A few years back, I read a study about monkeys and baskets. I don’t remember the names of the researchers or where they worked, but here’s the gist of what happened.

They split monkeys into two groups then taught all of the monkeys how to open a straw basket by pulling up a latch and lifting the lid. Simple. All the monkeys became expert lid-lifters.

Next, researchers put bananas into the baskets of one of the groups of monkeys. Those monkeys watched the bananas being put into the baskets and knew they were there.

Now, here is the fascinating part of the study. The non-banana group of monkeys continued to be able to unlatch and lift lids just fine. However, the banana in the basket group of monkeys wanted to get to those bananas so badly, they completely forgot how to open the lids. Frantically, they tried chewing through the basket, smashing it against the wall, maybe jumping on it—I can’t remember. But the point is that they were so overwhelmed by their desire to eat those bananas, they couldn’t remember a simple task they’d already mastered.

Okay, here’s how I learned this lesson in my own Real Life. I’ve written a book about the first nine centuries of Russian history for kids. You might ask why I thought that would be such a great idea. Let’s just say, it’s a long story.

The book is humorous and anecdotal—I’m positive kids would like it. A couple of years ago, Apple came out with iBookAuthor, a template for an interactive book. I decided to enter my finished Russian book into the template and release it through iTunes as an interactive book that could be read on an iPad. Using the template, you could include video and audio clips, 3-d widgets, tables, graphs.

Of course, Apple claims that this template is easy to use and maybe it is—especially for computer literate people—but I spent over a year, using Very Bad Language, trying to fit my book into the template. Hour after hour, I watched tutorials, then tried to enter my text and pictures, only to have them disappear in a poof when I hit some mysterious button.

I was about to give up when one night at about two in the morning (yes, I’m an insomniac), I began to play with the template. I opened a new template and created a crazy book by dragging and dropping all the stuff on my desktop. The opening video was of a small child passing gas. The cover page was of my husband and me in Hawaiian outfits. I created a table of fictitious historical figures, like Frederic the Slimy, the years they lived, and whether they were Naughty or Nice. I figured out how to include a clip of one son attempting to play a cardboard didgeridoo. All of a sudden, because I was “playing” and wasn’t overwrought about achieving a specific goal, I began to understand the workings of iBookAuthor, well, maybe about 50% of the program.

My point: once I relaxed, once I wasn’t so worried about “the banana in the basket.” I was able to let my mind do the work of understanding iBookAuthor.

Of late, I’ve spent lots of time trying to learn new skills: building a website, creating book trailers, overseeing the design of book covers, learning to play mandola and banjo ukelele. I’m realizing that rather getting all tangled up in obsessing over results, I need to relax and playfully find joy in the process.