Do you know the pain of not doing your work? I used to experience it as a constant, nagging ache at the back of my mind, a metallic sense of wrongness in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes, it was barely noticeable. Sometimes, it was strong enough to stop me in my tracks, double me over, bring tears to my eyes.

Up to late 2011, I was fairly frequently not doing my work (see under: small children, among many other things). These days, by contrast, I am doing my work.

There’s no pain … and whoa, I just paused to acknowledge that, because it’s huge. Instead, there’s a sense of stability, of bite and groove. Even when I don’t make much progress for a little while, I never grind to a complete halt, and I trust that my momentum will return.

It’s all down to what I wrote about a couple of months ago: the tiny things I do every day in order to keep my promise to myself.

Until I began that process, I’d never done anything remotely similar. The shift is immense. In many ways, it has rewritten me.

“Ooh, now I can fly to the sun, just like I’ve always wanted!”

A little way into my promise-keeping experiment, I gave another of B.J. Fogg’s ideas a whirl – namely, his “Tiny Habits” exercise. I had high hopes, given that it was Fogg who had inspired my commitment to tiny things in the first place.

The way the Tiny Habits dealio works is that you sign up, for free, choosing three behaviours you want to develop over the course of a week, and then there’s an automated email series with a daily check-in.

A lot of people find this life-changing.

I … kind of flopped at it?

Although I’d followed the instructions to the letter and come up with three perfectly viable habits to try (or so it seemed to me), I kept forgetting all about them. I did at least two of them most days, but I don’t think I had a “perfect” day the whole week.

Fogg’s system is well developed: he describes clearly how to “anchor” your desired behaviour to an existing automatic behaviour, and he gives highly specific guidelines on what constitutes an effective Tiny Habit (hint: go tiny … tinier … no, tinier than that).

Furthermore, he’s clearly speaking from the solid theoretical standpoint of a Stanford University professor. But something about it – or me – or the relationship between it and me-at-the-time – just didn’t gel.

I was frustrated, because I really thought I’d nailed the “do tiny things consistently” lark.

(Can one nail a lark? Given a sufficiently sharp nail and a sufficiently compliant – possibly chloroformed – lark, I think one can.)

Turns out I hadn’t. The lark remained unnailed (much to its relief, one rather suspects). Something was missing.

See, I don’t forget about my tiny things.

What’s the difference? I believe it comes down to that ageing chestnut, extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation

You’ve probably heard of this distinction, but to summarise, broadly speaking, extrinsic motivation is a reason to do something that exists outside myself.

So, for instance, observing the rules of the road. Hauling out the glad rags for a friend’s wedding. Having that report on your desk by nine a.m.

It follows, then, that intrinsic motivation is a reason to do something that exists inside myself.

“You know what,” one might say, “today I’m going to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. Because that sounds like a lark I’d like to nail.”

(James Joyce said that. More or less.)

Extrinsic motivation and I? Let’s just say we have a complicated history. We go way back, deep into the territory of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Approval Junkie.

As a child I jumped through ALL the hoops. My continued existence, in fact, was predicated on being able to wring favourable judgement from those in authority. I was really good at it, too.

These days, for an intricate web of reasons, extrinsic motivation and I are on a break.

(Er. I mean for certain things, such as creative work and personal development. I’m still following the rules of the road and dressing up for weddings. And I’d say, if you explained to me why your desk was the best place for that report, and nine a.m. the best time for it to arrive there, I’d get it done.)

Pats on the head, once the staple nourishment of my tender, twisted little soul, don’t do it for me any more. I need a better reason.

Trying to do my three Tiny Habits for B.J. Fogg that week just ran me into a series of rucks and pulled threads. Even though I’d chosen the habits myself, something about the structure of the thing apparently busted me right back to my teens. To be honest, it was tough going.

By contrast, my one-word-one-stitch regime is for me, pure and simple. My motivation could not possibly be more intrinsic. Happy days.

The story is not over

It’s fair to say that since extrinsic motivation loosened its grip on me, there’s been a kind of power vacuum. Saying that I’ll do something can feel quite risky these days, because I’ve done so much belated rebelling against the system (man). My experimental daily practice is – still – revolutionary, but it hasn’t solved everything.

After the Tiny Things Incident I did what any stable, balanced, self-respecting artist would do: I ran and hid. For several years. It was a setback, truly, to discover that I wasn’t Magically Cured, that I couldn’t now make myself do anything that took my fancy.

More recently, I’ve been experimenting with a bit more structure in my life – a greater level of explicit commitment to the things I want to do.

Living without a schedule, as I have been for all sorts of reasons, only gets you so far: other people’s agendas encroach from all sides, at all times, unless you set up palisades.

I’m not sure exactly what’s going to work best for me, or whether I’ll end up giving Tiny Habits another whirl, but I’m trying things on for size.

Watch this space, I guess.