Insert something else instead of learning guitar - running, painting, writing, photography, designing, dancing - whatever it is that is your passion. Can you see this happening to you?

I call this The Curious Case of Receding Interest. You pick a thing you think you like and want to become better at. Over a course of time, you find it tougher to maintain the level of enthusiasm with which you started it. You invest less time. After an accumulated lack of effort, you give up and move on to the next shiny thing.

Most of us are susceptible to an attack of this syndrome. I learnt this the hard way while writing this post. Two months have passed since I started working on it. Here's what happened:

Sitting 1: A light bulb switched on shining light on this idea in my head. I scribbled down the thoughts and the basic structure. This gave me instant gratification of creating something. And, instead of finishing the post, I moved onto something else.

Sitting 2: The drudgery began. Now that I had the idea written down, it was a lot less fun to do the hard work of completion. So after writing a little, I opened Facebook and whiled away my time.

Sitting 3: I had some free time on my hands. But, I decided to clean up the house a little bit. And then wrote during whatever little time I had.

Sitting 4: Wrote some. It was becoming and arduous task to finish this. So, I opened a few football videos and watched those.

Sitting 5: I got frustrated with my indiscipline. Thus, I sat down with a pledge to not get up before finishing this. I made decent progress but still couldn't make it into a finished product.

Sitting 6: Today, after 2 months since the beginning of the post, I sit again hoping to finish this.

Can we find a cause and solution to this problem? Let’s investigate. The irony of being the victim as well as the healer isn’t lost on me. But, let’s give it a shot.