S3 E59: Understand Your Creative Motivation Using the 4 Tendencies
The 4 Tendencies framework from Gretchen Rubin can be really helpful for understanding your creative motivation. I explore how each of the tendencies’ reactions to expectations (inner and outer) might impact how you approach creativity and share some tangible tips to help each tendency tap into creative motivation!
What’s your tendency? How does it affect your creative motivation?
Tag me on Instagram @rebecca_hass (or send me an email) to share!
MORE FROM REBECCA
Creative Wellness Letters (my every-other-week notes of encouragement for your creative life)
Compassionate Creativity Coworking Club (try your first session for free!)
I have openings for Creative Coaching in 2022: learn more here!
Sign up for the free Feel Good Creativity Unchallenge (5 days of super easy creativity + wellness prompts)
My PDF workbook: Fuel Your Creative Work With Compassionate Productivity
RESOURCES MENTIONED
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 59 of Being a Whole Person.
Today I'm going to talk about the 4 Tendencies framework and how that can help you understand your own motivation, and, of course, your motivation for your creativity and your creative practice.
Before I get into it, my usual announcement to please rate and review the podcast if you haven't yet, it really does go a long way in helping an independent podcast get found. We depend on those algorithms to help our work get found and help us spread our messages as independent podcasters. Like I always say, I want to be able to spread this message further - that we get to prioritize our creativity and our wellness in conjunction with each other, and that we don't have to run ourselves into burnout to do that. So thanks in advance if you rate or review.
Also there is another way to support the podcast on the site Buy Me A Coffee, which is a lot like Patreon. Right now, on there, you can buy me a tea. (I changed it to tea, because I don't drink coffee. Can't really do the caffeine.) But you can support on a one-time basis by buying me a tea. Or you can also subscribe at $5 a month and get some weekly check in prompts sent to you by email every week. I'm also working on some new support levels and some new offerings that will be housed there at the Buy Me A Coffee site. So stay tuned for more details about that, probably coming in April, or sometime very soon.
So let's get into today's topic. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you've probably heard me mention the book The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin. The full subtitle is: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better and Other People's Lives Better, Too. It's a very long title. I highly recommend this book. I found the framework very helpful, and if you want to figure out which of the four tendencies you are, she has a quiz on her website, too, which I'm linking to in the show notes. You might want to take that before you listen, or maybe you want to listen and see which type you think you are, and trust your intuition on that.
Either way, this framework is all about how you react to expectations, both internal and external. So, outer expectations might be something like meeting a work deadline, or following traffic rules, and an inner expectation is something that you've decided on for yourself, such as quitting some kind of a bad habit, or keeping up with your creative practice, things that you internally have deemed important.
Of course, how you react to expectations is going to directly relate to motivation, which is foundational to you keeping up with a creative practice. You can see the last episode, Episode 58, for a deep dive on what it means to practice and how to have a nourishing creative practice, if you're interested in going deeper on that.
If you're feeling skeptical about this, of course, there are limits to sorting people into types. It's not that simple. You might relate to more than one of these tendencies. But like any framework with types, I think it's incredibly helpful to understand yourself a little bit better, even if you don't agree 100% with the characteristics of those types. If you're skeptical, maybe you're a Questioner. More about those types in a second. As with anything, of course, trust yourself, your mileage may vary, take what works and leave what doesn't. That's always my motto.
I found this framework helpful for a long time, but I haven't really seen anyone apply it to creative work specifically. So that's why I really wanted to do this episode. First I'll just quickly run down what the types are, so that you can have a basic idea, and then I'll talk about how it relates to your creativity and your creative life.
An Upholder is someone who meets both inner and outer expectations. The sentence that Gretchen Rubin has attached to this is: “I do what others expect of me and what I expect for myself.”
A Questioner is someone who meets their own inner expectations, but they resist the outer expectations. They want to question those, and the phrase for that is: “I do what I think is best according to my judgment, if it doesn't make sense, I won't do it.”
Then we have Obligers. They tend to meet outer expectations, things that other people expect of them, and they tend to resist their own inner expectations. The phrase for that one is: “I do what I have to do. I don't want to let others down, but I may let myself down.”
Then the fourth type is Rebel. As you might guess, rebels resist both the inner and the outer expectations. The phrase for that is: “I do what I want in my own way. If you try to make me do something, even if I try to make myself do something, I'm less likely to do it.”
Maybe even in the short descriptions, you are feeling a resonance with one or more of them. I'd be interested to hear which type you are, if you want to contact me about it.
