Apparently I do not like learning
Based on some skimming and summaries I have read on the Unified Learning Model from the 2025 research paper called "A first-principles mathematical model integrates the disparate timescales of human learning" an interesting tidbit I read was on motivation types.
Essentially we have two motivations, being motivated by learning new things and motivated by enhanced performance. The reason why I found this so interesting is because I was led to believe I liked to learn because I was interested in academic subjects. For example, I was incredibly motivated to learn machine learning in high school and college. But when I think back on why it was motivating and interesting, it was the idea of having enough knowledge to push the field forward. When I think about my reasons for getting better at programming, it is not because I so much care for the things I learn about, but I believe what I learn about will help me build interesting things.
[small tangent i really think the arrival of ai and code gen tools is horribly timed for my skill development and i really wish i was able to build my new grad skills when ai was not around so i would have to learn these rote skills]
So, the conditions to keep my motivations up whilst keeping the task difficulty at the edge of my skill level, sort of requires domain knowledge and research before embarking because I need to develop a way to measure performance. In certain cases, the performance measure is simple, like lifting weights -> lift heavier and more reps. However, in knowledge building it is not always so simple, this topic needs more fleshing out, but it requires more knowledge about places to compete against others or measure competency.
I think the next step is to develop a framework to find a performance measurement for any task and make it the motivator while trying to learn or develop a skill.