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For a long time I’ve been interested in the marked differences between productive obsessions and unproductive obsessions, a distinction that you haven’t heard much about but one that’s of real importance in the lives of creative people and in the context of authentic living.

What is a productive obsession? A productive obsession is a pressing idea that serves your meaning-making needs. It is a response to your desire to live fully and an answer to the question, “What should really concern me?” It is the fruit of mental energy: it bubbles to the surface because of your curiosity, your enthusiasm, and your passion.

A productive obsession generates mental energy: you obsess about the business you want to build and you find yourself energized as you research options, make plans, and do the work of starting it. It also depletes mental energy: because you are thinking hard, your mind grows exhausted over time. A pressing idea for a project bubbles up in you and it is at once exciting, demanding, and exhausting. That is the nature of productive obsessions. 

All of the following are productive obsessions: chewing on a musical theme day and night until a symphony is born; obsessing about a particular injustice and starting a nonprofit to right that wrong; obsessing about the look of the dawn and getting up early every morning to take digital photographs; obsessing about a software improvement and working late every night to turn those pressing thoughts into a new program; and, in the sphere of personality, obsessing about your decision to make a big, positive change in your life and making that change. Without the pressure of productive obsessions to power them, the symphony, nonprofit, photographs, software program, and positive change would probably not happen.

An unproductive obsession, by contrast, is a pressing idea that serves no good purpose

and is generally a response to anxiety.  This is the most common sort of obsessing that we do. You’re anxious about flying; you obsess about the plane crashing. You’re anxious in general; you obsess that you haven’t locked your front door, that you haven’t shut off the oven, or that your hands aren’t clean. Like a productive obsession, an unproductive obsession is the fruit of mental energy: your mind has been whirring, but in a worried, anxious, and fearful way.

Also like productive obsessions, unproductive obsessions deplete mental energy: there is little in life as exhausting as obsessing fruitlessly. But in contrast to a productive obsession, no energy is generated by an unproductive obsession; no good feelings of excitement or enthusiasm arise; no meaningful work gets done; in short, there is no upside whatsoever.

You haven’t heard much about the distinction between productive obsessions and unproductive obsessions because psychotherapists define all obsessions as negative. This definitional gambit occurred a long time ago, before Sigmund Freud, and is the fruit of one man’s thinking. In 1877 the German psychiatrist Karl Westphal defined obsession in the following way: "Obsessions are thoughts which come to the foreground of consciousness in spite of and contrary to the will of the patient and which he is unable to suppress, although he recognizes them as abnormal and not characteristic of himself." In that moment a definition was born.

If only Westphal had chosen to call these particular intrusive, unwanted thoughts "unproductive obsessions,” we might have had the chance to chat about productive obsessions. But for the past hundred and forty years clinicians have viewed all obsessions, irrespective of their content, source, meaning, or purpose, as symptoms of disorder.

Once you define obsession as an "inappropriate, unwanted, intrusive, recurrent thought," you leave yourself no room to consider the possibility that a given obsession might be intrusive and recurrent but also appropriate and desirable. Mental health professionals have defined themselves out of the chance to discuss the important differences between productive and unproductive obsessions. I think that we can reclaim this territory. It would be good if we did so.

Unproductive obsessions, like fearing that your door isn't locked and checking it a hundred times a day or fearing that your hands aren't clean and washing them over and over again, are naturally a horror.  Productive obsessions, by contrast, are the fruit of our meaning-making efforts.  Without them, life becomes dreary and meaningless. Now is the time to correct this century-old definitional error and better attune to reality.

It takes more than passion to accomplish meaningful work and to lead an authentic life. It takes a special kind of obsessing: it takes productive obsessing. The pressure-filled state of productive obsessing, with its dangers and its unmatched rewards, is a state that most people fear cultivating—with the result that they don’t accomplish their goals or realize their dreams. If you have goals and dreams, you need to know about productive obsessions: what they are, why you want them, how to cultivate them, and how to manage them.

For more on this subject, please take a look at Coaching the Artist Within.

My book on this subject will appear from New World Library. If you’d like to be kept apprised of its publication, please subscribe to my newsletter. If you’d like to contribute to the book, please contact me. I look forward to hearing about your experiences with both productive obsessions and unproductive obsessions. Drop me a line!