No, the title of this post was not the result of my cat walking on the keyboard. Expressed here for the first time in scientific formula shorthand form, it is a critical problem often encountered by those of us who restore old cars. Translated into English it states "Enthusiasm quotient of the restorer is equal to the Age of the restorer divided by the length of Time the project is taking."
In the case of The Alfatross, if I had finished the project the same year I started it (2013), my Eq would have been a lively 64. Now, four and a half years later, if I finish it by December 31st it will be a feeble 13.6.
What are the signs of flagging Eq? Probably the most common is what psychologists call "Displacement activity", I found this broad definition on the Web:
"If an animal [such as a car guy] is stimulated to express a basic drive [such as bring an old Alfa Romeo back to life] , but the action is frustrated [such as mysterious brake problems holding up progress], the drive may find an outlet by inducing fragments of the pattern of behavior properly belonging to another drive [such as scrubbing the shop floor, cleaning the toaster, tightening the light bulbs, pecking away on his blog, etc.].
. . . or at least I think that's what it means!
So is the Eq=Ar/Tp equation infallible? Not really--too many variables. For example if we take 1969 (the year I acquired The Alfatross) as the starting point of the project and 21 as my Ar at the time, my Eq now in 2018 should be a measly 0.42. I think my Eq feels more like 13.6, so there must be other, as yet unidentified, variables in play--like maybe other projects competing for a proportion of the total amount of E a person can generate. By comparison, Albert Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity in 1905 when he was 26 years old. It didn't quite explain everything, so he spent the rest of his life working on the Theory of Everything. When he died 50 years later in 1955 he was still working on it. Dividing his Ar by his Tp you come up with an Eq of 0.52! I bet he had the shiniest floor, cleanest toaster, tightest lightbulbs--and (if there had been such a thing in 1955) a blog even longer than this one!
Thanks, Albert. I think I've stuck with this one long enough!
In the case of The Alfatross, if I had finished the project the same year I started it (2013), my Eq would have been a lively 64. Now, four and a half years later, if I finish it by December 31st it will be a feeble 13.6.
What are the signs of flagging Eq? Probably the most common is what psychologists call "Displacement activity", I found this broad definition on the Web:
"If an animal [such as a car guy] is stimulated to express a basic drive [such as bring an old Alfa Romeo back to life] , but the action is frustrated [such as mysterious brake problems holding up progress], the drive may find an outlet by inducing fragments of the pattern of behavior properly belonging to another drive [such as scrubbing the shop floor, cleaning the toaster, tightening the light bulbs, pecking away on his blog, etc.].
. . . or at least I think that's what it means!
So is the Eq=Ar/Tp equation infallible? Not really--too many variables. For example if we take 1969 (the year I acquired The Alfatross) as the starting point of the project and 21 as my Ar at the time, my Eq now in 2018 should be a measly 0.42. I think my Eq feels more like 13.6, so there must be other, as yet unidentified, variables in play--like maybe other projects competing for a proportion of the total amount of E a person can generate. By comparison, Albert Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity in 1905 when he was 26 years old. It didn't quite explain everything, so he spent the rest of his life working on the Theory of Everything. When he died 50 years later in 1955 he was still working on it. Dividing his Ar by his Tp you come up with an Eq of 0.52! I bet he had the shiniest floor, cleanest toaster, tightest lightbulbs--and (if there had been such a thing in 1955) a blog even longer than this one!
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| It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. ' |
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