The Art of Motivation

To be totally honest, I don't feel like writing today.

But what do feelings have to do with it?

Wednesdays are my days to write, and so here I am, typing away.

Only the foolish artist waits for inspiration to strike.

The rest of us set a schedule and get to work.

It's not easy, but let's get down to business to defeat the Huns… or to create meaningful art… whichever comes first.

It's a common fallacy to believe that our behaviors follow our feelings.  Most of the time, if we don't feel like doing it, we don't do it.

But just as often, if not more so, our feelings follow our behaviors.  We don't feel like doing it, but we said we would so we do it anyway.  Then, once we've gotten started, we feel inspired to continue.

There's a handy little equation to figure out our motivation (don't worry, the math isn't hard):

Motivation = Expectancy x Value / Impulsivity x Delay

The more we expect we can do something and the higher the value we place on that thing, the more motivation we will have to act.  The more impulsivity we have towards distractions and the longer we delay our action, the lower our motivation.

When we set a consistent time for creativity, we are decreasing delay.  When we commit to doing it, and when we believe in the work we are creating, we increase our value.  If we set the time first thing in the morning (as I like to do) we decrease the chance we impulsively check email, texts, and social media, which blows up our consciousness and clutters the brain with other people's agendas.  And the more we get to work, day in and day out, regardless of how we feel, the more we will expect the inspiration to follow, since we will know from experience how the process really works.

While this is a nice little equation for our motivation, it never ends up being quite as scientific as we would like.  Things come up, we lose track of our commitment to our art, we let our feelings overwhelm us, we fall into old patters of distracting ourselves, and/or we hide in bed from the hellish torture of creating… (seriously, it's like pulling our own teeth sometimes…)

Motivating ourselves is an art.  We can only reduce the variability of our lives so much.  We must learn how to navigate all the curveballs life throws our way if we want to stay motivated and continue creating.

It should come as no surprise that improvisation helps us maintain our motivation.

In this context I am mainly referring to the solo improvisation that creators experience as they are creating the raw materials of their craft.  I've rarely felt unmotivated in regards to performative improvisation… unless I'm feeling weird and I expect to suck, in which case I usually suck fantastically…

Too often, when we sit down to create, we feel the burden of making something amazing.  Perhaps we created something in the past that received accolades and we feel the need to exceed our prior success.  Perhaps we haven't created anything noteworthy yet and we want to make our masterpiece.

When we improvise, we don't care about the past.  Or the future, for that matter.  We allow our creative ideas to flow and save the filtering, editing, judging, and refining for later.  We ignore the potential outcomes and focus on the process. 

It takes some awareness, but while we're improvising, our delay is zero - we're in the moment creating, so there's no time for delay.  And our impulsivity is extremely low - aside from the notes or words or brushstrokes that are emerging from our fingertips, we are not engaging with anything else.

If we are aware of the benefits of improvisation, the value we place on the improvisational practice is extremely high - unless we're working on a project we don't really believe in.  Expectancy is the biggest wildcard, for me at least.  In the past I've hit weird roadblocks where I hate everything I create, I don't expect it to be any good, and therefore I stop creating.  I mentioned a few weeks ago - sometimes we just need to clean out our gutters by letting all the crap flow through us… eventually something good will start to flow.  If we anticipate and expect some crap to be a part of the process, then we will also anticipate and expect greatness to follow.

When we don't schedule time to creatively improvise and we just wait for inspiration to come, we rob ourselves of those life nourishing moments of flow.  AND we rob our fans of the artwork that nourishes them.  Would you intentionally steal from your mother?  Well, when you sit around and wait for inspiration instead of getting to work, that's what you are doing.  How could you do such a thing to your mother?!?

Anyway.

Sit down and listen to your muse - ESPECIALLY if you don't feel like it.  The more we can train ourselves to work past our feelings, the more meaningful work we'll produce, the more money we'll make, and the more satisfaction we will have in our lives.  Huzzah!!

Now get to it, friend, get to it.