I’ve been reading lately.

And one of the books I read actually changed my perspective on things to a degree I didn’t quite anticipate.  Although, in the same way, it didn’t change anything, because somewhere deep down I think I knew this all along.

The book was called “The Upside of Irrationality”, by Dan Ariely.  (You can buy it here.)  It’s actually his second book on the subject, but I didn’t read the first so I’m not going to talk about it.  I’m sure it’s fine too.

I strongly encourage you to purchase it for your iDevice, but for the sake of time, the gist is this: people are batshit crazy.  If you want the slightly-longer explanation, you can find it here.

But they’re batshit crazy in remarkably specific ways — and these ways are testable and reproducible in a laboratory setting (which Ariely does, in detail, over and over and over).

The bizarre-ity I found most interesting — and was most applicable to me, in my current situation — was regarding the nature of motivation.  The rational explanation for this is either a) people are always unmotivated and work because they have to, or b) people are motivated by doing things they like.

But right now, I’m having one hell of a time staying motivated to do anything.  Even writing, which is something I like doing immensely.  This is probably why I started blogging again — I need to get used to sitting down and typing on a computer again.

Ariely pinpoints why I suspect focus is such a problem for me, and a problem for countless other screenwriters languishing away in obscurity — at this stage in my career, everything I’m doing is essentially “practice”.  (This relates to another article I’ve read that I also agree with).

I’m writing for me, and me alone, because nothing is coming from it right now except the occasional pat on the back from friends and girlfriend.  And honestly, that’s making it hard to trudge through.

One of the most interesting studies in “Irrationality” was one done with Legos.  Ariely posted ads having people come in to get paid for assembling Legos.  He paid them $2 for the first one, and less and less for each successive Lego kit after the first (lowering their incentive to continue).  They could stop whenever they wanted.

Since Ariely is a real-life scientist, the experiment had two groups.

1) The control group built the Legos, handed them to the experimenter, and then experimenter put it in a box and handed the subject a new set and asked if he would like to continue.

2) The experimental group did exactly the same thing — except after they handed their finished Lego, the experimenter would disassemble it right in front of them while they were building their next one.

The results?  The control group built an average of three-and-a-half more Lego thingies than the experimental group.

So what does that mean?

That means that acknowledgement of effort penetrates pretty deeply into the human psyche, even at petty, stupid, Lego-building levels.  It’s human nature to want the work we do to be appreciated, not belittled or ignored.

The solution, then, is to look for little snippets of acknowledgement in the things that you do.  For writing, I suppose my subconscious solution was to re-start my blog.  Of course, nobody’s reading this thing, but since it’s just sitting there on the internet, I at least feel like someone could.

I posted pieces of my work on the internet too, for the same reason — it gives me hope that maybe someone’s looking at it.

And as for my other writing?  My career-based writing?  I’m planning on making calls to all my friends who’ve read my work and have them lavish me with praise whenever I’m bummed out about this.

Maybe they can leave it on my voicemail.  Then I can listen to it whenever I want.  That’d be pretty cool.

Are you guys listening to this?  Hello?