PART FOUR
Things you can do to conquer procrastination
___________
This short blog series is designed to help you identify habits that lend to procrastination, to help you understand why you have fallen into these habits, and to offer you an action agenda for dealing with it. I know it’s only November, but now’s a great time to be thinking about New Year’s resolutions for your writing life. Certainly, procrastination is high on the list of many creative people. Why not prepare to cast off bad habits and begin new ones today?
___________
Things you can do to avoid procrastination
- Break down your manuscript into smaller components and tackle each component individually, one at a time. (This is the “Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day” approach.) You can write anything to completion in just 15 minutes a day by doing this.
- Give yourself rewards for completion of unpleasant tasks. In example: “If I write 10,000 words toward my novel, I will take myself shopping for ___________.”
- Make a blueprint of all the tasks you need to undertake to finish your manuscript. Rank them in order of importance to you (sometimes they rank themselves naturally because some need to be done before others can be done). Then set some completion goals (with dates and times, if possible) for each of these tasks. Be reasonable with the amount of time you expect each will take and forgive yourself if you take longer than expected. Being flexible will keep you on course until you can master a strong sense of how long things take to complete. As long as you’re working, you’re not procrastinating, and that is the ultimate goal: the get things done.
- Allow yourself some time every day to weigh and make decisions. Sometimes we don’t give ourselves enough time to consider our options and then, when we are pressed to make decisions, we flail. Even 10 minutes a day spent looking at your To Do List and making decisions for that day alone can help tremendously.
- Creative visualization really does work. Regularly daydream about succeeding at your project. Enjoy the positive feelings that come with visualizing success. Then imagine what it will take to accomplish your project. Check in on your visualizations at any time, and especially when you feel yourself faltering. (This is the “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” approach.)
- Remember that setting out to write (and to publish) anything is a courageous act of faith. Don’t forget to consciously assign real value to your work. Do you know anyone who can do what you are doing? Probably not. Reminding yourself that what you do has unique value and durable meaning can go a long way to motivating you to your work’s completion.
- Set up your working and/or creating environment in such a way as to minimize distractions. Don’t answer the phone (land line or cell) when you write. Don’t answer email all day long; choose specific times of the day just for these sorts of tasks, then get in, get out and let it collect offline. Turn off IM. Log off the web. Eliminate unnecessary noise and/or encounters with other people as much as possible. This may mean scheduling work time with a sign on your door that says “writer at work” so that others around you know to leave you alone. Be protective of your writing time, space and energy; if you aren’t protective of it, who will be?
- Delegate certain tasks to others whenever possible. Sometimes we all just have too many things on our plate. Set loose those optional tasks you do out of obligation but which only consume your time and don’t feed you. This is especially important for women, as we tend to take on unpaid, unrewarded roles out of a need to satisfy social expectations. You don’t have to be part of the PTO to be a good mom, for instance. Share your tasks with others who are better able to do it or who are more available. It is never a sign of weakness to ask for help.
- Ask a friend to check up on you as a way to keep you accountable to your tasks. Taking a class that demands weekly homework is another way to do this. Meet with a friend to write, and then stick to that schedule.
- Schedule periods of time that are strictly for writing and all its related tasks, if you are able. This is how Toni Morrison wrote her novels when she was a single working mother raising young children.
- Also, just as important: schedule downtime. The working brain, like working muscles, needs quality rest. For downtime, choose activities that are relaxing and invite laughter and stress relief, such as exercise and socializing. Meditate, garden, bake, make other kinds of art, read, build jigsaw puzzles, play Sudoku.
- Sandbag your schedule. If you’re most productive at the beginning of the week, schedule more writing time then. If you are most productive in evenings or on weekends, choose those times for scheduled writing. Figure out when you are most energetic and productive as a writer and shape your schedule to maximize this.
- Visualize what happens if you don’t do the work of writing the book. That’s actually a way to assign positive reinforcement to your goals: if you can see what the price is you’ll be paying for not doing the work, you’ll be more likely to get the work done to avoid unpleasant consequences.
- Sometimes writers get bogged down in lots of small tasks that still need completion. Take one day every couple of weeks and tend to these nagging details. Do them, one after the other. Completing them will make you feel like you’re accomplishing something (because you are) and alleviate some of the weight that comes with the task of writing. There’s evidence that striking things off the To Do List generates a sense of chemical well-being in the brain; treat yourself when you can!
- Remind yourself that if you can talk, if you can think… then you can write.
- If you panic at the presence of a blank page, sit inside that panic for a few minutes. Recognize how it comes on. Understand that fear is self-limiting. It comes on, it lingers, and then it fades. Knowing this makes it possible for you to own the fear. Say, “This is my fear. It happens to me sometimes. It’s all mine and of my own creation. But it has not destroyed me, it has just delayed me because I have allowed it to.” And then tell it to go away, you have work to do. Literally. Once you own your fear, you can tell it what to do. Try it.
- Take notice of other places in your life where you procrastinate. Awareness is the first step to combating all sorts of personal bad habits, including procrastination.
- Remember this: You’ll never know what you can do if you don’t do it. The lesson here is this: Living in regret is far more damaging than the wounds of other people’s judgments or a failed writing project (which is still a step toward something better).
Feel free to share your solutions to the pervasive problems that procrastination presents in the comments section below. I’d love to hear what other ways you’ve been able to keep your manuscripts on target!
See Also:
Conquering Procrastination─Part One of Four:
“Indicators that you’re procrastinating”
Conquering Procrastination─Part Two of Four:
“Reasons why you might be procrastinating”
Conquering Procrastination─Part Three of Four:
“Lies we tell ourselves”
Public Domain Image: “Three Little Pigs: Third Pig Builds a House” by L. Leslie Brooke, from The Golden Goose Book, 1905. Courtesy Project Gutenberg.
Filed under: creative writers, creative writing, creativity, critical thinking, inspirations, procrastination, productivity, women's writing, write to done, Writer's Rainbow, writers, writers block, writers' odyssey, writing, writing groups, writing life, writing process, writing resources | Tagged: coach, coaching, creative writers, creative writing, creativity, inspirations, rainbow, seattle, tools, write a novel, writers, writing, writing for | Comments Off on Conquering Procrastination: Part Four of Four