Procrastination: 101

Checklist Queen, Reporting For Duty

I am Queen of the checklist. Determined. Focused. Making progress, and getting things done.

Enjoying the thrill of checking off the next item on my to-do list. Seeing the pages of my book grow and expand with the story I’ve been longing to write.

This is my daily goal, how I love to live and how I thrive.

Don’t we all? Okay, maybe that’s extreme, but you get the picture.

Getting things done makes me happy.

Enter: Procrastination

But then…there are those days when I am nothing like this. When focus has flown the coup and any discipline I thought I had has deserted me.

The culprit?

Procrastination.

It can hit me square between the eyes like a two by four, and my mind will conjure up a thousand other things I could or should be doing instead of focusing on the one thing that’s in front of me to do.

What I want most of all to be doing.

Writing my book.

When The Joy Feels Far Away

Which is very odd because I LOVE to write.

To get the words from my head and my heart and let them flow through my fingers onto the page.

I love everything about the process, and it puts me so out of sorts when my mind wonders and I can’t find the next coherent word to add to the sentence I’ve been staring at since three coffees ago.

Advice That Surprised Me

But then I heard this piece of advice from a writing guru whose instruction I have been following for years. He said when you set your daily writing goals, how many hours you’ll spend a day and how many days each week you’ll be writing to reach your end goal, to be sure to schedule in days for procrastination.

At first, I was almost appalled.

Plan ahead for procrastination? Who does that and why?

Writing is my joy! My release, my escape from the real world for a bit!  

I’ll never join the ranks of procrastinators; that’s just not my style.

Turns Out, He Was Right

Little did I know how right he would be. And how wise.

Knowing ahead of time that we all will probably feel like this at one point or another alleviates the guilt of having an off day.

A day where I didn’t reach my word count goal and I didn’t finalize that scene like I had planned to do.

The point is, procrastination is a part of life, even the writer’s life, and it’s okay as long as we don’t live there for too long.

Let It Breathe

Take a day here and there when your mind feels frazzled or needs a break from your characters or your deadline and do something else.

Chances are you’ll come back stronger the next day, ready and more inspired than if you had forced yourself to push through and write words you would probably end up erasing the next day.

Give Yourself Grace

To be Queen of the checklist has its perks, and I love to see my goals accomplished. But I no longer beat myself up when I have the occasional off day and I feel so antsy my chair may as well be on fire, I just can’t stay seated.

I will forever be grateful for the advice he gave that day.

I took it to heart and can embrace a day of procrastination every now and then, knowing the sun won’t fall from the sky and my book will still get written.

As one of my favorite heroines (or villans, depending on how you read it) once said, “After all, tomorrow is another day.”

What About You?

If you can relate at all to the woes of procrastination, I would love to hear what you do in those instances, and how you get yourself through it!

Use the message box on the “contact me” page and let me know!