Published on 12, July, 2020
Anyone else have a series of obsessions that seem to come and go in rotation?
When I get into a hobby, I throw myself into it fully and pursue it with passion whilst I'm learning at a decent rate. Then when the learning slows down because of the plateau that inevitably comes, I lose interest and move on to something else, often an old hobby.
Because I value efficiency, I'll often sell all of the hobby equipment - sometimes regretting it shortly afterwards.
I've been through astronomy, photography, shortwave radio, ham radio, electronics, hifi, religion, piano playing, guitar playing, motorcycling, advanced motorcycling (to the point where I was qualified to teach this). On the odd occasion that I find myself without a passion I get into a hell of a mess with addictive behaviours too.
Yep, love research, learning, and gadgets - then get bored as soon as I master something and move on. It's loads of fun but a pain for developing specialism/career etc. I finished a PhD but move across sectors and disciplines, enjoy problem-solving and research and make a living from it but it's a choppy and stressful process. Wish I could figure out how to sell researching and solving problems to make a living from it without having to deal with 'teams' and getting bored :D
Hi Extraneous, I can relate to moving around; I haven't moved between companies but I have moved across Engineering, Business Development, Product Management, Process Improvement etc. Like you I get bored so easily and much prefer starting on new stuff and making sense of it, but am tired and looking forward to retirement as soon as I possibly can (but it will be 10 years still, I think).
Hello mirror. I started a PhD but didn't finish due to family pressure of the "you need to get a proper job" sort, even though I was working 4 days a week.
I suspect, as I think a reasonable number of us have, that you've reached the point where you don't generally need an awful lot from other people in order to learn something, and can pretty much teach yourself most things you want to learn. My experience has been that isn't necessarily helpful for work because most workplaces insist they need people who claim to have particular skills. My experience is that it usually doesn't take me more than a couple of months to exceed most people who claim to have have particular skills. There have been exceptions, but those have been relatively rare.
I love researching stuff and learning. I'm less into gadgets and technology these days because most "in-stuff" isn't really that innovative in the scheme of things.
I've decided to try and narrow my interests into one area and then work out how to make money from that. The interest I've chosen has a very large scope, so I'm not going to run out of new things any time soon, plus it's something that a large proportion of the population aren't very skilled in.