Is a productive obsession really a productive obsession if you have to work at it? Isn’t there some implication in the phrase that you love your productive obsession so much and are so passionate about it that it never feels like work, that it is never daunting, and that you are always smiling because you’re getting to bite into something delicious? Marti, a member of my productive obsession group, expressed this wonder in the following way:
Yesterday I went to a ‘trunk show’ at a local jewelry store. I had never heard of this jewelry designer but at the store I saw the photograph of her jewelry as featured in one of the major style magazines. As I looked at her creations, which were indeed beautiful, we talked. I asked her how she got into doing this. She gave that answer which often comes from people who are highly successful at a young age. She said, ‘Making jewelry has been my passion since I was a little girl. I love making jewelry. I can stay up doing it until midnight and I don’t notice the time going by because I love what I’m doing.
For me, writing is an obsession, but I don’t always love to do it. Therein lies the problem. It’s an obsession but it’s not as pure as the way this jewelry maker’s passion appears to be. In fact, I’m not sure why writing is my obsession at all, considering that I don’t always love to do it, the way she loves to create jewelry. I think the ultimate question is: if one has to work at something being a productive obsession, maybe it’s not really an obsession at all?
Can you be passionate about something, obsessed with it, and still have to work hard at it? Yes! The proof that something is a legitimate productive obsession is not that it comes easy. A novelist may have one book come easy and the next book come hard: that doesn’t mean that she is less obsessed with the second book. It only means that the second book is harder. In fact, she may be more obsessed with the second book and may be traveling with it to a deeper place where the answers are rich but obscured in darkness. It would be a grave mistake to suppose that the proof that you are productively obsessing is that you are finding the going easy. Much of the time it may be hard work—maybe even all of the time.
Nor is there reason to suppose that you have to love what you have undertaken. You may not love turning your brain over to the question of how to get the best care for your disabled father, how to deal with the underhanded tactics of your political opponent, or how to get funding for your documentary film. You might prefer to turn your brain over to some other interest where love and passion reside. But love and passion are not the criteria; good reasons are. A productive obsession is an idea that you have good reasons for pursuing. It is the way you use your brain to handle the business of life, do the next right thing, make meaning and make yourself proud. If genuine love, passion and interest are fueling the idea, consider them bonuses or blessings. The point of a productive obsession is that it is productive, which translates as “I have good reasons for using my brain this way” and not “I love everything about this idea!”
Productively obsessing is a way to use your mind. It does not require that you love, honor, or cherish the object of your obsession: all that is required is that you have reasons for obsessing. Maybe you love to paint and your new idea for a series of paintings turns into a productive obsession. That productive obsession is indeed fueled by passion and love. But maybe you also need to think through whether or not to leave your current job, a decision of considerable importance in your life. Thinking about that is likely to make you extremely anxious—still, you have good reasons to stick with that obsession, even though passion isn’t fueling it and even though thinking about it makes you anxious.
Even if you do love your idea, even if it is the fruit of passion and genuine interest, you are not productively obsessing until you do the work that your idea demands. Many people are obsessed with some “big idea” but not in a productive way. They may be obsessed with creating a business that genuinely makes use of their talents or engaging in research that feels more interesting than their current niche research. But if their obsession takes them no further than wringing their hands and spinning their wheels, it is not a productive obsession. Their obsession, as excellent as it might be if genuinely embraced, is as negative as any other unproductive obsession while it remains a fantasy shrouded in worry.
That your idea is good does not mean that your obsession with it is good. Being obsessed with a brilliant idea for a film for forty years and never making an effort to turn that idea into an actual film is not a productive obsession, no matter how brilliant the idea is. It is exactly the opposite: it is an unproductive obsession fueled by anxiety, kept alive by anxiety, and used to quell anxiety. It is fantasy used as defense. While you are defending yourself with your beautiful fantasy of one day making this beautiful movie, your brain is held captive and prevented from productively obsessing. Your beautiful fantasy uses up your neurons and your life feels smaller and bleaker with those neurons tied up and unavailable.
Do the work. Productively obsessing is a way to address life, not a way to justify staying head-bound. It is the way you use your brain to meet your needs, whether emotional, practical, intellectual, or existential, and not a destination in itself. Imagine that your beautiful ideas are like a bountiful harvest. That harvest will rot if the food doesn’t make it to the table. To get that food from the field to tables all over the county, work is required, hard, slogging work. It takes real work to get that bushel of gorgeous heirloom tomatoes to market. Just looking at them is not enough: work must follow.
To learn more about the ideas presented in this blog post, please see two of Dr. Maisel’s titles, Redesign Your Mind: The Breakthrough Program for Real Cognitive Change and Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions
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This post is republished on Medium.
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