Procrastination is normal and can happen for many reasons. I explore a few of them in Why Do I Procrastinate? If left unchecked procrastination can cause overwhelm, because once you start getting close to your deadline (either self-imposed or given by others) you may start to panic. To quote an unwise man, “Where’s the time gone? There was lots of time!”*
It’s Day 7 of the 10 Day Blogging Challenge and Natalie’s suggestion is to choose one imperfect action that you can take every day that’ll take you closer to your vision. In order to overcome procrastination, she explains in her blog post, you need to take action. Agreed. She also talks about how perfection can get in the way of taking action. Oh yeah, I hear you! In fact there’s a post about that on my blog here too.
The imperfect action I’ve chosen is to write for an hour every day. This is because writing is a big part of the life I envision for myself but I’ve realised that lately I’ve not been doing as much as I’d like to. I started my first solo book but haven’t added to it for several weeks now! If I just commit to the action of writing for 1 hour every day, rather than writing a chapter every couple of days, it releases the need for perfection. I know that not everything I write is going to end up in the final draft and the actual process of writing does, in fact, invite inspiration.
If I do this for just 30 days to start with, I imagine I’ll have made a lot of progress on my first solo book. I’ll have formed a good habit that is a solid foundation to build on. I think perhaps the better angle to get me into gear is this:
If I don’t write for an hour every day for the next 30 days, I imagine I won’t have made any or little progress on my book, which means I won’t be any closer to solo bestseller status! (This is because that’s been true of the last 30 days.)
Worse, not sticking with this imperfect action will mean my message won’t be any closer to getting out to the world, and I’m sure there’s at least one person out there it’d help! Although I really believe it’ll help many more.
So the decision I’m making is to write for one hour for the next 30 days. Beyond that I don’t know, but my plan doesn’t need to be perfect, does it?
*This particular unwise man, Mark Corrigan, is a fictional character from the Channel 4 comedy series, ‘Peep Show’. He’s managing a new initiative at work, ‘Project Zeus’, and dismisses his own and everyone else’s ideas as not being good enough to present to the board. As a result he gets himself in a tangle, alienates himself from his co-workers and has nothing to present at his meeting. Cue OVERWHELM! You can watch a clip here, but it’s not for you if you don’t like swearing: ‘Mark Runs Away From His Problems’
This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 7
