How do you overcome procrastination?

As a writer there are two fears that are ever present - the first is the fear of a creative blockage and the second is the fear of failure.  These two fears often go hand in hand but the defining aspect of the former is epitomised by the proverbial blank page that is used to represent writer's block in other words it is defined by the lack of motivation or lack of inspiration to write.  The latter is best represented by a missed deadline, whether that was a personal imposition or whether it was set by another.

Writer's block in itself has many facets that I would like to write about in greater depth, I'll save those for a future post.  The latter fear however whilst often realised as a result of the former, is most of the time caused not by a lack of motivation or a lack of inspiration but simply procrastination.  As they say the only true failure is the failure to try, this is something I hold as true and something as I have mentioned before, serves as the primary barrier to pursuing writing with a serious conviction.  The first book or first work you publish is usually the hardest because self-doubt encourages you to give up, or at least convince yourself that you will achieve your goal later and make you content with a lack of progress in place of that achievement.

This week I happened across a video on YouTube from 2016, a TED Talk given by Tim Urban titled 'Inside the mind of a master procrastinator' which I found particularly intriguing.  I find TED Talks interesting not because I hold everything that is imparted through them as fact, but simply because I recognise their true purpose is simply to present a perspective to you for your evaluation.

Many years ago for another blog I wrote a piece that argued Wisdom in itself did not exist but rather the concept that we refer to as wisdom in reality was a combination of knowledge and experience.  I made the argument that experience could never truly be shared and that subsequently wisdom as a derivative could never truly be shared either.  I justify this position with the argument that you can only ever share knowledge of an experience or knowledge gained from that experience, never the experience itself.  You can describe how hot or how cold something was, but you can't actually make the other person feel that sensation, and even attempts to recreate experiences by recreating environments never truly succeed because no matter how close you may get to achieving that experience again, they will forever remain as two separate points in time and space.

To give an example, many years ago I visited a friend who was living in Paris, I had been living in Northern Ireland and it was late Winter, with Spring approaching.  The average temperature at home was 5°C [41°F] whereas the temperature in Paris one evening was 16°C [60.8°F] as we walked along the Seine.  I wore a light long sleeved T-Shirt and cotton jacket and found the weather pleasant and mild, my friend wore a heavy winter coat and found the weather chilly.  She was not alone, it was easy to tell from the fashion who was a tourist and who actually lived in Paris.  The point of this story is that we both had the same experience, 16°C temperature, but our perceptions of it were wildly different.  Our environments that we lived within played a great part in shaping those perceptions.  I can describe here how I felt, and I can attempt to describe how she felt, but I can't control the experience that each and every one of you reading this would actually have if you were in that position for yourself.

TED Talks take individuals and give them a platform where they can share their knowledge and describe their experiences, offering up their perspectives for you to evaluate.  This particular talk centred around the nature of procrastination and the revelation for Tim as the speaker, that for him the reason procrastination was so easy was because there was no trigger that called forth what he refers to as 'The Panic Monster' which left the 'Instant Gratification Monkey' in complete control.  The whole concept I find intriguing because it is often the case that I have ideas, inspiration, and even the motivation to achieve my goals but I often get side tracked and perhaps the explanation that there is no imperative or no consequence to failure could explain why this is the case.

As a counter point however I would say that creativity can be resilient at times but it can also be fragile.  Once again for another publication I once wrote that for me one of the reasons I pursue writing as a hobby not as my main career is that I find it difficult to be creative "on demand" - that the moment you set out boundaries and limits then the creative aspects die.  In many ways this can be likened to a Rubik's Cube in that as a child I found it fascinating and would play with them for hours never able to solve it but once I learned the method and the mathematics behind it I achieved two things simultaneously, one being the ability to solve the cube, and the other, completely destroying any sense of mystery, intrigue, and enjoyment I got out of playing with the cube to begin with.  Knowing how the cube is solved takes away the gameplay element and replaces it with a set algorithm.  Most people at that point attempt to reintroduce a gameplay element or challenge element by attempting to solve it at greater speed with the ultimate goal being the achievement of solving it in the shortest possible time.

Whilst in theory introducing structure and deadlines and essentially panic triggers as a means to overcome procrastination might work, I think one of the side effects would be that creativity would die as a result.  Tim even mentions in the video that the overall quality of his work suffered the shorter space of time in which it was completed - that efficiency did not lead to efficacy, or to put it another way, leaving it to the last minute to write your dissertation does not lead you to achieving the highest possible grade if anything it encourages you to do what is required to pass and nothing more because your focus is meeting the deadline not the work itself.

So the question remains, how can you overcome procrastination?  Once again I feel this is one of those questions that if you had a succinct answer to, then you would become very rich.  You can however take away some pearls of wisdom from those who have attempted to answer this question, namely that motivation needs a driver to sustain commitment to that motivation otherwise your determination will wane.  Also that starting is half the battle, not even trying is the only true failure.  Finally, like Tim suggested in his video that perhaps we are not divided into two groups, procrastinators and non-procrastinators but instead that we all procrastinate it's just that some people are better at self-regulation than others, that ultimately the question is not how to overcome procrastination but rather how do you achieve self-regulation?  

The answer to that question is not confined to creative endeavours, but rather it extends into all parts of your life.  How do you regulate any behaviour you engage in?  How do you regulate eating or drinking, both of which are essential activities - how does your method of regulating those differ from regulation of pleasurable activities, like sex, junk food, vices like gambling or alcohol etc, things that you naturally want more of but at some point have to stop before they consume you.  Can you translate your methods of self-regulation in those areas and apply them to your creative endeavours?  These aren't questions I can answer for you unfortunately for the reason I outlined before, they all centre around experience, I can never know how addictive something is to you, no matter how articulate you may be, no matter how succinct you may be in your descriptions of those experiences.

What I can share is my own knowledge and a recount of my own experience in this regard.  When it comes to procrastination the biggest pitfall for me as a writer is to explore a story in my head in its entirety.  I learned quite early in my writing journey that the further ahead I got in my vision of a work, the less motivation I had to write because I knew how the story would end, or because I knew there were later scenes I wanted to get to rather than writing about the scene I was currently stuck on - I do not advise leaving a gap and writing future chapters because that tends to lead to inconsistencies and it makes bridging the gap later difficult for the same reasons I hate prequels, you already know what the end result will be, so there is no existential threat.  The way I overcome this pitfall was to focus only on the scene at hand, to only ever hold the direction in mind that I want the story to go in but not to pin down details.  The narrative should unfold with the story.

In terms of finding motivation or sustaining creativity over a prolonged period, the only real advice I can offer here is to consider collective writing, this does not necessarily mean collaboration on a work but rather to be surrounded by others who are also writing.  The hashtag on twitter #amwriting and the associated podcast are a good way to find other writers or you could consider initiatives such as NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month which encourages writers to share their progress and connect with others, this takes place every November so now is the perfect time to check it out, and if you stumble across this post at some other time of the year not to worry the site offers a wealth of resources you can use all year round.