Motivation

[stoutfellow]

One of my besetting sins - and it's a very serious fault in a mathematician - lies in the fact that it is always more enjoyable to hunt for new stuff than to write down old stuff. I can think of three or four might-have-been papers that withered on the vine because I could not motivate myself to write them up - I was too caught up by some new butterfly to chase. If it harmed my career to do this, well, it's my career, innit?

Today, in the shower (naturally), I had an epiphany, in the form of the following words.

I know things about polygons that no one else in the world knows.
It is my duty to share that knowledge.

Framing it that way locks it into some of my foundational moral axioms. There may not be many people who are interested in that knowledge, but there are certainly some, and the only justification for the self-indulgence of the academic life is precisely its sharing.

I mean, what would you think of a painter who locked all of their paintings in the attic and never let anyone else see them? OK, maybe they're bad paintings, but who can tell under those circumstances? For that matter, who can tell what budding artist might find inspiration in the villainous daubs of another?

Time to write.