How do we achieve happiness, creativity, and productivity? Learn to be autotelic.

And unlearn the "pics or it didn't happen" mindset

my son’s drawing, his autotelic activity

When no one is looking, what do you do?

Apparently, for me, not much.

I’ve started multiple personal writing projects but they have gone dormant like the winter barren vineyards behind my house. I don’t plan on sharing this work with many people and, because of this, I am unmotivated.

What’s worse is this work means more to me than sending out this public newsletter. I’ve ignored what could nourish me creatively because I know the end result will be seen by few readers, or none at all.

I write these words on this page specifically so you can read them. But would I write them if I knew, in the end, it would be tucked away in a hardbound journal in my bookshelf for no one to read?

Our modern brains are trained to seek validation from little squares on our screens. We post to get likes, to get discovered, to be seen. Are we “doing it for the gram” or are we doing the work because we loved it, and for no other reason?

I bet many of us, including myself, do the work to receive external validation.

I’m annoyed it’s hard for me to enjoy writing unless I know it’s being read by an audience.

Why can’t I be more like Virginia Woolf or Vincent Van Gogh? Woolf’s work of diary entries were primarily written for her own pleasure, without an intention to publish. It’s incredible how Van Gogh painted for the sake of painting. In his decade-long career, he created roughly 900 paintings, 1,100 drawings and sketches — an average of 200 pieces per year. He completed his first painting at 27 and didn’t sell his first work of art for another 10 years.

They did what they love because they simply loved it. No strings attached.

This is being autotelic.

The term is derived from the Greek words auto, meaning self, and telos, meaning purpose or goal. Someone who is autotelic means they’re doing whatever they’re doing for no other purpose than enjoying the act. That’s it.

Anyone can be autotelic, like folks who create art, play a sport, read, cook, knit, create music, or rock climb. The key part is the person’s intrinsic motivation.

It’s creating art without an audience. It’s writing without a reader. It’s running a marathon because you love running (and torture 🤪).

After mentally beating myself up for watching a graveyard of unfinished projects and letting them sit there to rot, I realized my problem. I needed to find, again, why I love to write and create.

Since I was a girl, I wrote in journals because I grew up in an immigrant household where feelings weren’t allowed in our home. I don’t say this so you feel bad, it’s how it was so I needed an outlet. Writing was an unblocked avenue to share the dump truck of my thoughts, feelings and opinions without anyone punishing me for having them.

It’s why I came back to writing again as an adult when I spent the last decade or so having a hell of a time processing emotions. When I’m truly engulfed in writing for the sake of writing, I allow myself to let go, be myself, and write from my center, the true north of my calling. When I had no one, I had this. I loved writing because it loved me back.

I write because I can’t scream the rude, stupid, too vulnerable and inappropriate thoughts that refuse to leave my mind. I write to stream words of love and longing, hope, fears, and dreams.

I write because my voice needs to be heard, even if the only one listening is a piece of paper.

To do this, I need to find my flow with writing again. I’ve gotten lazy with my writing practice. I hardly write just to write, except when I see the looming self inflicted deadline of this newsletter I produce every other week. I’ve stopped writing consistently in my journal. I used to write Morning Pages religiously (3 full pages stream of conscious writing) and I don’t remember the last time I did it. All this PLUS, I need to get off my damn phone.

In the book Art & Fear¹, the authors cited a study that followed ceramicists, ones who churned out work in quantity vs. quality. They found those working on art in large volumes allowed the artists to learn from mistakes, have an openness to experimentation, and develop skills quicker. With this constant creation, it can lead to more quality art.

It seems my answer to learn to have an autotelic personality is to just write, and often. And without a care for anyone watching.

If you look up psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he’s known for creating flow theory. The “flow experience” is achieved when an autotelic person is fully immersed in their activity, and nothing else seems to matter. Based on his research of artists and musicians, each described feeling joy by simply doing what they love for no other reason than loving the act itself.

In his findings of about 8,000 interviews with people who enjoy their work, from Dominican monks to blind nuns, to Himalayan climbers, to Navajo shepherds, he said of the flow state: “There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity. You know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other. You get immediate feedback. You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears, you forget yourself, you feel part of something larger. And once the conditions are present, what you are doing becomes worth doing for its own sake.”

Doesn’t the flow state sound bliss? I haven’t had this experience with writing in a long while, or maybe I haven’t reached that flow with writing yet. I hope I get to it someday.

Autotelic people are internally driven, they’re curious, and they can truly live in the present moment.

If we strip away all the titles and achievements we think we need to have in life, isn’t this what many of us want for ourselves?

1. THANK YOU, ANNA!!!