Ending Procrastination

Ending Procrastination, by Jim Rohn

Perseverance is about as important to achievement as gasoline is to driving a car. Sure, there will be times when you feel like you're spinning your wheels, but you'll always get out of the rut with genuine perseverance. Without it, you won't even be able to start your engine.

The opposite of perseverance is procrastination. Perseverance means you never quit. Procrastination usually means you never get started, although the inability to finish something is also a form of procrastination.

Ask people why they procrastinate, and you'll often hear something like this: "I'm a perfectionist. Everything has to be just right before I can get down to work. No distractions, not too much noise, no telephone calls interrupting me and, of course, I have to be feeling well physically, too. I can't work when I have a headache." The other end of procrastination "being unable to finish" also has a perfectionist explanation: "I'm just never satisfied. I'm my own harshest critic. If all the I's aren't dotted and all the T's aren't crossed, I just can't consider that I'm done. That's just the way I am, and I'll probably never change."

Do you see what's going on here? A fault is being turned into a virtue. The perfectionist is saying that his standards are just too high for this world. This fault-into-virtue syndrome is a common defense when people are called upon to discuss their weaknesses, but, in the end, it's just a very pious kind of excuse-making. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with what's really behind procrastination.

Remember, the basis of procrastination could be fear of failure. That's what perfectionism really is, once you take a hard look at it. What's the difference whether you're afraid of being less than perfect or afraid of anything else? You're still paralyzed by fear. What's the difference whether you never start or never finish? You're still stuck. You're still going nowhere. You're still overwhelmed by whatever task is before you. You're still allowing yourself to be dominated by a negative vision of the future in which you see yourself being criticized, laughed at, punished or ridden out of town on a rail. Of course, this negative vision of the future is really a mechanism that allows you to do nothing. It's a very convenient mental tool.

I'm going to tell you how to overcome procrastination. I'm going to show you how to turn procrastination into perseverance, and if you do what I suggest, the process will be virtually painless. It involves using two very powerful principles that foster productivity and perseverance instead of passivity and procrastination.

The first principle is: Break it down.

No matter what you're trying to accomplish, whether it's writing a book, climbing a mountain or painting a house, the key to achievement is your ability to break down the task into manageable pieces and knock them off one at one time. Focus on accomplishing what's right in front of you at this moment. Ignore what's off in the distance someplace. Substitute real-time positive thinking for negative future visualization. That's the first all-important technique for bringing an end to procrastination.

Suppose I were to ask you if you could write a 400-page novel. If you're like most people, that would sound like an impossible task. But suppose I ask you a different question. Suppose I ask if you can write a page and a quarter a day for one year. Do you think you could do it? Now the task is starting to seem more manageable. We're breaking down the 400-page book into bite-size pieces. Even so, I suspect many people would still find the prospect intimidating. Do you know why? Writing a page and a quarter may not seem so bad, but you're being asked to look ahead one whole year. When people start to look that far ahead, many of them automatically go into a negative mode. So let me formulate the idea of writing a book in yet another way. Let me break it down even more.

Suppose I were to ask you: Can you fill up a page and a quarter with words, not for a year, not for a month, not even for a week, but just today? Don't look any further ahead than that. I believe most people would confidently declare that they could accomplish that. Of course, these would be the same people who feel totally incapable of writing a whole book.

If I said the same thing to those people tomorrow if I told them, "I don't want you to look back, and I don't want you to look ahead, I just want you to fill up a page and a quarter this very day" do you think they could do it?

One day at a time. We've all heard that phrase. That's what we're doing here. We're breaking down the time required for a major task into one-day segments, and we're breaking down the work involved in writing a 400-page book into page-and-a-quarter increments.

Keep this up for one year, and you'll write the book. Discipline yourself to look neither forward nor backward, and you can accomplish things you never thought you could possibly do. And it all begins with those three words: Break it down.

My second technique for defeating procrastination is also only three words long. The three words are: Write it down. We know how important writing is to goal-setting. The writing you'll do for beating procrastination is very similar. Instead of focusing on the future, however, you're now going to be writing about the present just as you experience it every day. Instead of describing the things you want to do or the places you want to go, you're going to describe what you actually do with your time, and you're going to keep a written record of the places you actually go.

