We all do it—to some extent, that is. You. Me. The princesses on the top and the paupers at the bottom. It seems to be some primal urge. Some burning instinct to seek self-pleasure, not pain, and avoid the unpleasant or overwhelming.
I’m talking procrastination, of course. The art of putting off till tomorrow that which should be done today. I’d say the majority of writers are procrastinators, and that’s okay. Many times, though, procrastination can be a positive force and not a negative curse. Especially for writers who can perfect their procrastination down to a science.
Procrastination’s best defined as “the act of avoiding doing what you know (or think) you should be doing”. The word descends from the Latin word procrastinare which means “to postpone or delay” and the Greek term akrasia, the “lack of self-control or the state of acting against one’s better judgment”. Leave it to the Greeks and the Romans to label the condition because these ancients were some of the biggest procrastinators of all time. In fact, back then procrastination was viewed as an admirable quality—something that was to be perfected for peak performance.
I know that doesn’t make sense, on the surface. But drilling down, you can make the case that, properly done, intentional procrastination can increase your productivity on important tasks. It’s a matter of setting priorities and focusing on prime output that brings delayed gratification—not a waste time on trivial stuff that seems like fun in the moment (immediate gratification).
Psychologists have done a lot of procrastination studies. Traditional thinking suggests procrastination is nothing more than a time management problem. These thinkers suggest self-discipline is all that’s required to Get Things Done, or GTD as the acronym’s known.
Others aren’t so sure about this. Dr. Tim Pychyl of Carlton University in Toronto and his counterpart, Dr. Fuschia Sirois of Sheffield University in the UK, did a detailed procrastination project and came up with a different suggestion. They saw procrastination, at its root cause, as an emotional management issue, not time.
Drs. Sirois and Pychyl found their studied subjects reacted to procrastination in relation to how they felt in the moment about tackling certain tasks. It’s human nature to avoid pain and seek pleasure, and that emotional connection is just as hard-wired as flight or fight. It’s really about mood when it comes to GTD, say the Docs.
The Docs went on to report the anti-procrastination mindset for GTD is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which is a psychological offshoot to Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). They say that a GTD mentality based on ACT principles allows “psychological flexibility” to tolerate uncomfortable thoughts and feelings (ie: I really don’t want to do this right now, but I know I have to or the consequences will be more untolerable). Recognizing this lets a person stay in the present moment in spite of negative feelings and to prioritize choices and actions that help that person (you) get closer to what you really want in life.
Their studies, the Docs said, found most people couldn’t envision their long-term situation—where they’d be in five or ten years instead of at the moment. Procrastination, or putting off important works, kept their subjects “happy in the moment”. They termed this “mood repair” and found people naturally avoid uncomfortable feelings by putting off tasks-at-hand regardless if the tasks are vital to overall life success.
This doctoral work claims people are actually wired to think of themselves as two different people. They say we have our present selves and our future selves but, strangely, we naturally prioritize our present mood at the expense of our future well-being even though the choice is irrational in our long-term welfare. The Docs reported brain scan waves of people told to envision themselves ten years out were the same as when told to think of celebrities they didn’t know.
Thinking about it, this does make sense. We procrastinate because our brains are wired to care more about our present comfort than our future wellness. That makes it clear we have two ways of dealing with procrastination:
- We make whatever topic we’re procrastinating on feel less uncomfortable.
- We convince our present selves into caring about our future selves.
Yes. I know. This is easier said than done. However, as a serious writer, you have to focus on the long term. It means feeling less uncomfortable about facing the blank page and putting the fingers on the keys. It means completing the current WIP and starting the next—knowing that in five years, ten years, fifteen years, and longer, you’ll have built a backlist strong enough to support you ad infinite.
You’re probably expecting some examples of how to pull off perfect procrastination for writers. To start with, let me suggest you don’t really procrastinate as much as you think. It’s just a matter of setting the right priorities and addressing/attacking the most urgent issues first.
Before I became a serious writer, I was a long-time government worker with high-stress tasks. I faced life and death issues, literally, for over three decades. Often, there wasn’t time to procrastinate. Each day was a challenge to balance urgent and important issues along with non-urgent yet still important jobs.
I learned to work within a priority matrix of four quadrants. There’s nothing new or secret about this anti-procrastination process. It’s called the Eisenhower Matrix or the Ike Box and rightly named after the Second World War General and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower who was supremely famous for GTD.
