The ideas in this post are strongly inspired by ideas from the study of mimetic desire (Rene Girard), Venkatesh Rao's post linked here, as well as James Carse's Finite and Infinite Games, which is referenced in Rao's original post. Outside of that, they're just a distillation of the ideas that I've formulated as a result of consuming those and other relevant pieces of literature.
Recently, I noticed that I've often been a victim of constantly starting new projects that I make instead of continuing ones that I already have going on. As a result of this, I've struggled with going deeply into specific topics, especially ones that I considered difficult or that required a lot of energy expense. But why is it that this idea of consistency is so expensive to me?
Background: what is a finite game and what is an infinite game?
A finite game is a game that is played for the purpose of ending the game (hence why it's "finite"). More specifically, there are specific metrics within the game that allow direct comparison between you and other players within the game, and it is these metrics that then cause you to want to improve your skills within the game for the purpose of being able to increase your win probability as high as possible.
An infinite game, on the other hand, is a game played for the purpose of staying in the game and continuation of the game. It is the exact opposite of a finite game quite literally in that players in a finite game want to end it or make the game obsolete because they are guaranteed to win every time, while players of an infinite game want to keep the game going as much as possible.
Why is life, by definition an infinite game?
From these two definitions, life as a whole can clearly be qualified as an infinite game. The vast majority of people living their lives want to maintain their ability to continue living, and hopefully to take the next step to something that's more fulfilling to them. In other words: the goal of life is to continue living life.
Reconciling goals and optimisation
Treating life as an infinite game makes it a little bit easier to understand that it isn't always necessary to sprint at 100% for anything, and that itbecause will never be possible to "finish" the game of life completely to the point of satisfaction, maintaining a more minimalist perspective can be more powerful. However, this also opens up the door to aspirational fatalism: why set goals and aspirations at all if you can just do the bare minimum to keep playing the game? More generally, especially in the arena of external pressures and societally constructed value metrics (whether tangible like money/relationships/time or intangible like fulfillment or productivity), how does one reconcile the many, clearly finite "minigames" that are brought about by someone's goals with the general idea of the infinite game?
The answer that I like to think of is more of a "gamescape". Specifically, life as a whole is a large, continuous, and infinite game space, much like a sandbox where you are free to explore however you want and make whatever decisions you please within the boundaries of the game's rules. However, within this sandbox, there are a set of visible waypoints to you on the map where, upon interacting either with other players, non-player characters, etc. you get thrust into a finite "minigame". This minigame usually provides you rewards in terms of resources/items that allow you to play the infinite game for longer somehow (think boxes or blocks in floor is lava, or 1UPs in Mario). You can choose to leave this minigame with your winnings (or losings) at any point in time, and obviously you keep the intangible experiences and learnings from having interacted with this minigame.
Finding incentives in life
So given this framing of life as a game, it follows that there should be some sort of incentive design, i.e. in any good game, there exists a strong set of incentives well-designed to keep you within the bounds of the game. For people, I would liken this to motivation. It is generally accepted that there are two main types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Intrinsic motivators spawn purely from your own internal desires; they are something that you want for yourself, and even in a vacuum without social pressures, you would still feel the same about them. Extrinsic motivators are the opposite: they spawn from some sort of social pressure or construct, external motivation, or, more generally, some model that you seek to emulate.
One interesting claim that arises from this is essentially the idea that people within the game are constantly designing and modifying their own incentives based on their life experiences or, more specifically, based on their models; this is where the underlying behaviour of mimetic desire fits into the picture.
Mimetic theory, in essence, dictates that all of your desires are based on some sort of external model that you seek to become or emulate. As a result of this desired model, your desires and motivations then shift intrinsically and often subconsciously to mimic your model, whether or not you are outwardly willing to display this.
The important part of mimetic desire here is the idea that these external models serve as extremely strong forces that can impact your incentives' momentum/inertia. In other words, as you meet and talk to more interesting people, if you don't already have strong inertia in a particular direction, you're more liable to fall victim to a bad form of mimesis that removes you from the trajectory you were on and knocks you onto another, separate trajectory filled with desires that may not actually be yours.
Identity in the "critical path"
It seems, then, that the answer to the question of consistency that I've asked at the very beginning can very nearly be reduced to the idea of "identity"; that is, in order to maintain steady progress, one must be operating in a "groove" that provides guardrails as to the productive inertia and energy that one is able to output. This groove becomes a lot easier to maintain if the thing you're doing is interesting, or valuable to you, or somehow otherwise close to your identity. And as a result of this, operating on tasks that are either close to your existing identity or are something that your existing identity cares about a lot and wants to bring into the fold (i.e. operating outside of your comfort zone) seems to be the best way to stay on your "critical path" and not easily get knocked off course.
I am the rock against which the surf crashes. Nothing can break me.
Appendix: goal-setting
A direct extension of the idea of an identity-based critical path is that all of your goals should spawn somehow from your identity. Though this is a reductionist way to view human goals and aspirations, which are often both emotional and externally influenced, it is helpful to use this more psychological view of goalsetting (as opposed to traditional purely productivity-based paradigms) in my opinion because this allows you to set goals that are more easily achievable through effective energy distribution (they're close to your identity, so you don't need to spend a lot of time "disciplining" yourself to do these things --> easy completion --> more energy --> more expansible goal space available --> etc. loop).