In other words, you're going to keep a diary of your activities. And you're going to be amazed by the distractions, detours and downright wastes of time you engage in during the course of a day. All of these get in the way of achieving your goals. For many people, it's almost like they planned it that way, and maybe at some unconscious level they did. The great thing about keeping a time diary is that it brings all this out in the open. It forces you to see what you're actually doing and what you're not doing.

The time diary doesn't have to be anything elaborate. Just buy a little spiral notebook that you can easily carry in your pocket. When you go to lunch, when you drive across town, when you go to the dry cleaners, when you spend some time shooting the breeze at the copying machine, make a quick note of the time you began the activity and the time it ends. Try to make this notation as soon as possible. If it's inconvenient to do it immediately, you can do it later. But you should make an entry in your time diary at least once every 30 minutes, and you should keep this up for at least a week.

Break it down. Write it down. These two techniques are very straightforward. But don't let that fool you: These are powerful and effective productivity techniques that allow you put an end to procrastination and help you get started achieving your goals.

Three Lines

After weeks and weeks of agonizing writing, of inserting words and taking them out again, of ending hours of work with only a handful of words to show for them - if that - there's been some breakthrough.

Query-wise, an arrangement finally came that made a semblance of sense. I came to the minute where I realized there was nothing more I could do without another pair of eyes, at which point I sent it off to Beta Reader Shelley, who had the quickest turnaround time ever and sent it back that night. Her notes were spot-on.

I'd pretty much rewritten the query {except for a few good lines that needed to stay}, and I was hoping I wouldn't have to do a rewrite again. I thought I may have to, though. Then I wasn't sure. The time comes when query-writing where you have no idea if your work has any merit or value or sanity or coherence at all. {This is when you send things to awesome beta readers like Shelley.}

I didn't have to rewrite. Basically, I have only three lines in the query that need work. Compared to the previous demolition of the first query, this was definite improvement.

THREE LINES. Three lines until I'm finished with the thing. And I will finish. Want to know why?

I've promised myself that there shall be no more White Collar watching until I finish this query. This, I promise, will work. Especially since my White Collar day is tomorrow. Oh yes, query-writing is definitely happening today.

What have you used to motivate you to finish those drag-your-heels projects?

Such A Big Story

I'm breaking away from the humor section on Pinterest to write this blog post. {If you do not have a Pinterest, you are both missing out on one of the internet's most engaging activities...and avoiding the worst timesuck of your life. Let's just say it's addicting. Set a timer. Obey your timer. And if you can't, thou hast been warned.}{However, the humor section has given me so much laughter that I'm probably adding several years to my lifespan. In which case, all that wasted time should cancel out. In theory.}

I was describing the dystopian WiP to a friend of mine, whom I shall call Athena, because I can, and she wants to read it. This is...well, this is lovely, but it's also bad. Because it's not written yet. Because I don't have all that much of a story. I have a girl who wears {brown} leather vests, a prince with a streak of blue in his hair, a bomb, a German shepherd, and a rebellion. In a nutshell.

I'm at a place right now where I must decide how big the story is. When it began, there was only the matter of the rebellion as far as life-threatening external conflict went. But now I'm wondering, what if there was a bigger threat, a threat from another country or something intending total extermination. I don't know. I could play it all Hunger Games-ish and focus in on the first book, then pull out to the big picture later on.

Which brings up the question: How many books is this thing? It's in two parts that could be made three, but I'm not sure they're long enough to be books. Or maybe they will be, once I insert all this plot stuff that I haven't yet figured out.

So many questions. Such a big story. But I'm going to write it.

How Not to Write

Well, Paper Hangover has the Friday Five (yes, yes, it's Monday) for us this week! :)

What are FIVE of your most distracting (procrastination-worthy) things (habits, websites, etc.) on the internet?

