Well, I finally figured out what my writing problem was – what it had been the whole time. As I thought, I don’t get writer’s block. Instead, I’m a thoughtless procrastinator. What a fool I am and always was. This just rubs me raw. The answer was sitting right in front of me the whole time, but I wouldn’t see it. It’s like playing chess against an opponent who can see that I don’t know what I’m doing and ends the game in three moves – a Fool’s Mate.
I briefly considered trying to make this habit of mine more positive by labelling it ‘inertia’ or ‘reluctance’ – something that doesn’t necessarily induce guilt. But it really isn’t positive, is it? It’s a nasty little habit, far worse than reading porn or picking my nose. Huh. And here I thought I was being picked on by powers beyond my control. A convenient lie.
Initially, I thought I was just being lazy. So, I did a Google search on ‘stop being lazy’. That was no help. Every one of the articles, in one way or another, insisted that laziness is not a real thing. They want to ascribe it to trauma or burnout or … who knows what. Not helpful. One author said laziness is usually what we say when we mean procrastination. So, I did a Google search on ‘stop procrastinating’. Bingo.
I stuck with James Clear, because I’ve read him before and I like his ideas. His position is that most people procrastinate because they don’t have a plan, they don’t have daily goals and they don’t know where to start. He recommended Anthony Trollope and Jerry Seinfeld as models.
Trollope turned out 42 novels and assorted shorter works by writing at least 250 words every 15 minutes, several times a day. No time for mulling over sentence structure and word choice. He did all this while riding the train every day for his job – as a bank examiner.
Seinfeld is the richest comedian in history. His method is to take a big calendar – boxes for days, one year at a glance – and write jokes every day. Every day he writes jokes, he gets to put a big red X through that day’s box. The plan is to fill every box. Don’t break the chain. The idea is, if you write 100 jokes, chances are you won’t have enough good material to fill 10 minutes of stage time. But if you write 10,000 jokes, you can fill an hour with great jokes – and an amphitheater with paying customers. Consistency is a superpower – possibly the only one worth having.
So, James Clear wrote that the way to overcome procrastination is to create a list of small goals, five or six tops, early in the morning or the last thing the night before. These goals cannot take more than an hour to complete, each. The quicker, the better. Then, as you go through the day, you pick one of those goals and you just do it. Get it done. Once it’s done, strike a line through the item and move on. Anything you don’t get done today cycles to tomorrow. No guilt, no shaming, just action. Interesting.
So, I tried it. I set myself five simple goals, written on a sheet of paper on my desk. One of the goals read: Write 500 words in 45 minutes. Wonder of wonders, I wrote at least 500 words in just under 45 minutes! I also got all but one of the other items done. So, I did it again the next day – same result. And again – and again… In the past three weeks, I have gotten well over 3000 words into a manuscript that hadn’t seen any new material in months. I am gratified and ashamed by turns.
By the way, the goals have to be quite specific. I’ve been having problems with my art goals on the list because I’m not specific enough about what to draw. I will fix this. All my arts deserve the chance to live and to grow. And write the lists down, every day. I know for a fact that if I skip a day and don’t write anything down, that just gives my procrastination urge permission to waste the day. My perfectionist tendencies are finally under control, I have to get this little beastie in chains, now.
I’ve promised a couple of people, including a cousin I’m very close with, that I will have this latest manuscript done before the end of the year. With this new goal-setting habit in place, I should be able to keep that promise. The alternative is to put myself in the position of being the victim of another Fool’s Mate. But this time it would be one I walk into with my eyes wide open, and that’s just not acceptable.
As a final note, I should say that one of my goals for today was to write a blog post. So, here it is, and now it’s done. See – it works every time.
Be well,
bcd