procrastination

Writing Productivity is a Process

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So summer came and went, and I find I haven’t gotten as much done as I would have liked. I’m still editing, I haven’t finished my first draft of the manuscript I’m working on, and I’m not quite sure where, exactly, the time has gone.

I did deal with challenges this summer, mostly in the form of unbelievable noise, the kind that takes up cozy residence inside of your skull, and no doubt that impacted my ability to focus. Still, I can’t help but feel that the track and I have parted ways.

But that’s the beauty of this kind of work. Forward progress–any forward progress–is still progress. Sometimes sideways progress is progress too, because once in a while, sideways is just the direction to get you where you’re going.

Is it rationalization? Perhaps, but if you don’t give yourself credit for the small things, it’s easy to get lost in the huge and looming picture. Step by step is the only way to get anywhere, and it’s OK if it takes a while to get to the next one now and then.

Productivity is a process. It doesn’t always operate at maximum efficiency, and that’s OK too.

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What if You Don’t Feel Like Writing?

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As per the last couple of posts, share Aunty Ida’s book trailer, post the link here in the comments, or tweet using my handle @IsaLeeWolf, and you’ll be entered for a chance at a $25 Amazon gift card. Nice, huh? Here’s yesterday’s post for more info.

So one of the problems with writing is that it’s one of those things that seems impossible to do if you just don’t feel like it. It requires the full attention of your brain, and if your brain is somewhere else, the blinking cursor can feel impossible to tame.

You can give yourself a break, sure, but at some point, you are giving yourself so many breaks you’re not doing a whole lot of writing. So then what?

Writing is a discipline, and like any discipline, it means keeping at it even when it’s not what you feel like doing. When you’re serious about something, you have to assume that it will involve work; writing is no exception. Great words, but what good do they do practically?

You have to decide, on any given day, if you are going to write. And then, despite the other things going on, despite the interference of life and all the things that come with it, you have to sit down and do it. If your fingers aren’t on the keyboard, the work never gets finished.

And no, I don’t always take my advice.

When I am really having problems with focus, I set a timer. You can do anything for a discrete amount of time; usually when it goes off, I want to keep going. But the thing is, with writing, no one can do it for you. Either you get it done or you don’t.

Need something to read? Check out  Her Cousin Much Removed,  The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management and Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only) .

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The Siren Call of New Ideas

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Here’s my problem. I am terribly, terribly fickle when it comes to my work. I love a fresh, new project, all open and free of tricky bits, nothing but potential ahead of me.

I dig in. I get to know it. We progress to a first name basis. It starts to tell me its troubles and my mind wanders, only a little. Ideas start to form, sparkly ideas, ideas that must be better than my current, worn-in project. Maybe I can give the new new project a little bit of time, a small chunk carved out of my day.

Old project? What old project?

It might be a symptom of my intractable procrastination disease, or maybe it’s evidence of a fruit-fly sized attention span, which I may or may not possess. Regardless, it’s easy, no matter what the project, in those beginning, glowy stages, to forget that writing is work. Hard, sometimes tedious work. It’s not always fun, it’s not always fulfilling, but there is no way to complete a project other than plowing through it.

I’m working on learning how to balance my ideas, the shiny ones and the ones that have entered the trudging realm of edits, and the myriad of work in-between. On the plus side, at some point, I’ll suddenly have a bucketful of finished stuff.

On the minus side, it will only get that way if I finish it.

Need something to read? Check out  Her Cousin Much Removed,  The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management and Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only) .

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Writing is the Internal Battle of Wills

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There was a time when I’d treat a sluggish brain with a nice dose of coffee and be on my way with whatever it was I needed to do. Sadly, that time is no more; for a myriad of reasons, I can no longer have caffeine.

On the plus side, shakiness and a pounding heart are (mostly) a thing of the past. On the negative, though, I don’t get that quick hit of alertness.

I miss that quick hit of alertness. Especially on a Monday morning when my brain is trying to do anything but think. So what is there to do?

As is nearly always the answer, get on with it. Maybe my brain will have to do a few laps before it gets circulation to the crevices. Writing (and editing, which is where I am right now) is, at its center-most point, a contest of wills.

Yours against yours.

Sometimes we can use crutches like coffee. Sometimes we simply can’t. Sometimes people use crutches like alcohol. That one you really shouldn’t.

We all have to face the page somehow, whether it’s nearly blank one with a blinking cursor at the end and nothing but white space ahead, or one that’s chock-full of words you have to shape into something remotely readable. It’s that battle, I think, that is the hardest in writing.

Well, I may have lost one of the weapons in my arsenal, but I haven’t yet lost the war. Productivity is a choice, sometimes made minutes at a time.

Sluggish brain or no sluggish brain.

My books are free to read with KindleUnlimited or borrow with Amazon Prime!  Her Cousin Much Removed,  The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management and Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only) .

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‘Orange is the New Black’ Won’t Quit Me

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So it seems as though watching the whole second season of “Orange is the New Black” has wiped my brain clean of anything else. It’s as though it burrowed in, pushing aside all unnecessary information, and by “unnecessary,” I mean anything unrelated to the inmates of Litchfield.

Ooops.

