Photograph by KARJEAN LEVINE

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OBSESS!OBSESS!OBSESS!OBSESS!OBSESS!OBSESS!OBSESS!OBSESS!OBSESS!OBSESS!OBSESS!

Forget life balance:Throwing yourself 110 percent into a

complex project could be the key to creativebreakthroughs—and to a meaningful life.

»jiERICMAISEL. PH.D. nnrf ANN MAISELprofiles hv CARLIN FLORA

May/June 2010 Psychology Today 79

GETS A BAD RAP. OF COURSE, OBSESSIONS WITHpeople, or with irrational beliefs such as those held by OCD sufferers, can be unhealthyor even dangerous. We are lobbyingfor somethingquite different: productive obsess-ing, or putting yourself wholeheartedly into a useful and meaningful passion. Thesehealthy preoccupations are an antidote to boredom and passivity. They aren't just forpeople driven to accomplish something out of the ordinary. They are for everyone.We firmly believe that doing things by half—merely dabbling in a hobby or profes-sional endeavor—produces sad human beings. It's dangerous to feel as though youaren't makinga meaningful contribution.We don't want you to look at yourself inthe mirror and see a person who mighthave done this but didn't, or who loves thatbut, for some odd reason, takes no activeinterest in it. In order to lead a life thatmakes you proud, you likely need to up the

your brain, asking it to halt its pursuit offiuff and worry, to instead embrace itsown potential. In addition, you announcethat you prefer grand pursuits to ordi-nary ones; you stand in solidarity withother members of your species who haveopted forbigthinkingand bigdoing. Andyou turn yourself over—even to the point

ante and get obsessed. Sure, you mightexperience fatigue and frustration at times,but you'll be able to deal with those sideeffects because you'll be immersed insomething stimulatingand important.

Some people knowwhat their productiveobsession would be—theyjust haven't committedthemselves to it yet. Oth-ers have vague interestsbut don't really knowwhere to begin, even ifthey like the idea of delv-ing deep into a project.The productive obsessionyou decide to cultivateshould be rooted in love,interest, and a desire tobetter our shared circum-stances here in the world.Think big!

Say, for example, thatyou produce one-of-a-kind water jars butit's been your secret ambition to tackle alarge ecological art project. If the sale ofyour water jars pays the rent, they proh-ably regularly push the eco-art projectright out of your mind and off the table.That's ofren how ambitious plans get lostor even vanish. A good way to start is todedicate yourself to a productive obses-sion for a month. In this case, you wouldchoose the eco-art project, even at therisk ofa temporary income dip.

When you obsess, you learn how toextinguish distractions so that you canconcentrate. You accept the hard exis-tential fact that if you intend to matteryou must act as if you matter. You retrain

Rebecca Sklootstory Wrangling and Writing

In orderto leada life thatmakes youproud,you needto upthe anteand getobsessed.

AS A 16-YEAR-OLD, Rebecca skloot spent hours each week in the waiting roomof the hospital where her father, who had contracted a virus that caused himserious brain damage, was receiving experimental treatments. "I rememberhaving complicated feelings aboutit, sitting with the other patients who were

hopingthe procedures would help them," she says. Skloot wasnot a typical teen: She was an autodidact who read voraciouslyon the history of science.

Skloot's intellectual and personal concerns of the time seemedto magically converge around an offiiand comment made by herbiology teacher. He mentioned that the most popular line of cellssold to researchers, known as HeLa cells, were taken in the 1950sfrom a young African-American woman, Henrietta Lacks. "I wasvery aware of the fact that Henrietta was black. I thought, 'Is thisanother one of those stories of racial prejudice and medicine thatI've been reading about? Did something horrible happen here?' "

She began to answer the question in earnest as a grad stu-dent and discovered that Lacks's cells were removed withouther permission and that her descendants had long been in thedark about her posthumous contributions to medicine. Sklootchased the story for a decade.

It took her a year to gain the confidence of Lacks's youngestdaughter. She went through three publishing houses and foureditors. She went 10 years without visitingher hometown. ("I'vebeen saying to my nephews, 'I promise when the book is over,

you're goingto have an aunt.' ") And she put on hold her desire to have children.("I said for years that I would have a kid by age 35. I'm almost 40 now, so I'm goingto try to have a family far later than biology would like me to.")

Emotional support from her parents and friends kept Skloot going, andabove all her own sense that Lacks's story was an important one to tell. "Hen-rietta's cousins were in their 80s when I interviewed them," Skloot says. "Some-times I would talk to someone and a week later she would die. So I had thisincredible feeling of responsibility, knowing I was the one person who wascatching all this history as it was vanishing."

In February, Crown published her epic book. The Immortal Life ofHenriettaLacks, to great acclaim. Skloot strongly believes that it was the long-term rumi-nating and exploring that enabled her to create such a nuanced, complex work."One of the amazing aspects of this story is that there are no clear answers. Yougo back and forth thinking, 'Oh, this poor family,' and then 'Oh, but the poor sci-entists.'" Because Skloot took the time to pull out and examine so many strands,Henrietta Lacks will now be part of literary and science history: The book hitnumber two on the New York Times best-seller list. •

80 Psychology Today May/June 2010 Maisel text adapted from Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions, published by New World (newworldlibrnry.coni)-

Photograph by ANDREW CUTRARO

Photograph by KARJEAN LEVINE

of threat and exhaustion—to your ownloves and interests.

