You Can Often Just Make Yourself Like Things

It's amazing how fun a seemingly boring thing can become once you develop a habit, establish some baseline competence, and get some skin in the game.

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Lots of people think their likes/dislikes are fixed, they have no choice in the matter, but the truth is you can often just make yourself like things.

It’s amazing how fun a seemingly boring thing can become once you develop a habit, establish some baseline competence, and get some skin in the game.

Personally, I’ve always loved working on mathematical models but 10 years ago I thought supporting infra (job scheduling, etc.) was boring AF. Now I get massive dopamine hits from all that infra stuff.

Similar experience with music: someone I’m close to gets interested in some artist, the music initially doesn’t do much for me, but I listen to it anyway and replay songs in my head and talk with them about it and pretty soon I am legitimately enjoying the music.

But it never works if I try to develop some kind of intrinsic interest right off the bat. If the intrinsic interest is not there to begin with, it only begins to emerge after developing a habit, establishing some baseline competence, and getting some skin in the game.

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