Why Does Interest Matter?
This article tries to answer and ask questions that help you understand why you make decisions to partake in things that do not interest you, and not in things that interest you.
Interest is vital in everything we do, every path in life has its burden, but interest just makes it twice as light. I had forgotten why I write, I had forgotten why I put on my Spotify playlist and type sternly. I write to narrate how I overcame my mental challenges in hopes of helping someone going through the same. I thought I had to write what was trending or the latest news, I just had to write what I felt, and what I overcame mentally. Right now, I am figuring out my interests and doing away with things that I have no interest in, which makes life a little bit more enjoyable.
Merriam-Webster dictionary says Interest is a feeling that accompanies special attention to something or someone. Paradoxically, as an aspiring writer, I struggled with finishing books, at first I was ashamed of this fact, not until I picked up a book recently and finished it in two weeks; a great milestone for me. I found out that I had been reading what others were reading and not what I wanted to read, I didn't find it interesting; flipping each page felt hard. I struggled and believed I would never be the writer I thought I’d become, just because I overlooked a simple fact—interest.
When we make decisions, we have The Beginning, when the decisions are made, then The Middle; where we live through the decision, and lastly, The End; where the results/consequences are. We usually regret it at the end of the day when we realize we wasted all our time partaking in things that do not interest us. You look back and wish you had done something different: stayed indoors more with your family rather than hanging out with friends you never really liked, listened to more soul-soothing songs than force-bopping to trap music, furthered your study, prayed more, gone professional in sports, started a business, learned an instrument, I can write an unending list of regrets but I am interested in the questioning “The Middle”.
German psychologist Stumpfin defined interest as a desire to observe, Thorndike considered interest to be a pleasurable feeling that aids learning, Bingham described interest as a tendency to absorb an experience and continue it, and Woodworth described the concept of interest as a motivating force. As scientists try to coin the definition of interest, the prevailing theme is that interest moves you forward, it's a progressive propelling force that makes whatever direction you head seem sure.
As time went on interest was measured in two simple metrics, likes and dislikes. If you liked football more than racing, you are most likely more interested in football than racing. What this means is that you are more likely to endure watching racing than football, because a lack of interest makes everything more burden-like.
Interest shapes our behavior towards activities. While one may be interested in an activity, interest does not guarantee to partake in the activity. I am sure at some point in your life, you saw something and went, “Oh I like that, I'd like to do that..” and then proceeded to not even take one action towards it. For me, it was playing a musical instrument, I loved how hitting the keys on a piano would produce a string of melodies, I loved how each stroke of the guitar’s strings birthed unassuming tunes that travel through my ear borough, leaving me pacified. But, I never put in any form of effort to practice. My point is, that interest is nothing without attention, attention is nothing without action, action is nothing without practice, and so on…. But mostly, it starts from interest, it is what shapes decisions and, consequentially that leads them on their path in life.
George Steele in his article talked about how interest and effort affect decision-making. As I read through, I was left both astonished and enlightened; people needed to learn how to make decisions and be aware of the decisions they make. One would think that important decisions would be deliberated before deciding, but it seems that most of the time we turn off our metacognition—thinking about our thought process and reasoning—and go on autopilot.
John Dewey in How We Think (1933), defined reflective thinking as: “Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in light of the grounds that support it”. Even though you are interested in a particular subject, you will most likely do everything half-measured and quit If you do not reflect upon it (think twice). Because of the lack of preparedness for conflict/problems in your endeavor, it creates doubt in your mind which in turn quenches the fire of interest (no interest—>no attention—>no action).
Dewey explained that reflective thinking is a pause, a chance to hesitate and search for mental resolve that untangles the intricacies of the subject matter. As much as metacognition is important it can not be achieved without interest and effort. Leading with my earlier example, I was already interested in learning a musical instrument but I did not put in any effort to try to learn. The role effort plays is that it helps you recognize your limits. In recognizing your limits, interest propels you to think about ways to overcome your limits and successively, find solutions that allow you to continue your preferred activity. This means that if I had tried to learn, I would have realized how little I knew about musical instruments and my interest would have reinforced my resolve to learn how to play, and then maybe, just maybe, I would have been a master guitarist or pianist. This is what abandoning your interests brews; a lot of maybes and what-ifs. Thus, reflective thinking helps prepare you for the reality that there will be problems, for every roadblock you hit, interest in the subject matter pushes you to find solutions to problems, attention keeps you on the path and action delivers satisfaction.
