Brainstorm

The person next to you may think that the epitome of brain powering is a sharp game of bridge or a rousing afternoon with a crossword puzzle. You will discover that real brain power is holding a rich idea over time as you productively obsess your novel into existence,

Most people harbor the hope that “when things change” or “when things improve” they will do a better job of productively obsessing and paying attention to their brainstorms. It is much smarter not to wait for that mythical time to arrive.

IF WE BETTER UNDERSTOOD MEMORY AND IMAGINATION we might discover that memory is in part the way that persistent productive obsessions recombine instantly and that imagination is our repertoire of persistent productive obsessions dynamically recombining.

The only sensible course, with respect to each new potential productive obsession that you field, is to pause and think.

If you can get from San Francisco to Paris in twelve hours, what can’t you do in a month? You could get in a lot of productive obsessing — or learn about your idiosyncratic ways of preventing yourself from using your brainpower. In a month you could produce a brainstorm or learn why you refuse to cultivate one.

he realized that he’d put the cart before the horse: the legal contract work was piling up, making him miserable, and it made no sense to try to turn his brain over to a beautiful pie-in-the-sky project when this pressing work required his immediate attention. So he lowered the bar to eye level. What was going on? Why had the contract work become s

By choosing to productively obsess about his horror of tackling the contract work, he’d begun to examine his assumptions and listen to his negative self-talk with a new ear — and that proved enough. He used his brain’s full power to test his assumptions and examine his self-talk and concluded — at first subconsciously and then consciously — that hi

Each of us has that do-nothing, watch-a-little-more-television place in our heart and that think-intensely and work-well place, but the latter is harder to engage. The life of your productive obsession depends on your constant recommitment to your ideals, intentions, and efforts.

if their obsession takes them no further than wringing their hands and spinning their wheels, it is not productive. Their obsession, as excellent as it might be if they genuinely embraced it, is as negative as any other unproductive obsession while it remains a fantasy shrouded in worry.