The Eisenhower Matrix deals with two priority dimensions. One is importance. The other is urgency. It’s laid out like this:
Upper Left Box — Important and Urgent Tasks
Upper Right Box — Important but Not Urgent Tasks
Lower Left Box — Not Important yet Urgent Tasks
Lower Right Box — Not Important and Not Urgent Tasks
I’ve used the Ike Box as a police officer and as a coroner. Each profession has a system in place to minimize procrastination and prioritize workload as well as a built-in accountability checker. I won’t get into how they work, but I will let you peek at the Ike Box I have as a writer for this week’s priorities as well as into the near future. It’s all about building the world of five, ten, and more years ahead.
Upper Left — Write blog posts for The Kill Zone and DyingWords, Link backlist in based-on-true-crime series on Amazon, Kobo and Nook, Exercise/Eat/Sleep well, Spend time with Rita, Get a haircut and buy shaving cream
Upper Right — Develop City Of Danger series, Plan July stacked promotion for crime series, Plan podcast with cool co-star Sue Coletta, Publish true crime series on Apple and Google
Lower Left — Respond to two lengthy email assistance requests, Plan print releases for true crime series, Mow the lawn before it’s impossible to walk through and remind our downstairs tenant to pick up after their Rottweiler/Great Dane crossbreed
Lower Right — Renovate writing/recording studio, Have that discussion with Floyd, my neighbor
That’s it. That sums my priorities in this writing and living gig. Nothing fancy or complicated, but it gives me a snapshot of what needs doing right now and what doesn’t matter. I’ve learned (or try to learn) to take only so much on and to say “No” to unproductive time theft. I heard someone say, “When you’ve got it all down to one shopping cart, you’ve got it made.”
Examples of procrastination for writers? Right, I did mention that. One big return in putting stuff off is sitting on your manuscript for some time after you’ve completed a polished draft and before you ship it for publication. This brewing time is precious, and I see that as high-value downtime.
Speaking of downtime, you might view surfing Facebook and watching cat videos as terrible procrastination when you need to GTD. I don’t see it that way, because no one can work all the time and keep peak productivity. Note: If you haven’t read Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Productive People, please do so. This is time well spent.
Time away from the keys and screen lets the creative juices flow. My best downtime is while out for a walk on the waterfront. My worst is after dinner and at the end of the day when I’m creatively done. However, I don’t consider watching an evening’s net stream of the Moody Blues Nights In White Satin (Days of Future Passed) and a TED talk on brain science with Dr. Lara Boyd as a procrastinator’s waste of time which I did last night.
Another prime example of procrastination for writers is leaving a major decision until the last moment and then committing after you’ve had plenty of time to think things over. Rash decisions (gut responses) just to GTD quick can have disastrous consequences as the Lehman Brother organization found out. While researching this piece, I found a Smithsonian Magazine article on a book by Frank Patroy titled Wait: The Art and Science of Delay. Here’s a quote about how the Lehman Brothers destroyed their own future by failing to procrastinate:
“I interviewed a number of former senior executives at Lehman Brothers and discovered a remarkable story. Lehman Brothers had arranged for a decision-making class in the fall of 2005 for its senior executives. It brought four dozen executives to the Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue and brought in leading decision researchers, including Max Bazerman from Harvard and Mahzarin Banaji, a well-known psychologist. For the capstone lecture, they brought in Malcolm Gladwell, who had just published Blink, a book that speaks to the benefits of making instantaneous decisions and that Gladwell sums up as “a book about those first two seconds.” Lehman’s president Joe Gregory embraced this notion of going with your gut and deciding quickly, and he passed copies of Blink out on the trading floor.
The executives took this class and then hurriedly marched back to their headquarters and proceeded to make the worst snap decisions in the history of financial markets. Failing to delay, or procrastinate, their crucial decisions caused Lehman Brothers to go broke in 2008.”
What about you Kill Zone folks? How does procrastination fit into your short and long-term writing plans? Don’t put off commenting until it’s too late.
——
When it comes to procrastinating, Garry Rodgers ranks with the best. Garry managed to put off a writing career until his sixties. Now, he’s making up for lost time with an 8-part, based-on-true-crime series written and indie published within the last two years as well as penning a few stand alones.
What Garry Rodgers isn’t putting off is starting a new made-for-net-streaming detective fiction series called City Of Danger. Tagline: A modern city in dystopian crisis enlists two private detectives from its utopian past to deliver street justice and restore social order. Follow Garry on Twitter and checkout his personal blog/website at DyingWords.net.
Garry, I love this, particularly your reproduction of the Eisenhower Decision Matrix. I struggled with procrastination for a number of years (still do, on occasion!) while attempting to remember that “while there is never time to do it right, there is always time to do it over” is not an immutable law.