Cultivating a productive obsessioninvolves going on a long journey, withdips and peaks in motivation. Knowingwhetht r you should stick with somethingor switch gears is more an art than a sci-ence, and external markers of success arenot the only way to measure how yourproject is coming along. Still, if you are

truly spinning your wheels, with nogrowth in your own abilities or in theworld's interest in your output, it's timeto regroup. Being obsessed with a bril-liant screenplay idea for 40 years with-out ever turning it into an actual film isnot productive. While you are defendingyourselfwith your fantasy of makingyourdream movie, your brain is held captive.

A productive obsession provokes all

Rodney Allen TriceTurning Trash into Treasure

RonNF.Y ALLEN TRICE calls himself the love child of Martha Stewart, Mac-Gyver, Al Gore, and Keith Richards. It's a spot-on (if highly implausible) char-acterization: Trice is artistic, handy, an avid recycler, and a shaggy-haired fanof chunky jewelry. For the past 20 years, he's had his eyes peeled for objectsthat could be reimagined as furniture: A bird cage becomes a chandelier drip-ping in crystal, a vacuum cleaner a whimsical fioor lamp, anda groce ry-store scale crowns a dainty nightstand.

As a young graphic designer. Trice took his first paycheckto a hig;h-end store in the hopes of putting together a "grown-up" apartment. He pointed at an Eames chair and was told itwas $3,600. " I headed out with my tail between my legs," Tricesays. "Then I noticed that people from New York throw out themostamazing.stuff. I started to drag it home. If I couldn't havethe fancy Eames chair, I wanted something special." The firstpiece he made, a coffee table, was once a red restroom stall door.He affixed pipes for legs and faucets for embellishments.

Though they've gotten plenty of praise, his one-of-a-kindpieces haven't yet sold well enough for him to quit his magazinedesign gigs. About three years ago. Trice felt defiated by theincreasing demands of his day jobs (which ate up 50 hours eachweek) and decreasing hopes of breaking through to the nextlevel with his creations.

"I called my sister," Trice recalls. "I told her that severalfriends had ju.st bought houses—something I couldn't evenimagine. I told her I was sick of goingto the studio and that Iwas thinking of giving it up. She said to me, 'Rodney, I don't have time to talk.I have to go feed my kids. But I'm goingto say this: Ever since I've known you,you have been making things, whether you were taking apart toys andputting them together or getting into Dad's tool closet. I believe in my heartthat if you give up the studio, in a month or two you're goingto regret it.' "

"My first thought was, 'Bitch!' But she was right." After taking a break andreading inspirational books such as Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, Tricewas reenergized. He's now on a mission to teach others how to turn refriger-ators into wardrobes and crutches into tables, in classes and on the small screen.He's currently filming a pilot for a how-to design show.

"I v/as very afraid of being ordinary when I was little," Trice says. "AndI'm still that kid who made latch-hook rugs and string art and just had fun.I've taken a hard road in some ways, but as the poem goes, it has made allthe difference." •

Cultivatinga productiveobsessioninvolvesgoing onalongjourney,with dipsand peaks inmotivation.

sorts of mental states—euphoria whensomething goes brilliantly, irritationwhen you feel thwarted, fatigue afterhours of mental struggle, excitement asone idea leads to another. You can pre-pare for these states and decide before-hand how you will handle them. Have yougrown a little too agitated? (A hot showerworks wonders.) Keep inventing newcoping strategies and remember the onesthat have proven effective in the past.

Much of the difficulty in pursuing aproductive obsession resides in switch-ing gears between your normal life andyour obsessive life. You'll need to learnhow to toggle effortlessly, so that, forinstance, no time is wasted and no inter-nal drama created as you leave your dayjob and turn to your symphony. Imaginethat you have—or are—a flawless trans-mission system, whisper-quiet and beau-tifully constructed, one that allows you to

move efficiently throughthe day, revving up toobsess and revving downto peel potatoes.

Each of us has thatdo-nothing, watch-a-lit-tle-more-television placein our hearts and thatharder-to-engage work-well-and-think-intense-ly place. The life of yourproductive obsessiondepends on your constantrecommitment, whichsounds like "I am doingthis, damn it!" Your mindmay prefer its habitualways and opt for fear, fan-tasy, worry, regret, or idle-ness. The instant your

mind produces one of its stories aboutwhy you ought to abandon your produc-tive obsession—because you can'tsucceed, because a storm is coming-shout, "No!"

