I used to think that if only I could get organized enough and follow the right disciplines, I could find a way to fulfill my goals and obligations in my personal and professional life without having to leave work undone or relationships unsatisfied.
I no longer believe that. I now believe that time and energy are so limited that I will have to neglect something important to me. I simply have to choose what that will be. Will I write less than I want to? Will I devote less time to my family than I want to? Less time to my church? Less time to my students?
The Limits of Our Attention
A group I am in is studying the book, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In one section he discusses the idea that attention is a limited resource but crucial to creativity. Since we have only so much of it, we must 
decide where we’re going to put it. Then he makes this memorable point:
“Another consequence of limited attention is that creative individuals are often considered odd—or even arrogant, selfish, and ruthless. It is important to keep in mind that these are not traits of creative people, but traits that the rest of us attribute to them on the basis of perceptions. When we meet a person who focuses all of his attention on physics or music and ignores us and forgets our names, we call that person ‘arrogant’ even though he may be extremely humble and friendly if he could only spare attention from his pursuit.” (10)
As we pursue our passions, few of us want to be perceived as selfish, arrogant people who care only about our writing or our music or our art or whatever other work we feel called to do. Better to be a generous, well-rounded person who cares about others but also makes a meaningful contribution to our field. However, with the truly creative person who brings about a groundbreaking change in a domain, Csikszentmihalyi writes that “it is practically impossible to learn a domain deeply enough to make a change in it without dedicating all of one’s attention to it and thereby appearing to be arrogant, selfish, and ruthless to those who believe they have a right to the creative person’s attention” (10).
Is he right? I am writing this in the midst of the Olympics, which I have been watching occasionally. One commercial I saw shows athletes training vigorously, and in voice-overs we hear them tell some of the things they have given up. “I haven’t eaten a dessert in two years,” says one athlete, and others say they have sacrificed television, burgers, etc. The list they give focuses mostly on trivial pleasures, but I’m sure many of them have also sacrificed more important things also, such as spending time with family, hanging out with friends, and so on.
At certain points in life I have practiced the kind of focused discipline those athletes are talking about. While I was still single and in graduate school trying to finish my dissertation, I gave up television for a couple years, dedicated one room of my apartment to nothing but a computer and dissertation materials, and set rigid hours for working on the project until it was finished. Even now, when I write a book, I commit to working on it at least a little every day until it is finished.
Deciding Where to Set the Limits
As a writer today, I am willing to sacrifice for my passion, but I will go only so far. I believe all of us make trade-offs, but we don’t always knowingly make them. Often we simply slide into letting things get out of balance in one direction or another.
The choice I knowingly make now is that I am not willing to sacrifice my family for my work. When my son says, “Let’s go play soccer in the backyard,” I go. I take him and his sister to their sports practices. I take long walks with my wife. I have more writing projects than I can ever complete. I want to get to them. I do the best I can with those projects, and I get some of them done. But I know that I will simply have to neglect some of them.
My teaching also holds me back. So does my church. So do my friends. So do my other interests. So be it. I care about those things and intend to give each of them some of my Attention. When I teach American literature, I sometimes teach authors who had writing as their only priority, even when it brought shipwreck to their personal lives. They were creative people. They made a contribution to literature. The cost was high.
For me, writing has an important place, but as much as I love it, it doesn’t get all of me.
Comments 19
Hi Dr. Bentz,
I’ve read all your blogs, but this one really hit home. The allocation of time has been an issue I have been dealing with for a while, but I think I have a solution: No more sleeping. I really think I’m on to something here. An extra third of a lifetime would really come in handy . . . . But in all seriousness, thanks for the blog entry. It brought up some interesting points. Write on!
Author
Thanks for your comment, Luis! I feel the same frustration about time. I’m glad you’re reading the blog. I look forward to seeing you again soon!
So very, very true. John Cleese wrote a book (Families and How To Survive Them, with Robin Skynner and Bud Handelsman) and I remember an interview he gave at the time where he was talking about the importance of psychotherapy in learning how to be happy and how many of his creative friends were people driven by old pain and clung to their unhappiness, as if it was a muse. Cleese said (I paraphrase), “the quality of my life is more important than my work; I would rather have been one of the Dutch Masters than Van Gogh – those guys had a life and painting was their work and they were really good – Van Gogh’s single-focus created brilliant, tortured work – and destroyed his life.”
I think y’all are onto something here! ;D
Author
I do think that art and writing and other forms can be ways of redeeming suffering and making sense of it, but I agree that the overall quality of one’s life is more important than work alone. Finding balance is hard. I often feel frustrated that I’m being kept from doing what I really want to do. But I’m trying to grow up! Thanks, Lynn.
Joseph: This is so true. After I completed my dissertation my mind was like mush. I didn’t have any creative energy left, and I didn’t have any desire to write at all because all of my mental energy and focus was on completing, not only the doctoral program, but my B.S. and Masters, and once done, I was like a balloon that lost all of her air. Since then, I have written, but I am channeling my creative energies into other avenues of interest. I design and create jewelry, or I utilize photography as an artistic expression. I work on projects that will bring joy to others. Writing is still important, but my family, friends, my spiritual life, and other interests are equally important. I just do not have the ambition or desire to lose myself completely in just one aspect of my life as I did for sixteen years to find that I was all burned out and my passion for life non-existent. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Victoria
Author
You are fortunate that you have artistic and other interests in several different areas. That allows you not to have to put too much stress on one creative outlet alone, such as writing. Some people who are more focused on only one thing have a harder time keeping that one talent or passion in perspective with their personal life. I am grateful for your comment.
