Short Notes on Self-Sustaining Subject Interest
One of the things I note daily is [how interested am I in X], where X can be a variety of subjects.
Recently, a curious pattern emerged on one of them – my interest in Touhou sunk really significantly for a while. The above ticks show 7 day averages computed daily.
What accounts for the fall? The answer for that one ended up being pretty clear – I stopped listening to Touhou music for a while when I got into Ghost Club and Deltarune. It turns out that frequently listening to Touhou music had a self-sustaining effect on my interest in the series, and the spike on the right hand corresponded to when I started listening to Touhou again.
Outside of music, one other activity that seems to have a strong effect on my interest curve seems to be the frequency of community participation related to the interest. For example, art meetups tend to temporarily but strongly boost my interest in art, and Japanese meetup does the same for motivations to study Japanese.
It's important to note that this doesn't seem to always happen though. For example, hearing a lot about hacking doesn't seen to boost my interest in that subject much.
Combined together, I think these observations suggest that environment plays a surprisingly strong role in interest – at least it seems so in at least a few areas for me.
— Categorized Under: #psychology, #hobbies, #data