Embark on a month of productiveobsessing, then another, and, ultimately,a lifetime. If you end up with a balletlike Swan Lake, a business like Apple, ora new theory of relativity, congratula-tions. But congratulate yourself just asmuch if what you end up with is a streamof brainstorms in the service of a fulfill-ing life, PT

May/June 2010 Psychology Today 83

Walter KührConduct ing a D r e a m (photograph on p. 78)

WHEN HIS MOTHER bought him an accordion in the suburbsof Frankfurt, Germany, 12-year-old Walter Kühr fell in love withthe unwieldy jumble of shiny buttons and keys. He came to theU.S. in 1989 as a youngman and played tangos and polkas in restau-rants and subway stations. Fourteen years ago he opened MainSqueeze, now the last accordion shopstanding inNewYorkCity. "The accordionis so expressive," Kühr says. "It can whis-per, it can scream, it can be ridiculous, itcan be seductive, it can be anything."

Kühr's true passion literally came tohim in a dream. Six years ago, after seeingvarious acts perform at an annual accor-dion festival in Pennsylvania, he dreamtofbeingon a bus with 18 attractive women(all in pigtails—perhaps a memory of Ger-man schoolmates?) com-posing his very own accor-dion orchestra.

"J was sup)er electrified,"Kühr says. "I woke up atfour in the morning andthere was no way I could goback to sleep. I made a hugepot of coffee and wrote mydream down, every detail.There was no douht in mymind that I had to do it."

At dawn, Kühr beganmakingphone calls. "I need-ed musical arrangements,money, a rehearsal room,and, of course, women whocould play the accordionwell enou^! I was runningaround like a madman. It'sthe first time I was ever successful atorgan-izingsomething, because I really wanted it"Nine months later. The Main SqueezeOrchestra, which Kühr touts as "The West-em World'sOnlyl4-Piece All-Female Accor-dion Orchestra," played its debut concert

Kühr spends hours arranging musicalnumbers—most of which are far outsidethe tjfpical accordion repertoire. Hitsinclude the Brandenburg concertos and"Bohemian Rhapsody."

The orchestra hasn't yet garnered fameor riches, but that was never the point.The idea was to create something he knew

would delight everyone. "My girlfi-iend says, 'Your orchestra ismore important than me, it's more important than your business!'But I can't help it. And I think she finds it charming at the sametime. She probably prefers it to a man obsessed with money."

Last year Kühr worked even more feverishly to arrange thetheme "Once Upon a Time in the West." Sufiering fixim lymphoma,he thought it might be his last arrangement. He even imaginedthe ladies playing it at his fijneral. Instead, they loyally tended tohis shop while he recovered from a bone marrow transplant.

"No matter how down I am,justthinkingof those girls makesme happy. The orchestra is the pride and joy ofmy existence." •

"It was thefirst timeI was eversuccessfulatorganizingsomething,becauseI reallywanted it."

Laura StachelGiving Light and Life

TWO YEARS AGO, Laura Stachel, anob-gyn, was shocked by conditions at thelarge state hospital in Nigeria where she was conducting public-health research."What I saw amounted to a chamber of horrors," Stachel says. The electricitycrackled on for just a few hours each day, leaving doctors and midwives to deliv-

er babies—and suture wounds—by candlelight. There were nofunctional blood bank refrigerators or ways for staff in differ-ent rooms to communicate. And as a result, in a country thathas the highest maternal death rate in the world, critically illpatients were turned away with no recourse.

Distraught, Stachel sent painful letters home to her hus-band, Hal Aronson. "He had huilt a solar-powered home backin the '80s for his family, so he knows very well how solar pow-er can work off the grid," she says. "He wrote back, 'Maybe wecan get our family and friends to put together some moneyfor a solar electric system.' That note changed my life, becausein that moment I got very invested in helping the hospital."

Soon after she returned to California, Stachel secured handsand launched a nonprofit agency, WE CARE Solar. She wantedto go back to Nigeria to demonstrate how the new system wouldwork, so Aronson made a kit of solar panels and rechargeablebatteries small enough to easily get through customs. The work-ers who saw this "solar suitcase" begged to keep it. "It poweredheadlamps and walkie-talkies, which allowed nurses and doc-tors to assemble in a fiash. It completely shifted the dynamics of

emergency care," Stachel said.Once word got out about the invention, hospitals throughout Africa and beyond

began requesting solar suitcases. "This has turned our life upside down," saysStachel. "It's the first thing I think about in the morning, it's the last thing 1think about at night. These women are dying and there's no one to speak for them,and I can't turn my back on them now that I know." She's taken 6 trips to Nigeria,each time leaving behind her 8-year-old daughter. "Hal has to carry the familywhen I'm not there. But he sees that what we're doing is important, and thatI'm personally fulfilled. I'm never happier than when I'm in Africa." Stachel rel-ishes the break from the materialistic rat race ofthe U.S., and the chance to con-nect with and help people who are struggling to survive.

"I woke up one morning and said, 'Hal, on every continent there are peoplewho have light because of you.' He looked at me and said, 'It's because of us.'Somehow we've harnessed the best ofour talents to be able to have an impact." •

84 Psychology Today May/June 2010 THERAPISTS; Interested in receiving Continuing Ed Credit for reading this article? Visit NBCC.org.

Photograph by JEFF SINGER

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