Destination: Procrastination
Procrastination. The deadly enemy of productivity. And it’s not only a deadly foe, it’s also a protean one, taking many different forms, making it difficult to defeat the beast. Therefore, as an act of service to the writing community — and as a break from my current work-in-progress — I have taken it upon myself to list below some of the most common types of procrastination I have observed, (and in many cases, been guilty of myself), with a bit of advice on how to manage or avoid them. I hope you’ll find this helpful, and that the resulting productivity boost will outweigh the time you spend reading this instead of working.
The Research Rabbit Hole
An especial problem for anyone writing historical fiction and/or about an area of life they haven’t personally experienced. Accuracy is cool and all, but if you now know absolutely everything about nineteenth-century beekeeping because of a character who has beehives and only appears in one scene (and then doesn’t even talk about his beehives)… well, you’ve got issues. Have you considered writing the story first, at least in outline, and then filling in the knowledge gaps later?
Procrasti-planning
Related to excessive research is excessive planning — or, in the fantasy fiction world, excessive world-building. Both of these are especially dangerous because, unlike a lot of procrastination activities, they feel like productivity. Chapter-by-chapter outlines, detailed maps, meticulous timelines — all these are good to have, but they are not, ultimately, the same thing as a completed book. Only a word count target and a commitment to hitting that target is going to get you there, I’m afraid.
The Perfect Time and Place
The carefully-chosen music playlist. The corner table in the cafe with exactly the right level of background noise. The ideal notebook and pen, the perfect font. Exactly the right snacks and hot drinks. While it’s good to make sure you’re feeling relaxed and comfortable, at some point you have to admit that your writing environment is never going to reach absolute perfection, so maybe you should just get on with it.
The Other Project
This is the one form of procrastination that is, actually, productivity — it’s just productivity on the wrong thing. There’s nothing like sitting down to work on Project A to make Project B suddenly look like the most exciting thing ever, and vice versa. To an extent you can weaponise this tendency by deliberately having more than one project on the go at once — but if your article deadline is looming while your ambitious SpongeBob SquarePants /Les Miserables crossover fanfic has reached half a million words, then it’s probably time to rethink your priorities.
The Suspiciously Spotless House
It’s strange how the dust suddenly looks more obvious when you’re trying to settle down and get some writing done, as does the overflowing laundry basket and the sink full of dirty dishes… still, at least at the end of it you’ve got a nice clean house to not-write in, unlike:
Procrasturbation
Feeling a little bit… tense? Uptight? Can’t concentrate? Perhaps a quick, um, release of tension will help to regain your focus. Just make sure you’ve got plenty of tissues to hand, and maybe some spare batteries.
The Sucking Hole of Doom aka Social Media
The basic problem with Twitter etc is that they’re so accessible. The other problem is that, because everything’s in bite-size chunks, it’s incredibly easy to get suckered in with an ‘oh I’ll just have a quick look maybe 5 minutes’. Don’t do it! I have personally adopted a ‘one day on, one day off’ approach to social media with occasional longer dry spells because, while I do like being in touch with the world, I find abstinence easier to manage than moderation.
What in general can be done to avoid Destination Procrastination? Well, in an extension of my social media policy, one thing I’ve found personally helpful is rapid mode-switching: ie, setting myself fifteen minutes ‘on’, and fifteen minutes ‘off’. I find it easier to maintain focus for a short time, so I can get a surprising amount done in a brief burst. And then, setting a timer for the procrasto-breaks really does help me to do only the most urgently pressing non-writing things in that time, often tedious admin tasks I’ve just not got round to before. Believe it or not, after a few hours of this rapid switching, I’ll often find I’ve achieved not only my daily word count, but also a bunch of other things as well.
