Internal motivation feels a little like fascination.
I do a lot of things that nobody will notice, that give me nothing, because there's an element of experimentation to it. To use the cooking analogy, it's like trying to replace butter in a recipe with margarine, making a french omelet as soft as possible, or pulling a perfect espresso.
I wouldn't say these things are enjoyable in themselves, but they scratch a curiosity.
One trick is to have different steps to try to follow. For example, I was very motivated to do a startup, because there were step by step instructions on what to do, and doing these steps consistently would result in becoming a billionaire.
It's an absurd idea and it didn't work, but it went much, much further than I expected, and it was fascinating to see how far it could go. Same with blackjack/poker - it's grindy and repetitive, but it's motivating to see whether the theory checks out.
Having an defined approach or steps to follow is a thing that actually demotivates me. I think it's why I don't cook a lot even though I can. I could follow defined steps and get an expected outcome but I'm just not motivated to do that.
I got disinterested in chess when knowing that all the best players have most moves memorized.
Then you were motivated by curiosity, which is great, but what if you weren't curious about the perfect espresso and knew that nobody would drink it. In this case, why make an espresso? You'd probably prefer to spend your time doing something else, right?
I do a lot of things that nobody will notice, that give me nothing, because there's an element of experimentation to it. To use the cooking analogy, it's like trying to replace butter in a recipe with margarine, making a french omelet as soft as possible, or pulling a perfect espresso.
I wouldn't say these things are enjoyable in themselves, but they scratch a curiosity.
One trick is to have different steps to try to follow. For example, I was very motivated to do a startup, because there were step by step instructions on what to do, and doing these steps consistently would result in becoming a billionaire.
It's an absurd idea and it didn't work, but it went much, much further than I expected, and it was fascinating to see how far it could go. Same with blackjack/poker - it's grindy and repetitive, but it's motivating to see whether the theory checks out.