Deep interest is a technique that really stands out for building activity habits. It stems from the realisation that interest is not a quality, but an action.
This topic has been best described by a user named Flemming Funch on Quora.
Question:
How do you make an interest in a subject that you dislike or have no interest in?
Answer:
If you’re “not interested” in a subject, chances are that you’re not really looking at it. You’re looking at a mental image, an abstraction of what you think the subject is about. It is usually not only cartoonishly over-simplified, it is also most likely very wrong.
You might think that the wall next to you is very uninteresting. You might just think of it as “a wall” or “a white wall”, if you even think about it. And you might think you already know all about it. “It’s a white wall! What more is there to say?”. But if you actually were perceiving, dealing with the real wall, instead of thinking about a picture of it, there would probably be plenty of things to be interested in on that wall. There are many shades of colors, patterns of shadows, textures, and it has a certain feel to the touch, a temperature. It has a history, it was constructed by people. It has a future. If you were thinking as an artist, you might get a lot out of that simple wall.
The thing is, if you really look, listen, feel, get in touch with the subject matter, you can go deeper. And deeper and deeper. You will learn new things, you will discover a part of the world that you didn’t know existed.
Interest is not something you have or don’t have. It is an action. It is something you do, as you’re looking at the subject matter. Your interest itself will reveal something interesting about it. It is not about faking interest, as in “Oh, that is very interesting!”, if you don’t mean it. It is about perceiving, with interest, what is in front of you. And, possibly, getting over any preconceived ideas you had about it, which had kept you from actually perceiving it honestly before.
If you’re really paying attention, you can always go deeper, continuously. If you do, new worlds open for you.