1. Facebook. My fingers know this better than I do. Every time Firefox opens, Facebook is Numero Uno.
2. Blogger. Granted, I get mine in Thunderbird. But I'm always scrolling down to see if anything new has come in and must be read right now. Or, perhaps I need to write a new blog post, hehe. :)
3. The Word Count Tool. I use OpenOffice (which I adore), and it just so happens to count punctuation marks with its word counts. *rolls eyes* Which means that whenever I'm hitting a bump, I'm logging on to check my progress without the punctuation marks.
4. Twitter. Granted, I totally forget I have it unless I'm looking for something to procrastinate with. But when I remember...I can stay there for hours, just scrolling and scrolling downdowndown and finding out what people are up to. :)
5. Britain's Got Talent. I don't go here very often, because it sucks you in and you can't get out. I watch video after video after video after video until an hour has passed, and I don't know what happened! Singing, comedy, the ultimate random, I just love it. No idea why I prefer it to America's Got Talent. I think it has something to do with the British accents...
   

Share the Love V

For your Friday delight, I give you the best of this week's blog reading. Feel free to pick one you haven't read! And if you've read them all, then let me tell ya - you've got good taste.


Show & Tell: Putting On Airs, by agent Mary Kole

Inspiring: YOUNG AND ACCOMPLISHED AND A LITTLE BIT FANCY, by Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

Relationships (With Your Books): Why It's Good For Writers to Love Then Hate Their Books, by Jody Hedlund, The Preacher's Bride

Future Possibilities: Tech Talk and the Active Ebook, J. A. Konrath, Jack Daniels series

Characters: Embracing the Dark Side...of Character, by agented writer Lisa Gail Green; Creating the Non-Stereotypical Character, by blogger Stina Lindenblatt

Procrastination: Things we do instead of that manuscript., by blogger Mia Hayson

World-Building: Pump Up and Write Now - Monday, by blogger Paula (featuring notes from Holly Black)

You'll Thank Me

There's a reason why I don't have a post today.

It's because this link, brought to my attention by Kristin Cashore, is much more fun than writing a blog post.

Or reading one.

So, seriously. Click it. Turn up your sound and click the little squares. You'll thank me.

Sure It Did, Dear

I have a synopsis! Granted, it's in bullet points.

And, um, for the wrong book.

I should be able to explain this. You see, I have a writing accountability partner, and if I don't write she's going to kill me.

And how come you didn't think this synopsis would count? Hmmmmm??

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh...it made sense when I thought it........?

Yeah, sure it did, dear. I think you're just doing anything you can to keep away from your important, soon-to-be-queried synopsis.

*wide-eyed* What? Why on earth would I do that?

Ending Procrastination

I'm trying desperately to wake up and realize that it's already Tuesday, the festivities are over, and life is going to keep going...and at a very fast pace. Which means I don't have anything written today. HOWEVER-

I first read this article on Pete & Dora Zdanis' blog several weeks ago. It really hit home, and a lot of it speaks directly to writers. I know I'm a chronic procrastinator, and I have a feeling I'm not alone. Hope this is helpful! Let me know what you think: Are you a procrastinator? What have you found helps you stay on track? (I welcome any and all ideas!! I need them.) :)

I hope I'm not breaking any blogging rules by reposting this. It's kind of like a ReTweet...only different. I don't plan to be reposting articles very often (only after holiday weekends), so don't worry. I'll be myself again tomorrow! (I don't feel exceptionally bad because Pete & Dora were reposting the article themselves.)

Ending Procrastination
- by Jim Rohn

Perseverance is about as important to achievement as gasoline is to driving a car. Sure, there will be times when you feel like you're spinning your wheels, but you'll always get out of the rut with genuine perseverance. Without it, you won't even be able to start your engine.

The opposite of perseverance is procrastination. Perseverance means you never quit. Procrastination usually means you never get started, although the inability to finish something is also a form of procrastination.

Ask people why they procrastinate, and you'll often hear something like this: "I'm a perfectionist. Everything has to be just right before I can get down to work. No distractions, not too much noise, no telephone calls interrupting me and, of course, I have to be feeling well physically, too. I can't work when I have a headache." The other end of procrastination—being unable to finish—also has a perfectionist explanation: "I'm just never satisfied. I'm my own harshest critic. If all the I's aren't dotted and all the T's aren't crossed, I just can't consider that I'm done. That's just the way I am, and I'll probably never change."

