Don't even try to deny the fact we all procrastinate sometimes! When you are a writer, a creative person who needs many factors to get inspiration and come up with great ideas, the word "procrastination" sounds really awful and impossible to defeat...
Do you want to know a secret? Procrastination is a wrong monster to defeat. Yes, you'll never deal with it if you do not even try to defeat two other monsters that cause your writing procrastination actually. Procrastination is a result, but what is the reason? If you want to defeat your procrastination you will have to deal with... lack of motivation and different writing distractions that do not let you go, bothering you while writing.
So, here we go!
#1 Monster: Your Writing Distractions
I am sure you know what is called a distraction: this is a little (or not very little) thing that tries to take you away from work and does everything possible for you to procrastinate. Well, it's really difficult to write and create something when you are always distracted; so, maybe it's high time to try getting rid from them or decreasing them at least?
The following tips can help a lot:
a) Turn them off!
Literally. Take all your electronic devices and turn them off. It can be quite difficult to do at first, but soon you'll see how much you can do in that 20-30 minutes when your Internet or cell phone do not distract you from writing.
If you still need some websites or contacts for your work, try some plug-ins or applications to limit or block calls or websites you do not need at the moment.
b) Make yourself comfortable
Are you cold? Take a sweater. Are you thirsty? Always have a glass of water on your table. When you feel yourself tired, there will be nothing wrong if you allow yourself some break. This tip is about the basics: meet your needs, and you will feel yourself more comfortable while working and, thus, you'll be more productive.
c) Clean your working place!
Organize your room and desk for work, as it will help you avoid many distractions in the future. Don't let all those photos, books or puzzles distract you from writing. This tip really helped me when I started writing posts for my Omnipapers.com blog: a well-organized working place means a lot.
#2 Monster: Your Lack of Motivation
Dealing with writing distractions is really good and helpful of course, but this is just one side of a coin. As far as we all understand, no work is possible without motivation. No, you can work of course, but this is much more difficult and really sad to work automatically and forget about such a wonderful feeling as excitement about something you do!
Everything can become your motivation: a book, a movie, a flower, a person, a word. It does not matter what motivates you; the point is to allow yourself to be motivated. You see, our problem is we consider some things irrelevant or even stupid for motivation: "How all those quotes on Facebook can motivate us?", you may say and you do not even give that quote by Coelho a chance to become the right thing to motivate you.
Don't try to avoid motivation and allow everything around to motivate you. How can you do that?
- Make notes of everything that motivates you. Even if you can't explain how you can use it now, big chances are it will motivate you later.
- Learn to see all wonders of our world; learn to see them even in small things.
- Find your passion and do not be afraid of following it.
- Do not ignore excitements.
- When you are motivated, try to remember this feeling and think of it again when you need it most. To help yourself with motivation, try reading some really good books on this topic. For example, I would highly recommend you Mastering Motivation: 40 Things You Can Do To Feel Motivated In Less Than 10 Minutes. Enjoy!
We often hear that a person needs a strong willpower to do something. Yes, it's true; but the fact that motivation can be stronger than your willpower is true too. And our big problem is that we can't believe procrastination can be managed so simply! If you read this article, big chances are you can't believe it too and still look for some tips to defeat this scary monster without realizing that you follow these tips already.
Just realize: to become more productive, eliminate everything that makes you procrastinate and keep yourself motivated all the time. Do it constantly. That's it!
Can you share some of your tips for dealing with writing procrastination?
Great post! I've noticed that when my life is busy and full, I tend to procrastinate less. In the summer when I'm only working part-time I get soooo much less accomplished than when I'm working full-time during the school year. I wonder if part of procrastination has to do with knowing there is more than enough time to get things done. When time feels precious, I get a lot accomplished!!