So let's talk about the ways this may impact your creative life. You might feel part of more than one group, or maybe you're feeling part of a group in certain situations, but a different tendency in others. I got Obliger on the quiz. I took it again recently. I knew I had gotten Obliger in the past, but I wanted to see if that still resonated, and I know that I have shifted over the years. I'm not sure about Gretchen Rubin’s thoughts on shifting types.
I think that engaging in self development and moving toward work that's just more aligned with what I want, has made me less of an Obliger and has strengthened my motivation toward those inner expectations, you know, being able to stay true to myself, and those things, maybe relate to that, too. Sometimes I really do feel like an Obliger in terms of projects that feel scary or vulnerable, or mundane stuff, like working on the SEO on my website, and I need some kind of outer accountability to help me get those things done.
But in some habits, like taking my daily walk every day, I feel more like an Upholder because I'm really able to stay true to my own expectations on that. So maybe you feel a little bit divided, too. Sometimes I even feel the Questioner or Rebel energy depends on my mood. I think most of us in our teen years probably had some of those tendencies a bit stronger than maybe we do as adults.
So let's talk about upholders first. If you've read the book, The Four Tendencies, you know that Gretchen Rubin herself was an Upholder. If you're not an Upholder, you might be jealous of their ability to have a really solid habit. For creatives, this translates to being most likely to have a really solid creative practice if that's a priority for you, which I'm guessing it is if you're listening to this.
Getting clear on your priorities, and declaring an action related to them is going to be enough for you if you're an Upholder. For example, if you say you're going to write 1000 words every day, once you've stated that goal to yourself, you're going to be able to follow through with that because you have set that goal. For Upholders, setting really clear expectations is critical. They like rules, and are good at following them, even if they're set by themselves.
Specific deadlines are going to be really important, even if you create a timeline yourself for a project, or maybe the terms of the scope of the work. If you're an Upholder, you're going to be compelled to meet expectations, sometimes even if they seem pointless, so checking in with yourself to make sure your plan is still resonating with you is going to be critical.
If you need any help in that, I have these great weekly and monthly check in worksheets that are for free on my website. The weekly one is just for questions, and takes 10 minutes or less, and the monthly check in is a bit longer, but if you need a little bit of a framework for checking in with yourself, I've got you! I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
The downside of being an Upholder is Upholders can be rigid. So opening up to experimentation might be something that you need to lean into, but if that feels scary, just experimentation without boundaries, set some parameters for it. Maybe you want to be more scientific about your creative experimentation, like you're going to improvise on a certain theme each day, for a week, or something like that. Setting those boundaries and parameters is gonna be making it easier for you to get outside those boundaries, or that rigidity.
Tracking your habits with a progress chart might be an appealing thing for you. I have been tracking my piano practice this year. I have this great daily habit chart from Elise Blaha Cripe, who does the Get to Work Book, which is the planner that I use. Or, actually, I use the weekly planning sheets, I don't use the full planner, but I really like her stuff. I've been following her blog since probably 15 years ago, or something like that. She’s been around a long time and she wrote a great book about goal setting, so, you know that she is an expert on this matter. I don't know if you can still sign up for that little PDF, but I'll see if I can track it down and put it in the show notes. I know people on her email list got it around the new year.
It can also be helpful, if you're an Upholder, to treat a life or a schedule change as a reset. So if, you know, some form of upheaval is coming to your life, that's a really great time to start new habits and just kind of build that in. I know this happened to me a lot when I was working more on a school year schedule. So it was like there was a new year, in the fall. It was sort of like a New Year feeling in January, I mean, of course, that's the calendar New Year, but perhaps my schedule didn't change as much then. Then once summer started, that was also a good time for a reset. You know what those are in your life, but that can be helpful for Upholders.
The second tendency is Questioner. As you can guess, it's right there in the name, Questioners are going to question all expectations, but they're really going to resist the outer expectations, because they're really motivated by reason and logic and fairness and justice. If you're a questioner, you probably hated when your parents said, “Because I said so,” as a reason when you were young. I hated this when I was young, even though I'm not technically a Questioner, but that might be a trigger for you still - arbitrary rules that you can't see the purpose of.
So, asking yourself what needs to get done and why is critical for a questioner. It might not just be that the urgent stuff needs to get done, you really need to resonate with the purpose of the activity for it to feel connected enough for you to want to do it. It's also so helpful to connect deeply with your “why” for creating, in whatever medium you are doing, in kind of a big picture sense, but then also looking for the justification in each step of the process in your project.
Maybe your overall “why” for creating is really clear to you, but it's harder for you to justify parts of the process. An example would be if you're doing a Kickstarter to crowdfund a project, you feel really connected to the project, you're really excited about it. You're pumped to share it with the world, but you might just feel like the work should speak for itself. And making the videos and writing the posts for marketing purposes might kind of feel like a drag to you. So if that's happening, keep connecting it back to your overall “why”, like, “If I do this thing, that doesn't feel like it should be necessary?” Well, it does relate back to the overall success of that Kickstarter, and therefore bringing your whole project to life.