Do you see what's going on here? A fault is being turned into a virtue. The perfectionist is saying that his standards are just too high for this world. This fault-into-virtue syndrome is a common defense when people are called upon to discuss their weaknesses, but, in the end, it's just a very pious kind of excuse-making. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with what's really behind procrastination.

Remember, the basis of procrastination could be fear of failure. That's what perfectionism really is, once you take a hard look at it. What's the difference whether you're afraid of being less than perfect or afraid of anything else? You're still paralyzed by fear. What's the difference whether you never start or never finish? You're still stuck. You're still going nowhere. You're still overwhelmed by whatever task is before you. You're still allowing yourself to be dominated by a negative vision of the future in which you see yourself being criticized, laughed at, punished or ridden out of town on a rail. Of course, this negative vision of the future is really a mechanism that allows you to do nothing. It's a very convenient mental tool.

I'm going to tell you how to overcome procrastination. I'm going to show you how to turn procrastination into perseverance, and if you do what I suggest, the process will be virtually painless. It involves using two very powerful principles that foster productivity and perseverance instead of passivity and procrastination.

The first principle is: Break it down.

No matter what you're trying to accomplish, whether it's writing a book, climbing a mountain or painting a house, the key to achievement is your ability to break down the task into manageable pieces and knock them off one at one time. Focus on accomplishing what's right in front of you at this moment. Ignore what's off in the distance someplace. Substitute real-time positive thinking for negative future visualization. That's the first all-important technique for bringing an end to procrastination.

Suppose I were to ask you if you could write a 400-page novel. If you're like most people, that would sound like an impossible task. But suppose I ask you a different question. Suppose I ask if you can write a page and a quarter a day for one year. Do you think you could do it? Now the task is starting to seem more manageable. We're breaking down the 400-page book into bite-size pieces. Even so, I suspect many people would still find the prospect intimidating. Do you know why? Writing a page and a quarter may not seem so bad, but you're being asked to look ahead one whole year. When people start to look that far ahead, many of them automatically go into a negative mode. So let me formulate the idea of writing a book in yet another way. Let me break it down even more.

Suppose I were to ask you: Can you fill up a page and a quarter with words, not for a year, not for a month, not even for a week, but just today? Don't look any further ahead than that. I believe most people would confidently declare that they could accomplish that. Of course, these would be the same people who feel totally incapable of writing a whole book.

If I said the same thing to those people tomorrow—if I told them, "I don't want you to look back, and I don't want you to look ahead, I just want you to fill up a page and a quarter this very day"—do you think they could do it?

One day at a time. We've all heard that phrase. That's what we're doing here. We're breaking down the time required for a major task into one-day segments, and we're breaking down the work involved in writing a 400-page book into page-and-a-quarter increments.

Keep this up for one year, and you'll write the book. Discipline yourself to look neither forward nor backward, and you can accomplish things you never thought you could possibly do. And it all begins with those three words: Break it down.

My second technique for defeating procrastination is also only three words long. The three words are: Write it down. We know how important writing is to goal-setting. The writing you'll do for beating procrastination is very similar. Instead of focusing on the future, however, you're now going to be writing about the present just as you experience it every day. Instead of describing the things you want to do or the places you want to go, you're going to describe what you actually do with your time, and you're going to keep a written record of the places you actually go.

In other words, you're going to keep a diary of your activities. And you're going to be amazed by the distractions, detours and downright wastes of time you engage in during the course of a day. All of these get in the way of achieving your goals. For many people, it's almost like they planned it that way, and maybe at some unconscious level they did. The great thing about keeping a time diary is that it brings all this out in the open. It forces you to see what you're actually doing—and what you're not doing.

The time diary doesn't have to be anything elaborate. Just buy a little spiral notebook that you can easily carry in your pocket. When you go to lunch, when you drive across town, when you go to the dry cleaners, when you spend some time shooting the breeze at the copying machine, make a quick note of the time you began the activity and the time it ends. Try to make this notation as soon as possible. If it's inconvenient to do it immediately, you can do it later. But you should make an entry in your time diary at least once every 30 minutes, and you should keep this up for at least a week.

Break it down. Write it down. These two techniques are very straightforward. But don't let that fool you: These are powerful and effective productivity techniques that allow you put an end to procrastination and help you get started achieving your goals.