Newsletter 6: February 11, 2008
Procrastination
(approx 500 words, and many of those are borrowed)
I talk to clients every week who are beating themselves up because they think are procrastinators.
And the first thing a person like that need to be told is yes, you are. Because so are we all. Putting things off is normal. Doing things at the last moment is normal.
Ok, there are some individuals who are obscenely organized (maybe because they are procrastinators on the inside?). But most of us procrastinate, because for some reason that is how humans are made.
I don’t say it’s a good thing.
I do say it doesn’t make you a bad person.
Look:
Callie Khouri said "I haven't yet found a way to get up every day and go sit in my office for three hours... Even in my own office, which I thought looked like a great working environment because I was in my own house, I still find I really need to be where there are no people and there's simply nothing else to do but write. I can think of fifty ways to rearrange the top of my desk before I can write.”
Callie Khouri won an Oscar for Thelma and Louise. Procrastinator or not, it didn’t get in the way of doing enough.
And Alan Ball said "I don't know if other writers experience this, but when I sit down in front of the computer, all of a sudden cleaning the refrigerator becomes incredibly attractive. I think, 'You know what? I really should organize my files. I haven't done that for a while.' It's just a trap. It's avoidance. I don't know why something that I love as much as I love writing, something that provides my life with so much meaning, and pays my bills, why it's such a chore, and why I would avoid it as much as I do."
Alan Ball won an Oscar for writing American Beauty. He’s a successful writer with a clean fridge. Doesn't that sound like a good thing to be?
Don’t blame yourself for being human. If you can only work when there’s a deadline, then create a deadline. If you need to get away from your internet connection, then get away from your internet connection. Doing that doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a realist and an actual working writer. Do what it takes and don’t waste time and energy on wishing it didn’t. There's no shame in having the honesty and commitment to do what it takes for you. This is the secret of productivity.
Something you can try today: Relax: allow yourself to be you are the writer you are. If you can only work when there’s a deadline, then create a deadline. If you need to get away from your internet connection, then get away from your internet connection.
David
David Jung McGarva
+1 (818) 707 1871
Write me: david at todayiwrite dot com
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