One of my favorite books on the subject is by amazing coincidence titled “Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It Now” by Jane B. Burka and Lenora M. Luen. It made such a difference in my life that, way back before there was email, a took pen to paper and wrote the authors a thank-you letter. I recommend it to anyone and everyone. I once gifted a copy to a friend who was in dire need of it. A few weeks later he told me that it wasn’t working. I asked him how much of it he had read and he responded, “Well, I haven’t gotten to it yet.”
Thanks for yet another terrific post, Garry.
Thanks, Joe. With your background, you’ll appreciate the change in the legal system once the fax and email showed up. Before that, lawyers depended on delay tactics where one would write a letter to their adversary, sit on it before signing, then mail it. The other would sit on the letter before opening, read it, think about the reply, write it, sit on it some more, and then mail it back.
Back and forth it went with no expectation of urgency until factors changed and positions altered and somewhere in the distant future someone would give in and the matter would be settled. I remember one lawyer bemoaning the faxes and emails would ruin everything with an unreasonable expectation of immediacy.
When I begin my day, I’m chomping at the bit to get back into my characters’ fictional world. That feeling is the “hook” that corresponds to the “cliffhanger” mourning feeling at the end of the day before that I have to leave it overnight.
Yet each morning I procrastinate for the first couple of hours, putting off the writing. For me it’s a way to delay and therefore greatly enhance the pleasure of being in the story again.
Good mourning, my friend. There’s nothing like waiting for the coffee to brew before getting nothing done. 🙂
Garry, didn’t you hear? The meeting of the Procrastinator’s Club has been postponed.
Seriously, this is fascinating research, esp. the part about seeing one’s self as two different people–the right-now version and the future version.
Writers do need lots of creative thinking time to come up with good stories, to ponder the best way to tell those stories, and to let them brew/simmer/marinate. As long as we eventually sit down and get the story into the computer, that time is not wasted.
Because you produce an amazing amount of work (as well as taking time to help writer buddies who ask your advice), your membership in the Procrastinator’s Club has been revoked!
You made me laugh, Debbie! Hey – what I did hear was you have a book climbing the Amazon charts. Just wait for that turbo boost from a stacked promo. 😉
Great post, Garry. I especially liked your example of Lehman Brothers. I grew up in a culture where GTD was the only way life should be approached. To do otherwise was lumped in there with laziness. I still am faced with nonwriting decisions, and am tempted to GTD and make a quick decision. After many years and many hasty decisions that I came to regret, I have finally learned to say, “Let me think about that.” It is amazing how often reflection over a few hours or over night will allow our brains to sort out the options, prevent us from being a prisoner of two options, or help us see a better way to do the action under consideration.
And as for procrastination with writing, my biggest issue is giving the writing priority, and giving the myriad of other things that “need to be done” a quick glance and a promise that “I’ll get to you when I have time.”
Nice to hear this piece resonated, Steve. I used to have a “Round Tuit” hanging on the wall. Ever see one of those?
My father made quarter sized “round Tuits” and would give them to anyone who said they do it when they got around to it. I still have one of them (one of about a million I should have gotten).
I have three ways to deal with procrastination:
1.
Garry, I think of procrastination in the negative, and downtime in the positive. The latter, as you suggest, is good for recharging (which is why I take one day off a week from my writing).
As for procrastination, it can too easily become a habit, as Cal Newport points out in his book Deep Work. There are too many ways to get an instant dopamine rush (social media, scanning the net, Candy Crush). If we give in too much, our brains actually develop a dependency. Ack!
One way back is to make yourself complete a high-priority task early. Get that out of the way with the promise of a “future” reward, i.e., a more pleasant work day. That’s why I try to get a nifty 350 words done first thing…it makes meeting my daily quota a lot easier.
“Too many ways to get an instant dopamine rush.” Man, are there ever. Bloody Facebook is a terrible distraction, but there is some funny, funny stuff on there. I hadn’t heard of Cal Newport and Deep Work, Jim, so I asked the Google and found https://medium.com/@nina.semczuk/5-practices-from-deep-work-by-cal-newport-thatll-change-your-life-303847ec5f3c I think I’ll order the whole book when I get time 😉
I workshop in time management suggested dividing tasks into dots and dashes. The dots could be accomplished quickly, while the dashes would require more time and concentration.
Now, if only I could get the Hubster to look at this post. He has to be “ready” to perform any task, and things will sit on his list until the stars align.
Dots and dashes, eh? (Eh is Canadian for “huh”, BTW) This system makes sense, Terry. I haven’t heard of it and thanks for sharing!
