By Dave Harris

As a writing coach, I focus on practice and the idea that, for any skilled activity, practice develops skill, and that no matter what our level of mastery, we always benefit from practicing the skill. In this context, “practice” means both small-scale, focused, repeatable, low-consequence activities to increase a skill that will serve their larger purpose (e.g., musicians practice scales to support their ability to play music, tennis players practicing serves to support their ability to compete effectively) or, at a larger scale, an entire career involving actual performance (e.g., a doctor’s medical practice, which has very real consequences for patients).

Academics practice at both levels: the large-scale concern is for a career of contributing to scholarly discourse and teaching others, while, at the small scale, there are specific useful skills that can be practiced, like writing, public speaking, or techniques of data analysis. At both levels, a good practice is regular and repeated.

Oddly, despite my focus on regular practice, I don’t generally think about “habits.” Thus, September’s TAA conversation circle on “Developing Good Writing Habits” sparked some ideas about the relationship between habit and practice, particularly about how positive emotions—love, enjoyment—help turn a practice into a habit.

Academics and academia; Philosophers and philosophy

The work of academia can be a labor of love.  Cynical views of academia abound, and horror stories of departmental dysfunction and professorial misconduct are emotively powerful, but they obscure the commonplace reality of all the academics who are excited about their research and who want to share their ideas for the benefit of all. I’ve met plenty of horrible academics, but I’ve met more kind, generous, capable people who chose to pursue knowledge instead of money.

This may not be chance: it’s much easier to develop and maintain a regular practice—one that can become a habit—if it is rooted in positive emotions. Many don’t believe this possible—there is a US saying: “it’s not supposed to be fun; that’s why they call it work.” But evidence suggests otherwise: for many people, work can be a positive experience.

Consider “philosophy,” which comes from Greek roots as “the love (philo-) of wisdom (sophos).” Socrates and Plato would not have argued that philosophy is easy, but they certainly would have considered it a labor of love: Socrates, after all, sacrificed his life because of his commitment to his philosophical principles.

To emphasize the possibility that work of academia can be a labor of love, I use the words “philosophy” and “philosopher” to refer to those who deal in knowledge, whether as researchers or scholars, as teachers or learners.

This usage is consistent with awarding a Ph.D. (doctor of philosophy) as the most advanced degree in most fields which followed historical usage of “philosophy” that fell out of use as academe specialized, and “philosophy” came to be associated with only one specific collection of questions and methods, while other fields that had once been “philosophy” took individual names, such as physics, sociology, political science, etc.

Virtuous cycles and flow

In our own time, the research of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, as described in books including Flow and Creativity, demonstrates that difficult activities are opportunities for the best experiences in our lives, and offers many examples of scholars who were both successful, and suggests that enjoyment is a common factor in their experiences.

Because difficult activities can be enjoyable, there is a good opportunity to create a virtuous cycle in our practice of philosophy: if we have a good experience writing/researching, that gives us greater motivation to try again, which effort may lead to another positive experience, which then boosts motivation, and so on. Realistically, virtuous cycles take effort to maintain, so they’re never easy, but the alternative, too often, is a vicious cycle, in which failure to make progress leads to greater self-doubt, which inhibits future action, which slows progress, increasing doubt, and so on.

Habit and practice

Practice requires some discipline to get going and to maintain.  No matter how good your practice, no matter how long you’ve maintained it, no matter that you’ve successfully created a virtuous cycle, each new session of work takes at least the effort to sit down and focus.  For these reasons, practice can be difficult to maintain, and this focus on the effort required for practice leads to my focus on practice rather than habit.

In the ideal situation, the practice becomes a habit—that is to say that you maintain the practice with great consistency over an extended period of time.  If we acknowledge the neurophysiological foundation of thought and experience, it’s easy to imagine that regular practice will develop neurological structures that make the work easier and more fluent.  Just as musicians and tennis players develop neurophysiology that supports their music or tennis, so do philosophers develop neurology that will support a practice of philosophy.

Two different levels of habit

During the TAA conversation circle, I was thinking about two different levels of habit: one level which is still very much a practice requiring effort to execute, and one that is so ingrained as to be automatic and can even be difficult to stop.

The first level of habit is an entirely conscious practice: it’s something you do because it’s the right thing to do.  The musician practicing a specific difficult technique or the tennis player practicing serves are examples of this kind of practice. The writer who diligently sits down to write, even when writing isn’t going well, is practicing in this way.

The second level has a greater unconscious element, too—an unconscious element related to positive experience. A musician who hums music or picks up an instrument in moments of boredom is a positive example of this sort of habit. In some cases, this kind of habit might have addictive characteristics, as with gambling or gaming.  It’s akin to the quitting smoker whose hands fidget for a cigarette even though their nicotine patch is alleviating nicotine withdrawal symptoms). There is an automaticity to it. As a philosopher and writer, I experience this with the ideas I’m writing about: in idle moments—in traffic, in line at the grocery—my thoughts wander to my current writing project.

Enjoyment, habit, and addiction

One of the speakers in the conversation circle, Prof. Aliakbar Haghighi, spoke repeatedly about how he considered his writing “fun,” which is generally consistent with Csikszentmihalyi’s reports of people who are in “flow.” It also reminded me of when Julia Cameron, in The Right to Write, talks about writing during the cycles of laundry machines: if the work has led to positive experiences, it is much easier to engage in small moments—if writing is a positive experience, there is less need for the perfect work space or an extended period in which to focus.

Certainly, any pleasure/enjoyment/fun—the “dopamine hit” of pop neurology—is something that prompts a return to the task. It is the same dopamine hit that contributes to addictive activities like gambling or gaming, and that keeps people coming back to those activities, despite the whatever failures or difficulties they might also experience.

In academia, philosophy is held to a high standard and is difficult to accomplish well, so “addiction” to philosophy does not arise as easily as, say gambling or gaming addiction, which are designed to be easy and inviting (it’s worth noting that professional gamblers and gamers have to work hard at their games to out-compete others). High expectations lead to greater difficulty, and more frustrations, making the dopamine hits less frequent and less easily achieved, so that addiction may not follow in the same way that it would for gaming/gambling. But perhaps that extra investment also means that we’re less likely to end up doing the activity when it becomes self-destructive—gamers and gamblers often have problematic relationships with their gaming; whereas philosophers, at worst, become workaholics who struggle socially because of their focus on their work.

Can we become addicted to philosophy? To our research? Well, we don’t want to become dysfunctional in our relationship to work, but, as Aliakbar’s description of his own work shows, we can come to find it enjoyable enough that we choose to work on it in those moments that we’re waiting for the laundry to finish (or that we’re waiting in traffic, or standing in the checkout line at the supermarket).

Philosophy and happiness

Regardless of whether we can become addicted, the evidence strongly suggests that we can come to experience philosophy (all the work of research/scholarship, including the writing) as positive and enjoyable. This seems consistent with the work of Prof. Angelica Ribeiro, author of How to Create Happiness at Work, who co-moderated the September conversation circle.

We’re more likely to experience that love of wisdom—to feel the philosophical love or enthusiasm—if we’re aware that it is possible and we understand the conditions under which it’s likely to arise.

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Dave Harris, Ph.D., editor, writing coach, and dissertation coach, helps writers develop effective writing practices, express their ideas clearly, and finish their projects. He is author of Getting the Best of Your Dissertation (Thought Clearing, 2015), Literature Review and Research Design: A Guide to Effective Research Practice (Routledge, 2020) and second author with Jean-Pierre Protzen of The Universe of Design: Horst Rittel’s Theories of Design and Planning (Routledge, 2010).Dave can be found on the web at www.thoughtclearing.com