Do you have to force yourself to work?

I was talking with a writer this morning and he said to me something like "I have to force myself to work on this." This seemed to me problematic in some ways, though correct in others.

He brought up the analogy of working out: "When you're working out regularly, you don't need to force yourself because you almost have to work out; it doesn't feel right if you don't; but if you've had a lay-off and have to get back into it, it can be hard, and you do have to force yourself." This I liked much better, because it contains an important element that the first statement didn't. In this statement there is the recognition of and focus on the good that comes along with the investment of effort. And this is the key.

My yoga teacher told the class something to the effect of: "At the moment of greatest difficulty, something beautiful is waiting to be born." The idea being, I think, that it is through the difficulty that we grow into new appreciations.

I just started reading Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In it he says

we have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like....
Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times--although such experiences can also be enjoyable if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen....
Such experiences are not necessarily pleasant at the time they occur.

The emphasis on "make" is his. But this is the kind of forcing that is positive: when we recognize that in the reaching and in the stretching to our limits, there we are going to be the most satisfied. So yes, we need to put in effort, and to push our comfort zone, but if that effort is motivated by our sense that this is a route to feeling good.
Yes, he notes that there may be some sort of discomfort, but that discomfort is not certain--and once in "flow" easily put aside (at least in my experience).

So, if you're thinking you have to force yourself to work, remember the optimal experiences in your past. What are the moments in your memory that stand out as the most pleasurable? Are any of them flow moments? Are they memories of things that required effort? Can remembering how good those moments felt help you engage with the project at hand?

Procrastination

I don't get many comments on the blog, so every one is kind of exciting.
I got a comment this morning (thanks!) that started me thinking.

"Hi, Dave,
I'm new to your blog and just wanted to let you know that I find your words insightful and even uplifting. Not that I'm promising to go work on my dissertation or anything...heh."

Now compliments are nice, but it's that final sentence that really struck me, just because it made me think of a book I'm currently reading: The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. I am something of a consumer of mass market psychology and self-help, which is what Fiore's book feels like to me. Fiore basically says that procrastination can often be ascribed to a sense that you're not doing a task because you want to, but rather because you feel as if someone expects you to do it. I've only read a third of the book, but as far as I can tell, the basic premise is that we get over procrastination by choosing what we will do--by feeling like we are making a choice and doing what we think we should do for our own benefit--not because someone told us to, but because we decided to.

This basic premise is one that I believe in, and one I believe I have mentioned in previous posts. We get the work done when we're doing it because we think we will make our situation better for doing it.

The kind author of the comment, of course, has no connection with me or commitment to me--no promise, and even if she/he did promise, I have no way of enforcing that promise. But that final sentence can be read as revealing the whole dynamic of procrastination as Fiore describes it: there is work that isn't getting done, and there is an author who is resisting, and who is referencing an outside authority of sorts.

Only of sorts, of course, because I am pretty much an anti-authority figure. I want everybody to work from a core of personal beliefs--including a belief that working on the project is a good thing.
It's better if one also believes that working on the project is not painful or agonizing in anyway, but that can be a slightly harder belief to come by. But it comes easier if you start thinking about the choice that you're making and the good outcomes that come out of making that choice and engaging with the project.

I'm not big on saying things like "you should be working harder; promise me you'll work harder." I'm more likely to say "do something that promotes your health--physical or mental, or better both. Do something that you think is important. Do something that helps give you better future prospects so you can live a better life." I figure if an author can't figure out how the dissertation relates to at least one of those three questions, then probably that author ought not be bothering with the dissertation anyway.

I'd like to suggest that every author try to have fun with their work. Explore the possibilities; look for the things that interest you and the things that you care about. See if you can rediscover the enthusiasm that directed you to the topic in the first place.

If you're only doing it because someone else expects it of you, then you're setting up a dynamic that will lead to procrastination (at least in procrastination as described by Fiore).

Thanks again for the comment! I hope that you had a good day, doing whatever you did.