We usually think of obsessions as negative. A lot of obsessing comes with pain, overwhelming frustration, and a sense that there’s nothing you can do about the source of your obsession.  There’s another kind of obsession, though, and those more productive obsessions are what we learn about in Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions by psychotherapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel, Ph.D., and Ann Maisel.

Writers and other artists are often desperate for fresh inspiration and renewed motivation.  By learning concrete ways to tap into the brain’s potential, Maisel’s readers can better move forward in whatever realm they care most passionately about.  What the Maisels are talking about here is another way to look at flow, or focus, or deep engagement, or mindfulness.  Even if they’re not all defined as precisely the same experience, there’s no particular need to pull apart the threads of difference.  They’re all extremely positive states of mind, ones that creative people often crave and benefit from.

PRODUCTIVE OBSESSIONS (paraphrasing Maisel):

1. Are not always easy or fun; but ease, fun, and joy may be part of the process.
2. Are fueled by good reasons, not only love and passion.
3. Need to be strategized.  To be continuously effective, you need to plan what you’ll do when you feel anxious or at a dead end.
4. Require stretching.  “Expect the emotional equivalent of aches and pains,” writes Maisel.
5. Necessitate switching gears between your normal life and your obsessive life.  Learn to do so with the least time wasted and “no internal drama.”
6. Need to be monitored.  Learn to pay attention to your state of mind, taking breaks when needed, or devoting a full week to your obsession when that is what’s called for.
7. Are risky.  “Take the risk that your project may not prove as important as you had hoped,” notes Maisel.  “Take the risk that it will prove exactly as important as you had hoped, taxing you with its difficulty and troubling you by its felt significance.”

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    Last reviewed: 3 May 2010