Flywheel Energy
Sometimes stopping to solve a problem is the worst choice...
Welcome to All the Tasks Fit to Print, my newsletter on all issues productivity-related for authors (and other solopreneurs)! Watch for my new book, Holistic Productivity: Essays on a New Vision for a Well Balanced Life!
The directions we get as children, as adults, as students, and as employees is that when we encounter a stumbling block is to sit down, figure out the problem, and solve it. We’re told to “power through” and “crack the case” and “persevere!”
Sometimes, that is necessary. In medical emergencies or criminal investigations, for instance, hammering at the problem until a solution is cracked can save lives.
Most of the time, though, the consequences are not so dire. For many writers and artists, it is actually counterproductive to focus exclusively on the problem in front of you.
In my experience as a productivity coach, people tend to fall into one of two categories: the people who need to hit the “stop” button and focus exclusively on a problem until it is solves; and the people who thrive on what I call “flywheel energy.”
Flywheel: A rotating mass used to maintain the speed of a machine within certain limits while the machine receives or releases energy at a varying rate, or as a form of energy storage.
There are, as with everything, shades of gray to that dichotomy. I don’t mean for it be used as an absolute measure. What I want people to think about is how their own energy gets used on creative projects.
I have flywheel energy, which is why I have multiple stories going at any one time. When I hit a roadblock (or worse, a writer’s block) on one story, I just shift over to work on a different one.
I have been lectured numerous times that what I should do is buckle down and work harder on the story having a problem. Don’t let Resistance win! Power through! Keep at it until you vanquish your foe!!!! (or similar motivational aphorisms.)
On rare occasions, that has worked for me. Most of the time, though, stopping to solve the problem means stopping everything. The problem doesn’t get solved and nothing else gets done either. Once I force my writing flywheel to become stationary, the energy it held constant falls apart.
I have learned the hard way that no matter the reason, when I stop writing, I stop writing. I don’t write fiction, I don’t write non-fiction, I don’t write blog posts, I don’t write anything at all. The problem I was having goes into stasis, remaining untouched until some happy accident kicks the flywheel back into motion.
People who don’t have much flywheel energy, or whose flywheels are focused on other things, can and do simply stop whatever they are doing to solve the problem they are confronted with. In fact, for most people, it’s almost a compulsion. They cannot do anything else until the problem is resolved! At its most positive, this motivation solves a lot of problems! At its worst, it locks people into a situation they cannot fix and traps them there indefinitely.
Having flywheel energy means that it is more important to keep the flywheel going than to stop and focus on a thorny problem. This can lead to squirrel syndrome (SQUIRREL!) if not directed well, whereby a person just runs from project to project and never circles back around to resolve issues. They just keep looking for a new project to distract them from problems.
Healthy flywheel energy is about balancing existing projects, problems, and new ideas. Writers like me always have five or more stories in the hopper, even if a few of them have not been actively worked on in a long time (Rogues, my SF space opera, has seen no progress in years, even if I’m thinking about it regularly and always putting it on my short list of current projects—it’s got problems, and I will happily talk your ear off for hours about it because it is often on my mind).
If you feel yourself sinking into the mire of a dreaded fire swamp filled with RoUS, consider your own approach to problems: are you compelled to power through, or do you tend to find better solutions if you redirect your energies for a little while? Maybe your flywheel just needs to keep spinning.
Watch for my new book!
Interesting. I've always had an excess of single-focus energy, and I agree that sometimes I think I need a healthy dose of flywheel energy to get me going on something/anything!