Productive vs. Destructive Procrastination
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
I admit, I’ve been procrastinating on getting back into revising my novel. I had planned to revise it this fall and then send it out next year, but an unforeseen move to another state meant that I spent September and October frantically packing and preparing to move. Now I’m more or less settled in the new place, and I have a little room to breathe and try to get back into my writing routine.
While packing and moving, I was engaged in necessary procrastination. This is when life happens, and you need to focus on something other than writing for a while. Some people will try to shame you for this – they say you should write, no matter what – and it’s true, maybe I could have forced myself to do some work on my novel in the past two months.
However, I also believe in another kind of procrastination: Productive Procrastination. This happens when you allow yourself to take a break for a while, in order to let your mind rest and wander, and to fill your creative well. Especially between drafts, it can help clear your mind of the lingering tendrils of the old story, allowing you to see new possibilities.
The key is that it is deliberate. You choose to do something other than writing, with the aim of stirring up the creative juices. You can take an Artist Date, go on a walk, engage in another art form... or even write something completely different. It can also act as a “palate cleanser” between projects. You play, and dream, and let the subconscious do its thing.
However, when we talk about procrastination, it’s usually Destructive Procrastination that comes to mind. This is when we put off things we know we should do, ignoring the negative consequences. We often engage in future discounting, where we truly believe that although we don’t feel like writing now, we magically will at 7:00 am tomorrow. So we tell ourselves we’ll definitely do it tomorrow, and thus escape the discomfort of shame and guilt for not doing it now. We even get a little dopamine hit from congratulating ourselves on what we will do in the future!
This can be an endless cycle of failure to act, shame, determination to do better, failure to act... It’s easy to waste days, weeks, months this way. Or we get to writing a few times, and feel like we’re back on track – but soon stumble right off the track again.
Understanding Destructive Procrastination is helpful in overcoming it. It’s a defense mechanism, wired right into our amygdala, the primal part of our brain that alerts us to anything harmful or dangerous. The thing is, it can’t differentiate between the positive stress of a writing session, and the actual life-on-the-line stress of running from a saber-tooth tiger.
So, the first thing to do is to understand that the urge to procrastinate is coming from a place of self-preservation. It’s like when I was 5 and my mom said if she was late to work she’d get fired, and my little brain thought it meant she would be set on fire so I didn’t want her to go at all! Once she understood where my fear was coming from, she laughed and forgave me for being a pain about her leaving.
If you’re beating yourself up for procrastinating, you have to do the same – forgive yourself, and understand it’s a natural human reaction. BUT: It is based on false beliefs. You’re not going to die if you sit down and write. It might be dangerous to your ego, if you think you’re brilliant and what you write turns out to be... less than brilliant... but that’s okay.
Writing is hard work. It takes a ton of mental and emotional energy. You can acknowledge this and understand that our brains often prefer to take the lazy route whenever possible. In his seminal book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman says that in a sense we have 2 systems working in our brains at any one time. System 1 is automatic, fast, expending little effort. System 2 is the slower, deliberate, effortful thinking we do when we need to concentrate on something. System 1 leads to snap judgements (“He cut me off! He must be a jerk.”). System 2 is reasoning something out (“He’s really in a hurry. Maybe he’s late for work, or rushing to his grandmother’s house because she fell.”).
Writing is, for most people, more of a System 2 activity. Sure, there are times when we’re in flow, and it seems like it’s all System 1 – we're coming up with great stuff with little effort! But we’re designed to conserve energy, and the mind is very capable of shunting the Writing Express over to the System 1 track unless we’re very determined to do it.
Understanding may lead to forgiveness, but we can’t let it end there. If we’re writers, we have to write. Sometimes thinking of the future can help motivate us. We envision ourselves very clearly, at the desk, writing. We feel our butt in the chair, the sun on our back. We smell the coffee on the desk next to us. We hear the tapping of the keys (or the scratch of the pen). We feel the excitement of being in flow. We feel the satisfaction of having written. Focusing on the desired future - and letting that predict our behavior, instead of past failures to act - is a great motivator.
I have created a meditation visualization that may help with this. You can grab it here.
You can also create visual cues to motivate you: post affirmations around your house, or create a vision board for your writing (in general or for a specific project).
Another great trick is Mel Robbins’ 5 Second Rule. Say 5-4-3-2-1 GO and just write. Don’t allow all the reasons you have to procrastinate to gain a voice in your brain. 5-4-3-2-1 and that’s it. No argument, no debate. Often all you need is a little push past the initial inertia. Give yourself 5 minutes, and you’ll probably be in business.
I am also a great fan of the power of 15 minutes. It may not seem like much, but if you can persuade yourself to do 15 minutes per day, you are at least doing something. Often it’s the promise that you only have to do 15 minutes that gets you started. Once the 15 minutes are up, you may very well be on a roll and not want to stop.
Finally, don’t forget to congratulate yourself when you keep your promise to yourself to write! If you treat it as unimportant or meaningless, or focus on how much you didn’t do, you send a terribly negative message to your brain – and repeated often enough, that negativity will affect your motivation to want to write at all. Consider giving yourself a tiny reward – a piece of chocolate, or a short walk, or something that will help make a positive association with writing.
Procrastination is a protective mechanism, but don’t let it overcome your desire to create. It’s based in fear – but it is not based in reality. Understand it, and take positive steps to work with it, and you will transform your relationship to writing.
And now, I have to get back to my novel...
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