When I was between the ages of 11-14, I remember being pretty intensely curious about lots of stuff. I learned a bunch of programming and took online courses on special relativity, songwriting, computer science, and lots of other things. I liked thinking about maths puzzles that were a bit too difficult for me to solve. I had weird and wild takes on things I learned in history class that I wanted to share with others. I liked looking at ants and doing experiments on their behaviour.
And then I started to feel like all my learning and doing had to be directed at particular goals and this sapped my motivation and curiosity. I am regaining some of it back but it does feel like my ability to think in interesting and fun directions has been damaged. It’s not just the feeling of “I have to be productive” that was very bad for me but also other things like wanting to have legible achievements that I could talk about (trying to learn more maths topics off a checklist instead of exploring and having fun with the maths I wanted to think about) and some anxiety around not knowing or being able to do the same things as others (not trying my hand at thinking about puzzles/questions I think I’ll fail at and instead trying to learn “important” things I felt bored/frustrated by because I wanted to feel more secure about my knowledge/intelligence when around others who knew lots of things).
In my early attempts to fix this, I tried to force playful thinking and this frame made things worse. Because like you said my mind already wants to play. I just have to notice and let it do that freely without judgment.
This was a somewhat emotional read for me.
When I was between the ages of 11-14, I remember being pretty intensely curious about lots of stuff. I learned a bunch of programming and took online courses on special relativity, songwriting, computer science, and lots of other things. I liked thinking about maths puzzles that were a bit too difficult for me to solve. I had weird and wild takes on things I learned in history class that I wanted to share with others. I liked looking at ants and doing experiments on their behaviour.
And then I started to feel like all my learning and doing had to be directed at particular goals and this sapped my motivation and curiosity. I am regaining some of it back but it does feel like my ability to think in interesting and fun directions has been damaged. It’s not just the feeling of “I have to be productive” that was very bad for me but also other things like wanting to have legible achievements that I could talk about (trying to learn more maths topics off a checklist instead of exploring and having fun with the maths I wanted to think about) and some anxiety around not knowing or being able to do the same things as others (not trying my hand at thinking about puzzles/questions I think I’ll fail at and instead trying to learn “important” things I felt bored/frustrated by because I wanted to feel more secure about my knowledge/intelligence when around others who knew lots of things).
In my early attempts to fix this, I tried to force playful thinking and this frame made things worse. Because like you said my mind already wants to play. I just have to notice and let it do that freely without judgment.
<3