would also agree with the human tendency to decipher & recognize the feeling of affection & tenderness by one person from another to some degree. I would say they are more external than internal. True, the expert wickeder y may be a little hard to gauge from the more practicing masters. But then again I would argue & to my understanding there is a decent framework proposed by the Master creator himself to ward that thing off. This also reminds me a quote by Sebastian (or someone else) that the "Biggest trick that Devil pulled was to make humans believe that he doesn't exist". But the way we formulate our opinions from our peers, surroundings & text read we must be mindful of the the slice of badness/wickeder y that is being sandwiched & put forward to mostly palpable minds of simple, who tend to adopt without realization & in the process be part of the ripple process that was originally intended. You can easily see the phenomenon in the history & the present. May also be termed as boulder effect.
Romance of mysticism devoid of logical & rational pursuits. Desires of materials being injected onto the naive minds. Don't want to sound like hippies :) but they do have a bit of point. Jevon's paradox may be true after all if we analyze the drive / desire to grow/develop. Don't get me wrong I'm no Amish (to some extent those brother are right), I'm not against development/growth. I just feel the more thought ought to be put in the pursuit which is being undertaken. I hope that link that I pasted in the last comment of mine, appeals to your sense of rationale (Don't be offended by my innuendo if you don't agree. ) This response is getting to long for my simpleton mind to keep on trying to be articulate in my thoughts/response.
Remember "Belief is not by having seen the black & white proof, I feel its by reaching a logical conclusion by seeing the rational & overwhelming signs."
Cheers & be good.

Concerning good/bad:
Your view is internalist - you explained that position well – it’s about intentions, things on the inside. But there is also consequentialism, whose supporters don’t care about intentions, but about the consequences. They define an action to be good when the consequences are good. Utilitarianism would be an example of that.
The problem I have with your definition is that it is only valid within the internalist viewpoint, but others may beg to differ.
It is about perspective indeed, as you’ve said. That way the definition of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is contingent, though, which is precisely why I’m wary of the terms. I thought externally given meaning (such as by a God) is supposed to be necessary (in the sense that there is specific content that's a specific way and cannot be another way). But 'good' and 'bad' mean such different things depending on the perspective, so how can they mean something but the meaning one gives oneself? And if that's the case, why do we need the terms? Why do we have to say they constitute meaning, if in truth we do?

Thanks for your thoughts =)

Intentions are the source of determining the deed's goodness or badness. E.g; A person planting a peg in the ground in front of, say , a restaurant with intention of helping people tie up their horses while they are busy. On the other hand a person removing that peg with an intention that someone might stumble/fall off due to that peg. Both of them has good intentions & view each other a being bad in intention but then there are other principles to resolve this possible argument.
You avenging the someone hurting ur child can be understood by some but misunderstood by others. Its about the perspective. But then there are principles which resolve this as well Im not gonna get into those here.

".. Hmm, and the court of justice thing only works for believers of that sort of thing.... "
You closed the argument then & there. As you seem to have dismissed the opposition's views. So we cannot discuss this any further. It seems pointless no matter how much proofs I present you. I am reluctant to get into a religious discussion as it may also invite flame. A Godly text (if it is Godly at all) cannot be refuted, as scientific data itself vindicates the text as authentic. But deducing/basing your opinion on a adulterated text, touted as Godly text, is just not smart.
Im pasting a link which makes an interesting scientific reading to a NON-believer of that sort of things ;)
http://www.islam101.com/tauheed/provingGodExists.htm

Cheers & bee good (double ;) )

@Xman,
I think the 'good' and 'bad' would require definition. What do you think is good or bad? There are things like murder and helping others, of course, but there's way more to life than pretty clear-cut things like that. Usually there are more shades of gray, and I dare say a lot of times only referring to 'good' or 'bad' really narrows ones' view of life and the world. I'm very skeptical about those terms, because they often are only stand-ins that distract from what it's really about.
Hmm, and the court of justice thing only works for believers of that sort of thing. I don't worry so much about some final court where I'm judged, and it surely does not give me any sense of meaning. What you seem to mean in that respect is the 'external meaning' Sebastian spoke of. I suppose I'm with him concerning point - one has to define the meaning one wants to have on ones' own.

1-Meaning of life ? Simple. We are meant to be witness to our good & bad deeds. So that when we are tried in the court of justice we should have no objections to the ultimate verdict.
Remember we have been given the choice i.e. do good or do bad. Its all about the choice. How we choose . And yeah don't confuse bad with wrong. Wrongs/mistakes can be forgiven.
My acquired 2 cents ;)

Hey

I just got started on solidly doing time tracking after failing a few times before.

First trick: Keep it simple at first even if you don't plan to keep it simple long. It was only a couple days before I was able to make some serious upgrades, and now my tracker is pretty sizable.

Second trick: Make the process as easy as possible. I wrote a program that takes care of creating templates, archiving, and dating for me. All I have to do is hit my shortcut keys and up pops my tracker. This means that the activation energy of motivation required is next to nothing. If I even feel the slightest whim about possibly tracking my time, the tracker is practically open already. I will gladly spill the code if you want it, but its written in bash for my linux machine so it may be less than helpful.

Third trick: What I said about activation energy earlier is really a big deal for me. For myself, motivation is usually pretty easy, except for that first nudge. If I can drag myself up to starting a task, I find that hours often go by before I realize how long I have spent on something. Coincidently, thats how I just wrote this long comment.

For me, motivation consists of finding a way to set things up so that I can sort of accidentally accomplish things. I know that motivation is fleeting, but so is lack of motivation. You never know when you might get the sudden urge to work on your major project so you might as well just leave it on your desk. Who cares if it gets in your way while your trying to do something less productive.

Rusty

P.S. Sebastian, thanks for the help getting me started. I was planning on sending you an email letting you know how it progressed, but now you know.