Obligation and motivation have a complex relationship. On one hand, obligation will lead us to do things that we don’t want to do. We don’t necessarily want to get up to go to work, but we do because of our obligation to do so, for example. On the other hand, obligation can turn pleasure into pain—the event we might have chosen from interest, suddenly becomes a burden when it is an obligation.
I think of this dynamic in the a writing practice and particularly in my relationship with writers with whom I work. Writing is hard and requires a lot of effort. When it starts to feel like an obligation, that sense of burden can really start to weigh.
Psychologist Neil Fiore, who for many years worked (and perhaps still works) with graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, argued that procrastination often arises from resentment—the sense that the research is an obligation keeping the writer from other things.
For people who have become writing-averse, especially for people who have started to struggle with writing anxiety after enjoying it earlier in their lives, this obligation-fueled distaste becomes a real problem.
Internal and external sources of obligation
Some obligations are external—the commands of parents, teachers, work superiors, etc.—are external obligations. A speed limit, for example, is an unwelcome external imposition on the impatient driver sure they can drive twice as fast and still be safe. These external obligations are typically unpleasant and source of resentment.
Some obligations are internal. If, for example, I feel much better when I consistently practice yoga, I feel an internal obligation—it is only my own desire for long-term well being that I put up with the short-term discomfort of a yoga practice. These internal obligations may have a touch of unpleasantness, but they do not generate the same resentment because of their fully optional nature: I am not trapped by them in the same way that I am trapped by an external obligation.
Some obligations have a mixed provenance that can make them emotionally complex. For me, personal correspondence often falls into this category. There is an emotional residue from my childhood when I hated to write and was forced by my parents to write thank you notes—the unpleasant external obligation. But there is also the more mature internal obligation stemming from gratitude that is only unpleasant in the sense that I will feel better for thanking people to whom I am sincerely grateful.
Discipline vs. obligation
There is a gap between discipline and obligation, especially between an external obligation and a personally chosen discipline. Choice is a key factor—the emotional state related to the external obligation compared to the internal personal choice is huge—when one has made a choice, it’s much easier to feel enthusiastic about it.
To be sure, we can feel trapped by our choices. We may choose a job or relationship and later find that we need to leave that job or relationship. That can be true of a discipline, too. A person who enjoyed eating meat might choose to become a vegetarian for personal convictions, maintain that discipline despite temptation, and then give up their decision a decade or more later.
We want to engage with writing and our work as a discipline, not an obligation. If our writing and work are both a discipline and an obligation, we can choose a perspective on which to focus.
Discipline and obligation
If you are in academia, it is likely that you are motivated by things like curiosity/the desire to gain knowledge and/or social service (perhaps while also getting rich/famous, as, e.g., inventor of a new technology both serves society and can also get wealth/fame).
Being in academia, however, creates obligations. You have to meet the expectations/demands of the institution in which you work. You have to satisfy professors when you’re a student. When you’re staff or faculty, you have to satisfy hiring committees, grant funders, journal editors and reviewers, etc.
The obligations make it too easy to lose sight of the internal motivation for the discipline. Unfortunately, this can really poison the experience of work in much the same way that negative feedback can kill motivation to work on a project.
Can you choose to focus on the discipline instead of the obligation?
This is not to suggest that you fail to meet obligations or ignore them, but, to the extent that they are overlapping, to focus on the aspects of them tht grow out of the personally chosen discipline rather than on the externally imposed obligations.
For example, there is pressure to publish on the scholar or researcher. On the one hand is the obligation of the publish-or-perish environment of academia. On the other hand is the desire to share valuable knowledge. The researcher who has evidence for evidence-based practices, or the scholar who identifies some important theory both do some sort of service to society by advancing the scholarly discourse. They can only do that by getting published through peer review.
Focusing on the potential help to society, or even just on selfish personal interest an curiosity, makes it easier to work than focusing on the demands of a peer reviewer or editor or professor or dean or whoever is making demands of you. If you see what you’re doing as helping people (or yourself), it’s easier to work as if you see your work as a response to someone else’s demands (especially if you feel their demands are unreasonable).
Choosing the positive focus
The world is complex. Things in the world are imperfect. The people we love appear to be imperfect at times. The activities we love or enjoy are sometimes disappointing or frustrating. So, too, is the work of writing or research or teaching, whichever it is of these that motivates us to work and write.
We have some choice in where to turn our attention. If your supervisor is yelling at you to meet a deadline, you can still remember that your work is going to serve society.
Try to avoid looking through the lens of obligation and remember, whenever possible, the lens of discipline.
Don’t let a sense of obligation poison an experience you would have otherwise enjoyed. That’s a challenge, but working on it can pay off in peace of mind.