Procrastination — We All Do It, Some Thoughts on How to Stop

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

You sit down to write…

…and before you know it the living room is vacuumed, the fish are fed, you’ve gotten yourself a snack, and you’ve played five levels of Candy Crush.

You haven’t written a word.

I envy the writer who can say this has never happened to them, because they’re a rare bird indeed. So, how do you stop yourself from having a very clean house instead of a finished book? I don’t claim to have all the answers, but here are some thoughts:

Is it Ritual?

If you find yourself wasting time with the same procrastination activities, but then managing to write afterwards, you could just have subconsciously developed a writer’s ritual. A lot of us have them. For me, it’s music. No music, no writing happens. Some writers have to have their coffee, in that one specific mug.

Some might have to clean something before they can write. If it does turn out you have a routine, you probably don’t want to mess with it.

Are You Stuck?

Are you, well, stuck? The symptom of this might be if you have multiple projects, but only procrastinate on one of them. Or maybe every time you hit 30k words, you start procrastinating (I call this Great Sticky Middle…