Procrastination stealing my dreams

By Virginia Winder

When in doubt procrastinate.

That’s been my fall-back position for years and it’s not working for me.

Dilly-dallying, delaying, dawdling and just plain avoidance is the reason why I haven’t written a novel before now. I feel stuck.

“My advice is to never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time,” Charles Dickens says.

Like Dickens (although I’m not in his category), I have a burning desire to write, have a strong story idea, think about my characters constantly, but – there’s that stalling word – I’m worried my writing won’t be good enough.

My own doubts are thwarting me.

So I have been researching overcoming procrastination because if I get to the end of this month, let alone my life, and haven't written a lot, I will be deeply disappointed with myself.

In a book called The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-free Play by Neil Fiore, he talks about the language we use on ourselves.

“I should be…, I could be… I have to…”

Instead, Fiore talks about “I choose”. That gives us the power back.

I choose to write a novel. Yes, there is a lot of freedom in those words.

You might have things you want to do: I choose to save for an overseas trip; I choose to train for a marathon; I choose to write the annual report...

Use the word “choose” for anything you have, want or need to do.

Fiore also talks about reverse planning to reach a goal. Look at the end and work your way back in small increments.

For this novel, I need to write about 100,000 words. If I write 500 words a day five days a week, to reach my goal should take 40 weeks, which is around 10 months. Taking in to account my freelancing work, that is realistic, but I could definitely knock out more in not-so-busy weeks.

Former Poet Laureate, novelist and short story writer Elizabeth Smither always does her maths before embarking on a novel too.

"If you just keep going it goes on piling itself up,” she says in a Taranaki Story on the Puke Ariki website.

She also has a huge amount of self-discipline and dogged determination: "When I start something, come hell or high water, I don't let myself off the hook.”

According to the Mind Tools website, people procrastinate for many reasons, the main ones being because something is unpleasant, they are disorganised or they may feel overwhelmed by the task – it’s just too big.

Into the mix, I'd add self-doubts, feelings of inadequacy and the need to be a perfectionist.

There are many ways people procrastinate – you will know your patterns.

My wasted time is mainly via my phone. There is the newsfeed on Facebook to scroll through, stuff to read on Stuff, Instagram posts to view, emails to peruse and Twitter to flick over.

Hi, my name is Virginia and I am a digital procrastinator. 

Now I choose to become a fiction writer; just knocking out this blog post has clarified my thoughts.

There are other ways to bust out of this bad habit; this stealer of dreams.

 With help from Mind Tools, here are some tips to beat procrastination:

• Reward yourself for getting a task done or reaching a short- or long-term goal.
• Ask someone else to check up on you. Peer pressure works (Christine Fenton, you are needed).
• Identify the unpleasant consequences of NOT doing the task.
• Become a master of scheduling – book in time to do your work, training, novel etc. Make this time as immovable as a meeting appointment.
• Set yourself time-bound goals, like I will spend three hours on this task today, or I will train for 1 hour today.
• Focus on one task at a time.
• Break the project into a set of smaller, more manageable tasks. This is as applicable for ironman training as it is for creating a new garden.  
• Start with some quick, small tasks if you can, even if these aren't the logical first actions.

There, the tools are in place to go forth and follow that goal or dream that’s eating away at you.

I’ll leave you with the wise words of Benjamin Franklin: “You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again.”