Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
As I’ve said lo these many times on this blog (both before and after re-naming it to reflect my major new emphasis on food), I’m a personality type called an Obliger, part of a four-part personality framework that Gretchen Rubin created. (Take the quiz here to find out your type.) It’s a framework that’s very helpful—I think, anyway—because it doesn’t try to explain everything about a person. Instead, it focuses on one narrow part of personality: how you respond to expectations, either inner or outer. Obligers, who make up the largest group (about 40%, according to a study that Gretchen commissioned), respond very readily to outer expectations—that is, what others expect of them—but don’t do well with the expectations they have for themselves. In other words, they don’t tend to be great self-starters. I had always recognized this lack in myself but thought of it as a character flaw. I was lazy. I was unmotivated. I was a procrastinator. Then I realized that this was simply the way I am, and that I needed to deal with my personality type in a productive and positive way. There was no sense in berating myself, but neither was there any sense in just excusing myself. ‘Oh well, that’s just me,’ wasn’t going to cut it.
It was very interesting back before the Christmas holidays to observe how slump-y I was. There were things sitting on the coffee table that needed to be put away; all I seemed to be able to do was to stare at them listlessly. There were items that needed to be taken out to the shed. I wanted to finish the new decorative pillows for the couch and loveseat, but I couldn’t seem to get myself going. I kept telling myself that I’d perk up when the deadline of my sister- and brother-in-law’s arrival got closer, and that indeed was the case. It was so interesting to feel an actual internal shift. Suddenly I had all the energy in the world. I became tremendously efficient with my time, especially during the ten days that Carol and Alan were actually here. We’re leaving on an outing in 30 minutes? Great! I can unload the dishwasher and make the bed. The kitchen is a mess after the nice dinner I made? No problem! I’ll just get it all cleaned up before going to bed.
But this energy and efficiency didn’t last once the company left. But just recently I was under the gun for our latest Cherry Creek Chorale concert and my part in it, particularly the planning of the reception. While everything didn’t go quite as planned on Friday night (as I mentioned in my previous post), I was pretty efficient and everything went well in the end. We always have the week off from rehearsal after a concert, and I always think I’m going to get a lot of writing done during that time. I don’t have to go anywhere on Tuesday night! I don’t have to practice music for the upcoming concert, because I don’t have it yet! So I’m free to spend hours at my laptop getting lots of content written. Does this happen? Well, no. Here it is Thursday, and while I’ve done some writing I’m nowhere near where I wanted to be. The plan was that I’d finish writing all the essays about our Letters from Ireland choral suite by the time we performed it. Ha! Then this week I’d get back to work on what will end up being a short book on the text and background of Mozart’s Requiem. Ha, again. As I sit here I still have three essays from Letters to write, plus something about folk music in general since all of the pieces are folk songs. I’ll find myself doing what I almost always do when I’m not under the gun: anything but the subject at hand. So what if I’ve already read half a dozen reports on the coronavirus today? Maybe one more will give me that perfect insight.
But here’s the thing: I’m still responsible for my own choices. Just because I have a certain personality type doesn’t mean that I’m off the hook. Instead, I need to deal with the issue properly. I shouldn’t call my personality type a problem, by the way: it’s just a fact. I heard this concept on a podcast recently from a man named Jonah Goldberg, a great, great voice in rational, conservative news media. He was talking about his teenage daughter and her more-than-usual teen angst about various things and how he’d been trying to help her deal with her feelings. He was quoting someone, but I’m not going to go back and re-listen to every single episode in the past month in order to track down the name. The idea, though, is this: something that cannot be solved is not a problem. Problems are things that by their very nature have solutions. (I’m kind of belaboring the point here.) I can’t solve my personality; it exists. Instead, I need to develop strategies in order to deal with it.
The key for Obligers is the idea of outer accountability, but I can’t create that out of thin air. I don’t have an editor yelling at me to get my essays done. I’m my own editor. How to manage this situation? Well, I don’t have anything perfect, you’ll be astonished to hear. What does seem to work, though, is to monitor what I tell myself. Accept no excuses. Don’t allow the “well, I’ll just look at one article” syndrome to take hold. What you allow yourself to think matters. Hey, I have a whole chapter in my book on Intentional Happiness about this very concept!
Also, I know that once I get started on a project I usually get motivated to keep going. My first music book was about Carmina Burana. I don’t know how long it took me to get started on that book, but once I got into it I was obsessed. I had 15 minutes? Then I could dive into Google Images and Wikimedia Commons to find yet another picture to illustrate one of the musical selections. It was fun.
I always need to remember the concept of what I call the “wedge action.” It’s the idea that you start out an action with the easiest and smallest possible step—the thin end of the wedge, as it were. So for the floor exercises that I do (video to come . . . someday) I start with the easy-peasy little hip-joint-strengthening ones, not the pushups. (I hate pushups.) It’s much easier for me to get going if I’m just doing something I don’t mind. Once I’m down on the floor I usually follow through with the rest of them.
Well, now I’m kind of using this blog post to keep me from doing my Ireland posts. Obligers are endlessly creative in getting out of obligations! So I’ll stop for now. How do you get yourself going?