Every once in a while I get obsessed about some project or hobby, and it’s always when I make the most progress in that area. After a week or a month this obsession fades and doing the same thing is not effortless anymore.
I feel like these periods are the most important for my progress in life, pretty much every big thing that I accomplished was thanks to an obsession. Eventually I understood that while I want to do something it’s better to do it now, because later I might not want to do it anymore and will miss out on a new skill or opportunity.
That’s the reason I did that ​internet detox​. I allowed myself to isolate from the world for a while to study book making and actually work on the first chapter. It didn’t leave much room for anything else, but it was exactly what I needed at the time.
Obsession, however, is very unbalanced. And I think the best way to kill your initial passion is to worry about living a balanced life.
A balanced lie
These days most people want to be “locked in” and focused on something important in their life, they want to make breakthroughs every day and feel accomplished. But on the other side they also want to be healthy, keep in touch with their friends and family, have a stable romantic relationship, engage in various hobbies and more. That’s what balanced looks like, and it feels like a great idea.
But what happens when suddenly you have a burning desire to start a new project and forget about the rest of the world for a while? What if the project takes up so much mental capacity that one day you forget to respond to your friend’s DM or you abandon your hobbies just to have more time to work on the one thing you’re obsessed about?
This is when people chasing that “balanced” lifestyle start to feel worried, and I used to feel like this too. The truth is that you might never experience this level of passion for that project again, it usually happens in the beginning and fizzles out in a couple weeks. You can either feed this passion by isolating yourself from distractions temporarily, or you can strangle it because you’re afraid of it taking over your life.
How to decide
Set your priorities. To make the right decision about what kind of obsessions to allow in your life, you need to know what you live for. I’ve established my purpose to be an art educator, so that’s the test I used when I decided to isolate from the world to work on the book.
There’s of course a different kind of obsession that’s harmful. The rule of thumb for me is if it takes me closer to my goals in life then I let it take over, but if it steers me away from them, then there is a problem.
What to actually do when you’re obsessed
Build a simple system you can follow after the free fuel stage runs out. That’s the best use of your time in the beginning.
That’s why I made a Notion database of all pages, chapters and exercise sheets and figured out all the technical details in advance. Now I can just use what I’ve built to keep going at a slower but reliable pace.
