Stop Being a Procrastinating Writer
How to stop putting off your writing projects…
I am a procrastinating writer. I will create deadlines for myself for my writing projects and when they come and go, I’ll just keep moving the completion date further back. I’ll be honest, that’s what I did for the entirety of this long weekend. I waited and waited for an idea to hit me but that obviously didn’t happen. But as we all know it never does. We all sit and wait for an amazing idea to pop in our heads and when it doesn’t, we shrug it off and say we will write tomorrow.
But how often does that actually happen to you?
It doesn’t to me, and I’ve noticed that when I set my writing aside for too long the urge to pick it up again fades further and further away. Writing is a profession that is very easy to procrastinate. Some of us might have deadlines to follow, but the majority of us simply have to make our own timeline and follow that. I don’t know about you, but I am someone that sets a schedule and has a hard time following it, even though I know that I should. For some reason that’s how my brain works, but that won’t get me very far in writing if I keep pushing back the deadline for my works in progress. So, are you also finding yourself continually pushing back your deadlines? If so, check out these tips to stop procrastinating:
Divide your tasks:
I’ve noticed that when I have an overwhelming task on my to-do list, I seem to push it off more often than not. That may be because I have other pressing things to do beforehand, but there are only so many times you can push off a project before you just don’t have the motivation to do it anymore. If you find yourself facing this situation, you should divide the work to be more manageable for yourself. If that is writing a book chapter one page at a time or writing a hundred words for an article or blog post, whatever the project may be, divide it into tasks that are easier to complete so you don’t feel so overwhelmed.
Remove distractions:
I know this is clearly a given, but you’d be surprised by how often writers let themselves be distracted by the things around them. Now I’m not saying that you need to sit in a room with no windows and focus solely on your laptop, but if you know what distracts you easily then you need to eliminate that distractor while you’re writing. For me, and most people, my phone is my biggest distractor. I like to pop in headphones when I write, and a lot of times I find myself staring at my phone and looking for a particular song instead of writing. So, if I find myself gravitating more towards my phone, I will put a playlist on and put my phone somewhere where I can’t see it. By doing this, I’m not tempted to look at my phone if I get my notification and I certainly won’t be changing songs.
Set a timer:
One of the main reasons why writers procrastinate is that they are facing writers block and simply don’t know what to write next. That happens to us all more than what we’d like, but there is an easy way to fix that, and that is to set a timer. Whether you set a timer for 10, 20, or even 30 minutes, doing this will allow you to focus on your writing as you have a mini deadline to get all your thoughts out as quickly as you can. I’ve noticed that when I set a timer and write until the timer goes off, I generate more ideas than I thought I could’ve. Now they might not all be good ideas, but they at least give me a basepoint to start.
We all procrastinate. But, if we want to get out ideas out there and show them to the world, pushing off our writing to the next day certainly won’t help with that.