Procrastination is my sin, it causes me great sorrow. I know I shouldn’t practice it, perhaps I’ll stop tomorrow.
You’ll get around to it some day, Bob. Keep the faith! BTW, you’re a poet and didn’t know it.
Boy, did I need this post today, Garry. No surprise that you packed it with information and helpful tips. I really needed the reminder about the Ike Box.
I was first exposed to it a few years ago in a staff training, but wasn’t really successful at using it at work. It was too easy for me to procrastinate about projects because I was always having to do the Important and Urgent tasks (answer questions, or engage in a PIC (Person-In-Charge) task. All too easy to let the Not Important but Urgent tasks take precedence over projects that were often Important but Not immediately Urgent–until the latter became Urgent, thanks to deadlines.
Deadlines are the procrastinators crutch in my experience. What I need is to be more mindful about using downtime more effectively, as well as using the Ike Box for my writing. Certainly I have time now 🙂
Thanks for another great post!
And thank you for thanking me, Dale. My police force had an effective anti-procrastination system called diary dating. There was a mandatory deadline (diary date) set on each investigation file where you had to state your next steps and when you intended to have them done. Your supervisor held you accountable as well as making you prioritize what file took precedence over others. Pleading procrastination was a good way to get removed from the detective squad.
Great post, Garry!
I learned about procrastination in high school. Way back then, I discovered something about myself. I work best under self-imposed pressure. (However, it drove my parents crazy!)
I’d wait until the last possible moment to write an essay or complete a project. My parents sometimes flicked their fingers at me to get it done, but when they noticed my straight A average, they accepted that I worked best that way.
Now, when I approach my writing projects, I strategically procrastinate on some aspects of it.
I gotta say, though, sometimes I’m just lazy and want to go out and pet my German shepherd and smell my roses for awhile! 🙂
Nice to see you have your priorities right, Deb, and that you don’t smell your German Shepard and pet your roses.
On a semi-serious note (which I rarely have) I found an interesting article when I was rabbit-holing this piece. I’m sure most folks know of the famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright who designed Fallingwater (https://fallingwater.org/) for business tycoon Edgar Kaufmann. Story goes that Wright had put off and put off doing the design until he got a morning telegram from Kaufmann that he’d be on the noon train to have a look at the plans. Forced into a deadline, Wright sat down and drew Fallingwater’s plans in two hours and was done when Kaufmann arrived.
🙂 🙂
Another well-researched and entertaining piece, Garry. Thanks!
As a writer, I find myself procrastinating when I’m afraid I won’t have anything good to write. Maybe I’ve arrived at a point in the book where I’m not sure where to go next and I want to wait for inspiration. That’s when I’ll do other stuff to avoid having to face the monster. But I’ve noticed that it’s sort of like a locomotive. If I just sit down and start writing, I’ll move forward and pick up steam. I start having fun and sometimes it even results in some good prose.
I also agree on downtime. When I run outside I think my brain has time to relax and enjoy the experience. I become a passive listener to an audiobook or podcast, and I come home refreshed and often with new ideas for my books.
Thank you, Kay. Nice to hear you liked it. I’d done this piece a week ago when I thought it was my turn to post on TKZ. I published it and then realized it was Elaine’s day so I took it down and put it off till today. Now that’s effective procrastination.
Yeah, Garry, we all noticed it. Did you see the references to it on last Thursday’s post?
Someone called your now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t blog a ghost-post…hilarious! Maybe you’ve started a new tradition here at TKZ. 🙂
No, I didn’t see them. Damn! Thought I got away with it 🙁
There is no place to hide on the internet. 🙂 Once written, forever burned into memory.
“Oh, the shame! The utter humility of it!” ~Jim Carrey as The Grinch
You can go back & look…if you’re brave enough! Just kidding! 🙂
I took a management course with the Marine Corp and these things stuck:
Move forward , daily
Take the initiative
If you want it you got to work for it.
Love those guys and their attitude about getting a mission done. Ooh rah!
HUA! Thanks for dropping by, Warren.
Sorry I’m late, Garry! Which sounds hilarious considering the subject of this post. But I wasn’t procrastinating. I was clomping through the woods looking for a dump site, then through different woods in search of an old cabin, and I found both. Yay! Excellent post, though. I’m so glad I read it this morning. Good stuff!
Excuse well accepted, Sue, considering you were consumed with crime scenes. Dump site? And an old cabin? Remember Locard’s – it might come back to haunt you.
I think I’m good. Crime happened decades ago. My state police buddies will vouch for why I’m there. 😉