Exemplary work needs time, passion, and a lot of handwork. Unless a person’s naturally brilliant that every idea that comes out of his/her mind would sound like a whistling lavenders to an abandoned lang. Most of the time when I want to start writing, I suddenly get the urge of making a long to-do list, find other things to do, wait. Some seem reasonable, others menial and trivial at all.
I never really thought that I just made those to procrastinate on my writing.
1. Make really long TO-DO LIST
Priority: Writing
But…
I do the others first.
There’s like a blast of tasks to finish. I force myself to do the easier ones first. I do know in “theory” that I should work on the bigger load first because I can allot more time to it. Then I move to the easier, smaller tasks after.
Well, I do the opposite. So, my writing gets postpone until the last minute. Sometimes even put on hold and be a to-do priority number one (again!) the next day, and the next. This aggravates to totally not writing anything.
2. Get myself distracted
Aside from the extremely long to-do list, I squeeze other stuffs in between.
- Movies on TV (which seems to be endless, thanks to cable TV)
- TV series to binge watch (Oh, I’ve got to see the new episode. No, I’ve got to see that first season again)
- Pick up a book, read through a couple of pages. Pause. Face the laptop. Sees another book and read. Repeat.
- Pick up my phone look through: email, facebook, twitter (even though I rarely use it), read random articles. Checks the clock, oh! Two hours done.
In the end, no output. However, in this case, I try to give myself some false assurances.
“I’m simply looking for inspiration. This will help me later.”
Nah! Majority of the things I’ve seen gets sucked up by other never-ending distractions around me. Then I forget about the inspiration that actually kicked in some time in the interval.
Oh, cute puppies.
3. Cook. Eat. Get Hungry. Repeat.
This ever delicious and indulging form of procrastination. I let myself enjoy the comfort of food before I go on with my writing. I am not so sure, but once I thought of writing, I also feel hungry. 🙂
I go to the kitchen, find things I can use and cook a meal or prepare a simple snack.
Satisfied!
I walk back to my laptop to write. Damn! I’m sleepy.
Dozing off, but can’t. Walk to the kitchen again and prepare some coffee. But later I find some sweet treats and just eat. Forget about the time.
This last one I really can’t get out of my system. No excuses, it’s food! I need it to survive. But my writing…
—
Now, I try my best to write even short sentences early in the morning. I have my pencil and paper (not laptop) near my bed. When I wake up every morning, I say my prayers, read a Bible verse, and start writing. Anything. This lets me continue with writing and helps me get through the day better.
When I have to post something, I just have to check my notes. This also has some let downs because I have to find the proper notes to use. Most of the time my notes are just all over the place. But I’m getting better. I think. I hope. 🙂
Yakapin 
Haha, what a relatable post! What I find (with myself, at least) is that the genuine urge to write comes not when I sit down and want to get it done, but when I’m in the middle of something else: work, cooking, eating, TRYING TO FALL ASLEEP – and it’s ridiculously inconvenient to stop what I’m doing and take out some paper.
However, I recently came across this article about “structured procrastination”: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com which argues that we will never do anything we are SUPPOSED to do, but in that space we can be incredibly productive doing something else to ward off what it is we’re supposed to do. And this can be used to our advantage. I’d take the article with a grain of salt but I thought perhaps you might be interested!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, T.K. for sharing that article about structured procrastination. It’s really interesting to know about this, but I think I still need to be more familiar with it so that I’ll have productive outputs afterwards. 😉
LikeLike