OVERCOMING PROCRASTINATION
Most of this information comes from Neil Fiore'sTHE NOW HABITand Susan Griffin'sPORNOGRAPHY AND SILENCE: CULTURE'S REVENGE AGAINST NATURE, both of which I highly recommend. I've played with their ideas a little and added a few of my own, which are, of course, based on bitter experience and some stuff I read once.
1. Keep in mind the incredible inheritance you have access to, simply because you're a human being. For all our problems, the human spirit has produced the Sistine Chapel and the split-finger fastball, "Krapp's Last Tape" and Beethoven's final symphonies and the Pogues doing "My Blue Heaven."HUMAN BEINGS HAVE AN INNATE CURIOSITY AND DESIRE FOR ACHIEVEMENT. I hope these suggestions help you access even one tiny splinter of what we've done -- the part that's yours, that nobody else can give. If you're true to your experience, and if you persist, that tiny splinter can make you live forever.
2. Don't give up before you start. Don't resign yourself to the idea that "It's always been like this so this is the way it has to be." Don't think, "Well, the way I do things now is a pain in the ass, but trying something new is scary."
3. Advice such as "just buckle down and do it," "get organized," and "try harder" are based on a dysfunctional definition of procrastination. What they're really saying is: "If you weren't such a lazy piece of crap you could do this. No fooling around. Life is dull and hard. There's no time for fun. Work is a horrible thing to contemplate, but you have to do it anyway." Most procrastination happens because through procrastinating we are temporarily able to relieve fears: fear of failure, fear of being imperfect, fear of impossible expectations. Most of these fears, in turn, are ultimately based in the idea that work and life are awful struggles which we must somehow get through and that this whole horrible process will somehow make us better people in the long run. (In other words, for those of you that are American Lit students, on what's been called "The Puritan Work Ethic.")
4. How do we get around these fears? By temporarily setting them aside, not in favor of playing World of Warcraft, or slam-dancing with the dog, or (insert your favorite procrastination activity here), but by - - -
SETTING THESE FEARS ASIDE IN ORDER TO MAKE A SMALL, IMPERFECT START ON WHAT WE WANT TO ACCOMPLISH.
This idea is, of course, the basis of the sloppiness of most informal invention techniques (freewriting, looping, clustering, talk/writing, etc).
5. Don't, don't, don't plan on completing a project in one big push. This almost certainly means you will have to force yourself to do this enormous task. You can accomplish a lot more in small increments -- even fifteen minutes is enough time to do a little bit of quality work. Just get a decent start, and don't worry so much about finishing. If you start often enough, the end will take care of itself.
6. Create safety in the task. Ask me about the board-walking metaphor as a means of doing this.
7. Make and use an unschedule.
8. How to talk to yourself:
-- Replace "I have to" -- which promotes victimhood and resentment -- with "I choose to."
-- Replace "I must finish" with "When can I start again?"
-- Replace "This is so big/difficult/complex" with "I can take one small step: one rough, rough draft, one imperfect sketch."
-- Replace "I must do this right (i.e., perfectly)" with "I can be human." Accept "mistakes" as feedback, and part of the natural learning process. In fact, try to be imperfect. Intentionally do the first part of your project sloppily: rough draft in crayon, or on a coffee-stained old envelope. Worked for Abe.*
-- Replace "I've got to get this done; I don't have time for play" with "I must make time for play." Reward yourself with fun, friendship, exercise, whatever, after you've made your start. This makes making the next start much easier.
Combined, this becomes: "I choose to start on one small imperfect step, knowing that I have plenty of time to enjoy life."
* Actually, the story of Lincoln writing the Gettysburg Address on an envelope is apocryphal.