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“My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry 'til a more convenient season.”
- Mary Todd Lincoln
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Did you ever notice, when you’ve finally overcome inertia, opened your word processing document, and begun to type those first few words, that a list of undone tasks abruptly leaps to mind?
You finally sit down to write and suddenly you remember bills unpaid, dogs unfed, thank you notes unwritten, phone calls unmade, dishes dirty. And all of these tasks feel surprisingly pressing. I call these thoughts that charge into your mind, blasting away all thoughts of your task at hand, “procrasdistractions.”
How can you tell that they are distractions rather than essential duties? Just wait. Wait until you’ve finished working for a half hour and then see if your sense of urgency remains.
You may be amazed, once you’ve put in a good hour of writing, how much less critical it feels to scrub your bathtub or reorganize your music collection.
One of the things your wily procrastination mind will whisper to you while you’re starting to work is that you absolutely, positively, conclusively MUST take action on this non-writing related task or else you will forget it.
“I’ve got to do it Right Now,” declares your mind, “or I’ll never remember.”
This fear suggests the easy solution for Procrasdistractions:
Write them down.
Keep a pad of paper and a pen next to your computer mouse pad, and when your wandering mind comes up with a new item for your to-do list take your fingers off the keyboard for five seconds and write the task down.
Sometimes procrasdistractions may masquerade as research gems:
* You suddenly remember a book that you need desperately as a reference.
* You brilliantly think of a statistical analysis that would revolutionize your approach to the methodological gap that’s been gaping at you.
* You unexpectedly realize that a new theory encompasses all your data with unparalleled eloquence.
What should you do? Jot down the idea. And return to the document on your screen.
These serendipitous insights warrant their own separate sheets of paper – what one of my coaching clients calls her “epiphany pad.”
By all means capture these ephemeral treasures in writing, but whatever you do, don’t switch gears and start an internet search for new references, or open up your statistical program to start entering parameters, or pore through an important text in search of that perfect quote.
Wait until you’ve finished the writing segment that you promised yourself you’d complete.
When you’ve finished your daily goal you’ll be better able to judge whether the fortuitous thought nugget was a genuine gem or a glass bauble. Unfortunately, some of these insights will look cockeyed rather than piercing an hour later.
If the flash of insight was a bona fide jewel, you’ll have plenty of energy to follow up because you’ll be invigorated by having met your self-imposed writing goals.
Do procrasdistractions plague you? I’d love to hear tales of the tangents you’ve taken in the service of avoiding work.
And let me know what you come up with on your epiphany pad.
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