If this is a feasible solution to most of our problems, why do we choose to go into paths that do not interest us?
I sat and thought, if you take a path that does not interest you, and has no road that leads to what you are interested in, it means a few things:
At some point, you lose the core motivation to pursue your interest
The disillusion of the unattainability of your interest due to various reasons
Getting lost/stuck in the process (the middle)
Your habits are your worst enemy
Fear
Comfortable with certainty.
As we advance in life, we find out that we must sacrifice some of our likes due to our career choice, which is perfectly normal. A real-life example of persevering in an activity that does not interest us is working at a job we have no interest in. There are times we have to tolerate some activities and just see them through. I picked jobs because they are long, they eat a chunk of our lives and ultimately, they give us purpose. It is the reason why most people wake up every morning. At my job, I met a woman who had worked in the banking industry for over 20 years and she told me she wished she left earlier on to do something else that her life felt unfulfilled; financially she was doing better than most, but yet she was not satisfied with the years she put in, even with financial security something was missing.
I asked, “What would you rather be doing?” She looked at me with a smile on her face, head tilted slightly upwards and her eyes shut briefly as if she had disappeared into her wishes, she said, “I always wanted to own a business full-time”. Something so simple, so routine, I’d like to think ignorantly, that it's everyone’s wish to own a business, and rightly so. Yet the very absence of it in her life made her miserable on honest nights. As a way to compensate, she advises every young employee who comes into the bank, to work a maximum of 3 years and leave. I must applaud her for doing her part. It is most obvious that the older you get, the easier it is to advise someone in your shoes, but is it easier for the youth to take it?
Speaking from a youth’s perspective in this current generation, I will say that there is a youth complex that makes us feel like everything needs to be urgent as if there isn't enough time to do anything for ourselves. The internet makes everything feel rushed, it's too much information. Stability is the enemy of the youth, it worked for a small percentage but as time goes on people always say they wish they took more risks. Most people do not change jobs because of stability; the pay is good, I am treated fairly, and I can afford basic amenities. This becomes a trap, if you remember clearly you had interests before this, goals, and dreams but because the path to it is inconvenient/unstable you decide to play it safe and hence the long game of dishing out regret-disguised advice. I acknowledge how hard it is to give up stability for uncertainty, We are logical creatures so of course first instinct is to avoid uncertainty. It's just an instinct, why don't we give it a second thought?
I ask another question, if you had stopped to think about what you want, really think, would you settle for what you are given or go after what you are actually interested in?
I want to know why it's so hard to break out of the middle; getting lost in the process. You were on a rollercoaster to becoming successful, and after a few highs and lows, the first sight of linearity we stop and camp there, years and years go by in our neo-stability and when we are done we say, I wish…maybe…if only…
I was going through Twitter and I stumbled on @jeremygiffon’s tweet he said he believed that there is no such thing as laziness and that most people spend their entire lives working on the wrong thing. Some truths about life feel unfair, but would you say you had no choices?
The second paragraph of the tweet says, “Consider, Andre Agassi who wrote an entire biography about how much he hates tennis and how miserable his life was when he pursued it. It would be fair to call him a 99th-percentile player (a player better than most). Then you can look at Novak Djokovic. A journalist asked him what keeps him motivated as the greatest of all time. He said “I can carry on playing at this level because I like hitting the tennis ball…there are [other players on the tour] who don’t have the right motivation. You don’t need to talk to them. I can see it…”
In summary, Novak Djokovic carries on playing the tennis ball because he enjoys it, and he is interested in what he does. All it took was for him to truly love what he does for him to have an elite mentality. At the end of the day, Andre Agassi claimed that he felt happier after he stopped playing tennis. If Andre Agassi didn't enjoy playing tennis, why didn't he leave to pursue what he loved? Is there a rule that states that if you go too far there is no turning back?