Depending on your work situation, you might have client projects, or other things that are more sure financially. So if some of the things you do for work don't feel that aligned, make sure you have at least one project going at any time that feels meaningfully aligned. This is good advice for everybody, but especially for Questioners who really need to connect with the purpose of things.
The downside of being a Questioner is you might tend to be an over-researcher. I relate to this, even though I'm probably not a Questioner in this framework. You want to make sure you have all the info if you're a Questioner, it's kind of baked in there. But then you might get stuck in the research and get into sort of an analysis-paralysis sort of mode, and maybe not make it past the research phase.
I know sometimes when you're planning a project, it can be really easy to get excited about the research, because that's the safe phase before you actually have to start doing anything or telling anyone about it. That can be like your little cocoon that you might want to stay in and not move forward with the project. So just be aware, if that's happening, it can be great to set a time limit or a deadline for the research phase of your project.
Especially when you're looking at softwares or systems or different platforms for publishing and sharing your work, I know that can be a real rabbit hole for me to try and compare and contrast and find the best one and I spend too much time doing that when I could have spent more time creating. This also could be exacerbated if you're a perfectionist. So be aware of that.
You might want to break down those time limits also, for each part of a project. Like, “I know that I tend to get stuck in the middle of a project, so I'm going to tell myself, I have to declare this section finished and I have to move on. I can go back and edit later but I can't let myself get stuck at that spot.”
Leaning into your internal compass, your intuition, or any spiritual practices that help you stay in touch with yourself is going to be extra important, so that you really know what those inner expectations are. Don't be afraid to set up your creative habit exactly how it works for you, even if you think that might seem weird to other people. Say you need a really specific environment for writing like you need a certain type of music, and you need this one candle on, and that's what makes you connect with your creative flow. That's awesome, make that a ritual, then, because you know what works for you, you can trust that.
Then in terms of reflection, you can use your questioning nature to your advantage by questioning your habits regularly, asking yourself, “Is this habit still working for me? Is doing this practice in this way still working for me? If not, what would make it work better?”
Then we have Obligers. A large portion of the population is Obligers, and a very small portion is Upholders. So if you're an Obliger, and you're feeling down on yourself because you need external accountability, you are not alone. There are many of us who need that, and that's okay.
If someone else isn't involved in a project, it might feel hard for you to justify spending time on creativity, or to prioritize it above more immediately lucrative pursuits. Of course, there are practical reasons for that, but you're wanting to prioritize both of those things, probably. Obligers also can fall into this kind of self sacrifice mode. I've seen this with a lot of educators, especially music teacher friends. You're so dedicated to serving your students and your job, and that's so wonderful, but then it's also at the expense of your own mental, physical, etc. health.
Of course, you're going to feel burned out if you're always serving others at the expense of yourself, having all those other expectations. So that makes it really hard to say no, if you're an Obliger. So having sort of a personal litmus test for “What am I available for? What am I allowed to say yes and no to?”
Also just saying, if someone's going to ask me something, I make it a policy not to answer right away, if I'm not sure, because, as an Obliger, my default is, I want to say yes. There are lots of things that I'm interested in, I want to please people in some way - that can kind of go with the Obliger nature. So just saying, “Hey, that sounds really good, can I take a day to think about it? Can I get back to you next week?” Whatever it is, just set a little boundary so that you have time to really think about it, and you don't just default to yes.
Also, those of you who are multi passionate, it's so easy to want to say yes to so many things, because if you're multi passionate, you just like doing a lot of different things.
There's also a phenomenon called Obliger rebellion, where you have said yes to too many things, you're feeling burned out, and you're maybe nearing a breaking point. Then you just refuse to meet an expectation so that you can cope. That can be a good signal that you need to step back and take some more rest time, or processing time, or whatever it is that you need to replenish some energy.
If you're an Obliger, you might be taking on projects or marketing methods that you think other people expect you to do, or that you think you should, for some reason, because you've seen success from other people. That sounds okay at first, but it might be extra hard to follow through once you're in the messy middle part of the process, because you've lost sight of why you should even be doing that thing, and you're already feeling overloaded. So, there is a limit to that meeting outer expectations.
Obligers need accountability. Like I said, you might need accountability to keep up with your creative habit, and there is no shame in that. This is valuable information that you know about yourself, and then you can work accordingly. You can find an accountability partner buddy, you can seek out a coach like me.
