How Joy Can Be Counter-Productive

When you were a kid, did you ever build a Lego city? How about a drawing? Or a piece of music?

I definitely did. I had Lego-opolises of varying sizes. No one (except my mom and few friends) ever saw them, and you know what? I didn’t care.

I was creating for the joy of creating. It was fun, it felt enjoyable. Time flew. All of the stuff people describe today as being “in flow”.

This innate desire to create doesn't go away, and can be another contributor to perfectionism, in addition to the fear of failure Adam mentioned.

For example, I like to build analyses. Recently I built a personal cash flow model, and I put a bunch of stuff in there that I didn’t really need, because I just had fun doing it, and it was a part of my vision of complete.

Once I reached “complete”, I felt an emotional payoff. Joy. Warmth. A feeling that all is right in the world. These feelings would not have been there had I done only what was “necessary”.

These warm feelings give us incentive to create until it’s complete, even if those run counter to our most important goals.

How do you address? Give yourself a little R&R. No, not rest & relaxation — recognize and redirect.

Recognize that perfectionism has a different emotional payoff from releasing quickly. Emotions are a lot easier to manage once you recognize and acknowledge them. When you feel like building that extra feature, notice what’s going on. Sometimes I feel a craving, like “I want this to be complete, I want the joy and payoff from that”.

Then, redirect. Instead of focusing on the joy of creating, I can focus on the joy of releasing and moving closer to my goal. Like this article. I challenged myself to see how fast I could write a Medium response, instead of ruminating on it for days. As I’m writing this, I’m feeling a craving to add more, and more. But when that happens, I’m redirecting my focus to the joy of clicking “Publish” in record time.

Next time you create, try giving yourself some R&R and see what happens!