You wouldn’t think a TV show could do that, but it has. Maybe it needs a warning label. “Warning: Consume in reasonable quantities. Binging may result in loss of connection with reality, an overdeveloped sympathy for the incarcerated, and a strange desire to eat off of a plastic tray.”

Who am I kidding? I’d do it again. In fact, I will do it again next year when we get season three.

So you’ll have to bear with me as I return to reality and try to get some synapses firing on some writing of my own. Let’s hope they’re starting to spark, much like a home-made prison lighter.

Oh dear.

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My New Unproductive Method of Productivity

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I’m having one of those days when my brain is thrilled to be focused on a task. As long as it’s not the task at hand. If I’m tidying, which I needed to do, I think I should be writing. Sitting down to write, I notice the things I should be tidying away.

Restless, I guess.

And not for any particular reason.. Still, I’m like one of those cats chasing a dot of light on the wall, utterly unsatisfied when I manage to catch it. Maybe it’s not restlessness, maybe it’s just very thorough procrastination.

Hopefully things will get done, if only in blips and drabs, in those moments before the urge to be taking care of something else takes hold. Even writing this, there was an irresistible pull to check my e-mail. And thoroughly read an ad. It seems, for today, productivity is doomed.

I’ll need to push through with the scatter method today, I guess. It always sounds better when you call it a method, don’t you think?

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Phone Games Aren’t the Best for Productivity

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I downloaded a new game for my phone. In the words of Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman,” Big mistake. Huge.

I’m totally addicted.

Like most games that suck you in and keep you distracted from all you should be doing, it’s simple. You press a group of two or more matching blocks, and try to clear them before one of the columns fills up. Easy, right?

Only, of course it isn’t. I don’t even know what my highest score is, it’s just too addictive, and around and around I go, matching up pigs and frogs and pandas, and, hmm, I thought they were just random orange blocks, but looking more closely, they’re lions.

Oh my.

The graphics aren’t super fancy, the interface is a little clunky, and still I cannot stop playing this game. Maybe that says more about my motivation to get things done than the game itself, but I don’t think so. Once you start, this game will be beckoning to you, telling you just one more round is all you need.

As if.

It’s called “Forest Magic” if you want to suffer along with me. But I don’t recommend it if you have stuff to do. Or anything to do.

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It’s Not Procrastination. Unless It Is

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OK, it’s not procrastination. I swear. It might look like procrastination, and it might sound like procrastination, but really it wasn’t.

I had to get the weather widget back on my phone.

You see, I’d taken it off because it wasn’t updating. The weather being what it is right now–which is changeable and arbitrary–I absolutely need to have it at my fingertips. And yes, you’re right, it’s technically at my fingertips in a myriad of ways, including going online on the phone itself to find it, but why do that when there’s supposed to be a widget?

So it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out how to get a widget, and not an app button, back where it belonged. And then it wouldn’t update again. So I downloaded some others, and now the widget expert that I’ve become, I tried them out.

I found one I liked better.

Incidentally, “widget” used to be a word that we used to stand in for nothing in particular. You talked about someone selling widgets for an example of whatever concept it was, usually contracts. Now a widget is an actual thing. How about that.

Anyway, I could try to turn this thing into a lesson on deviating from your set plan and ending up somewhere nicer than where you aimed to go, but I’ll ‘fess up.

It was procrastination. And you know what? I’d do it again.

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How Do You Love Cleaning?

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I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who derives great joy from cleaning. For whom scrubbing and tidying and polishing et al. is like breathing, something you do without thinking about it much. Or something you even enjoy doing.

Sadly, for me, it is not.

It always seems like whatever task it might be will take forever (it usually doesn’t) or will be really difficult (it usually isn’t). But that’s not the heart of it, not really.

The truth is there’s always something else I’d rather be doing. Always. Cleaning, for me, isn’t one of those tasks I like to nudge higher on my list. Unless there’s something on that list I’d rather do less.

I guess what irks me about it is you are never, ever done doing it. Once you finish, something else needs it, or you have to start again. Round and round, clean and dirty. It would be great if you could check it off once, and that’s it.

Billion dollar idea. Someone should invent that.

What I’m saying is I should be cleaning right now. So naturally, I’m right here, on my blog. Yeesh.

I’m Not Getting a Passing Grade in Time Management

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Tasks are like water. They flow and ooze to fit the container they’re given, not matter the size and the shape. In my case, it’s not even a conscious decision. If I give myself a bigger window, I’ll swing it open until the sash meets the frame, every single time.

I start out with good intentions. Sometimes I set timers, and that helps, shrinking the window to more of a pass-through. But other times, my brain rebels, it stalls and sputters and insists that whatever needs to be done can’t be done quite at this time, but don’t worry, requests are being taken in the order in which they are received.

Yeah, right. Meanwhile it’s prioritizing the stack of shows on my TiVo.

One thing I’ve learned fighting my true procrastinating nature is that many things take far less time than you think that they will. Sometimes they become huge in my mind, crammed with the hassle that I imagine they hold, and then, boom, I’m finished almost before I’ve started.

Writing’s never one of those things, though. Writing is it’s own animal, and it takes as long as it’s going to take.

At least, that’s what I tell myself.