You could join us in Compassionate Creativity Coworking Club, where you have a dedicated time every week, which is Tuesdays 1:30 to 3pm Pacific. You have a dedicated time every week where you're going to show up with other people, you're going to say what you're working on, and you'll get it done together. There's a link in the show notes if that sounds good to you. You're always welcome to come and try a free session to see if you like it.
Obligers also might want to declare publicly that they have a creative goal, like saying on Instagram, “I'm going to do this project, and I'm going to show you when I'm finished.” Just telling someone else publicly might be enough to make you follow through. If that's motivating, that's great. You can leverage the accountability piece however you need to.
The last tendency is Rebels. If you are a Rebel, you are going to be resisting both those inner and outer expectations, and you might feel like it's hard for you to stay consistent. So, asking yourself, “What do I want to do today?” is going to be way more motivating than, “What do I need to do?” or “What do I need to do for someone else?”
Creating a mental space for creativity that allows you to do what you want, even if it doesn't seem consistent, might be something that works for you. Your habits might vary wildly, like one day, you have this three hour session where you get lost in painting and totally in a flow, but the next day you feel like doing other things instead. Like, maybe you want to connect with fellow artists, or plan a new project.
You might find yourself looking inconsistent on the surface, but if you have the motivation, follow it, allow for some spontaneity in your process. You can set up your schedule with some openness, if you're able to. I know not everyone has that flexibility. But that openness will allow for more spontaneity. Maybe you have one day a week, that's a “do whatever I want” day, even if it's not creative stuff. Because, as we all know, life is what feeds creativity. Maybe you don't know what the spark is going to be, you don't know when the idea is going to come. Maybe having a little adventure is just the thing you need.
For rebels, it's important not to listen too closely to others that are saying you have to do something a certain way, because you'll probably just want to rebel and do the opposite, just because. Maybe you really like drawing in the morning, but you heard someone talk about how you have to do your morning routine a certain way with all these steps, then you just decide not to get out of bed early at all, because you don't have to, and you want to push back against that expectation. But maybe that was actually the time when you would have felt good engaging in some creativity.
Side note, if anyone is ever saying you have to do things a certain way to have success, and encouraging you to ignore your own nature and preferences, I always think that's kind of a red flag. So, know thyself is good advice for all of us, not just rebels.
Rebels might want to create a menu instead of a to do list for the day, with the heading “Today I can…” instead of “Today I have to…” For instance, maybe you can do a writing prompt, or you can choose something else entirely. It's completely up to you.
How can you make breaking the rules a part of your process? This can be really helpful in art, and actually can be a huge asset to you as an artist, because breaking rules might make you more innovative, especially if you're sort of immune to other people's expectations. This can help you create new processes of working that really are the best for you personally, and maybe those things can be shared with others, and helpful for them too.
Asking yourself how your art relates to your identity is key for Rebels. If that relationship doesn't feel strong enough, maybe it's worth giving some thought to how you could strengthen your art relating to your identity, or at least understanding it better. If your art feels really like a part of you, you'll be more likely to want to do it, and that wanting is so key for you as a Rebel.
“How does creating make you feel true to yourself?” is a great journal prompt for this too. If you are a Rebel, talking to yourself or someone else working with a Rebel, it's good to present the facts in information, consequence, and then choice, knowing that these are the facts, but the choice is ultimately up to you, or the person you're talking to.
For example, you can say if I practice violin at least five times a week, I'm going to feel more connected to music and better prepared for my upcoming performance, and that's something I want. So, that might be more motivating than like, “I need to keep up a habit because it's important to keep up the habit.”
Like Questioners, focusing on the “why” is going to be so important, and maybe framing your mission of your work as a rebellion against something might be motivating. Like, if I were a rebel, I might really lean into the part of my message that is against toxic productivity, instead of focusing on the positive aspects of “here's what I can do”, or maybe both, but maybe that rebellion part is really what lights your fire if you're a Rebel.
Then, of course, leaning into the uniqueness of how you're creating - how does your approach set you apart from others? Maybe that's very intriguing to other people to share and also really motivating and helpful from a marketing standpoint, because uniqueness is what helps you stand out from others and possibly helps your work get discovered more easily.
So, there's a rundown of all four tendencies. Hopefully you found some nuggets in there that will be helpful for shaping your own creative practice into something that feels motivating for you personally.
Let me know what tendency you are and whether any of what I mentioned about that tendency is resonating with you. I always love hearing from you. You can send me an email at hello@rebeccahass.com or you can find me on Instagram at @rebecca_hass, and that's always in the show notes too. So, I hope this has been helpful. As always, I'm rooting for you in your creative practice and in all things, and I hope you have a great week! See you next time.
Pianist and composer