Money is pivotal and life decisions are made based best on where we think we would get more money. But, regret is present in both the poor and the rich so money can not be a determining factor in this case. There was a lot around the conversation but ultimately, it sounded like Andre didn’t know what he wanted when he was young. I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have,” Agassi wrote in his 2009 autobiography Open. I think by diving deeper into the middle, we might find some answers to why people get stuck in the process and refuse to move forward.
Here are some of the reasons why people continue to live lives they do not enjoy:
Financial Circumstance: I am sure you have heard the phrase, “I would rather cry in a Lamborghini than in a taxi.” This is a mirage, it is back-door reverse psychology that is used by sad people to justify their sadness. The words and conditions set in the phrase make it seem that somehow rich people's sadness is different from the lower class’s. Putting it simply might change your perspective, what that phrase says plainly without guises, “Because there are a lot of sad people in the world, I don't have a right to be happy, sadness is everywhere”. People stay in jobs they have no interest in doing because of the financial benefits, but at the end of the day like the banker woman, they are never fulfilled with the lives they lived. But leaving a good paying job to one that you love doing but doesn't pay you as much is hard. It is hard because you have to adjust your lifestyle and needs to live within your new means. So most people would rather just ignore the numb feeling of waking up to a life of no purpose as long as they can cry in a Lamborghini.
Habits: Habits are the underlying force that shapes our lives it has a strong hold over the outcome of our every action. Until I started reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits, I wasn't even aware of the cues in my life. I thought I could not do without a lot of things because I didn't know the triggers for my reaction. Almost every time I ate, I watched a movie, and after that, I would lie down and scroll through my socials (the cue here is eating) and when I pressed my phone the cue for me to move to Twitter was when I was done viewing all my contacts status and after that, I ping pong between socials. As you can observe, we are spiraling down a rabbit hole of existential crisis with a snowball of cause and effect.
Before the illumination of my self-awareness, I would think that these were my hobbies, and I would ask myself why I didn’t have time to study and why I didn’t have time for my online courses, but I do. I had more than enough time than I realized, but because each cue led to satisfying a want that cued in my next desire, and so on and on, I felt I didn't have enough time. James Clear said, “ No behavior happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior”. The point is, that you might feel a genuine interest in an activity, but sadly it might just be a bad habit. Every habit doesn't necessarily have to be good for you. You carry it out anyway. So if the foundation of your habits is rooted in procrastination and negativity, you will get stuck wherever you find yourself, unless you change your habits. You can't keep pouring cold water in a kerosene stove and expect it to boil beans for you—delusional. People persist in lives they have no interest in because they are trapped by their habits, they are bound to repeat their failures.
Fear: I remember fully well the first time I posted a write-up online, people rushed to comment, like, and encourage me. I wrote twice more and had the same reaction. After that, I became comfortable in just writing the exact way that I would get compliments I got comfortable in being stagnant. At first, I didn't see it as fear, I couldn't find it in my emotions. It camouflaged with my ego and sense of worth. It felt like I was clinging on because of the dopaminergic feeling I got each time I was praised. Thankfully, sooner rather than later I found out that I was scared of the unknown; I didn't know how people would react if I wrote something different. The fear behind the curtains pulled my strings to keep me in my comfort zone. Eventually, I wrote something different It didn't resonate so much with my audience but I got some new readers interested in that particular genre. If I didn't step out of my comfort zone I would never improve or get new feedback that would hinder my growth as a creative. Fear plants people and leaves them to wither with so much wasted potential, it is another reason why people stop halfway.
I would like to end by saying that not everyone has the answers, and not everything will go your way but take every opportunity you get to live a life that makes you happy, make memories, and do what makes you satisfied. I said earlier “A lack of interest makes everything more burden-like”. Do not ignore your interests, as trivial as it may seem, interest lifts a certain weight off your shoulders making life just a bit easier, which should never be taken for granted.
You are alive, Live for you. —Emmanuel Esheku