Joe–such good points! I used to think that if I worked smarter and faster, I could do it all, but we aren’t machines. Some of the best things take longer!
Author
Yes, I’m trying to learn not to rush the creative process so much. I often feel the urge to go faster and faster, but what’s the rush?
Joe, I love reading your comments. I am also drawn to the word attention. I have written, in the past, that the word implies other words, like “tension” and “tending”. There is a tension between what you need to do and what you want to do when you “attend” to something. But “tending” can be a very graceful way of “paying” attention. And isn’t the expression “paying attention” telling? You pay, suggesting you have to “fork over” or “give up” something in order to attend. Keep writing for your adoring public!
Author
I love this idea of “paying” attention. It really is a price you pay, and, like money, there is only so much attention to go around. So spend it wisely!
I enjoyed your post about managing time and setting priorities. Being a grandparent these days, it’s nice to realize that life often gives a person one more chance to get it this “time thing” right. I, too, was one of those over focused, goal obsessed individuals who probably placed career over family too many times. I read your blog just minutes after listening to an interview on NPR with Frank Partnoy, a law professor at the University of San Diego, who has just written a book titled, “Wait.” As I read your thoughts about slowing life down in this 24/7 world of news and social media, I found an interesting corollary offered by Partnoy who advocates a kind of “active procrastination.” He says that while there’s a high premium today for speed, “there are serious downsides to rapid decision-making.” In other words, while the world tends to idealize people who can make “snap judgments,” there’s power, says Partnoy, in delay. In fact, people who practice deferring their own gratification not only are happier but also make more thoughtful and sounder decisions. I think it was Eisenhower who said, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” Maybe when life pushes us to go faster, we should use those very times to slow down and think about what really matters. Slow is good!
Author
In the “Creativity” book that I referred to in this post, one man says that one way he tricks himself into taking his time in his creative work is that he pretends he is in prison. He said he knows it sounds kind of strange, but if he pretends he’s in prison, then time has a different meaning. There is less of a hurry. He has all the time in the world to do the work right.
I like the idea you mention about “active procrastination.” My only concern with that for myself is that I could easily let that slip into excuse-making. It could quickly turn into regular-old-procrastination. It’s hard to find balance in all these things, but I’m trying. Thanks for your comments!
Joe, thanks for another great post. Now that I’m in the autumn of my life (or is it winter?) I’m paying more attention to what really matters. Yesterday, for example, I sat in the yard with my husband for two hours (time when I’d usually write a chapter or so of my current book). We had some family matters to discuss and their importance eclipsed any other work. It felt good to resolve a pressing situation together, taking the necessary time to do so. It meant letting go of what seemed important to handle what was important in that moment. I also took a week off this month to go camping and hiking with my women friends–something I’ve been doing each summer for a decade or more. While there I led a journal-writing session with the women–as I do each year. It always surprises me at how much comes up when we let go of our worries and simply write from the heart as nature inspires us.
Author
Karen, I really enjoyed your recent blog post on your mountain hike, and I will copy the link here for other readers who might want to read it. You help me to think about looking at life from a wider perspective, but you are also someone who is very productive as a writer. You seem to find the balance that many of us struggle to achieve.
http://findinggoddaily.com/2012/08/01/finding-god-on-mammoth-mountain/
I’ll have to check this book out though I’ll never be able to pronounce the author’s name in a million years. 😎
This is a major struggle for me. I can focus for long enough periods to write, but I have so many demands that I can’t focus enough to do research–and I must do that before I can write.
And in the last few months, I’ve had to shelve writing completely to focus all my attention on improving my health (paid off too–blood sugar now back in normal range, cholesterol good, 46 pounds off).
But I also fret over the other stuff I never have time to focus on. I want to learn to draw, pain, play banjo. And every single one of those things requires laser focus, just like writing.
At this point in my life, it feels like creativity is getting shelved. But hopefully for just a season.
Author
Funny you should mention the banjo. I used to want to learn to play it too. But then I realized, when would I ever have time to pursue THAT?
(Congratulations on your 46-pound loss!)
Uh, sorry. That was PAINT, not pain. 😎
Joe, I’ll be thinking about this post all day. It’s very powerful. Too often I think “Have I accomplished enough today?” but I don’t think “Have I loved enough today?” “Have I listened enough?” Not what were the minutes I wasted when I could have worked but where were the opportunities I missed to love or represent Jesus more. I don’t believe loving is always in competition with my writing work. Much of what I write stems from my love of Christ and my love of others. It’s making sure that selfish ambition or blind human drive are not suddenly taking over the wheel of my creative energy – that’s the key for me.
Author
I love your comment, “Too often I think ‘Have I accomplished enough today?’ but I don’t think ‘Have I loved enough today?’ ‘Have I listened enough?'”
Very convicting!