The Procrastination Ritual

Procrastination is Death by a Thousand Nothings.

This is a long one, but I highly encourage you to read it and try the tools outlined here.

I mentioned in a previous post that I was going over my old Tony Robbins motivational cd's, enjoying the program again for the first time since 1995. Yeah, I know, he can be a dick. 

But one of the best things I got out of it back then was tools for dealing with procrastination.

I don't know a single creative person who does not struggle with it, and as someone who has her dream job, you'd think I'd be running to my drawing board every damned day. But lemme tell ya, when your dream becomes your job, it can also become your worst nightmare.

As I mentioned here in The Paradox of Motivation, sometimes traumatic events can become wrapped up in your art. The negative feelings fuse with the project, and it is extremely difficult to break them apart.

One of the things I learned from the seminars, books, and tapes I bought and participated in, is that I'd developed very negative feelings about myself that were attached to my work. This made it difficult for me to move forward both as a person and as an artist. 

Even the names of old publishers or anyone I knew there made me sick to my stomach. In fact, my long term fans will note that for years I never said or wrote their names on my blog. (I've been cleaning out my files this past week, and to this day, touching a document related to this experience makes me upset. They didn't use the word back then, but now we'd call it "triggered”. I like to refer to one company as “defunct” which I know drives them crazy because as a publisher they are, in fact, defunct. They just don’t like to hear someone say it.)

Think about this: what happens when your beloved art means "health care payment"? "Rent money"? "Food"? "Pervy editor?"

Art becomes a commodity. A burden. Not just fun...but responsibility. Sometimes a lot of responsibility. 

Sure, everyone has a job. But not everyone has a job that means "Make up a private world, throw it out there into the public, and depend on it for validation and food." 

People tell artists they have to have thick skin to make it. Then they tell them if they're not sensitive, they're not artists. No wonder creators get writer's block!

I've heard some people say writer's block doesn't exist, but most of those people are utter hacks, able to crank out anything at the snap of a finger. 

Well, go you! 

But some people are very emotionally involved in their art and process,  personally and professionally. The anxiety that comes when art suddenly means money, lawsuits, and ugly commentary on Twitter, which can shut you down.

As I wrote before, I think some of Tony Robbins's advice is utter bunk. For example, every time he refers to "depression" as an "emotion", I want to hit him with a brick. Depression isn't an emotion, it's a mental illness you can't rah-rah your way out of.

Sadness is an emotion. Don’t confuse sadness with depression.

I've never been clinically depressed, but I do have an auto-immune disorder (and am currently in cancer treatment) that causes brain inflammation and changes your body chemistry, and it can make you feel depressed. Depression medication won't cure it because it's not clinical depression. But rah-rah won't cure it either. There is no cure. There is only treatment. As long as I take this pill, I feel better.

Anyway, I feel better these days because I am taking the freaking pill, so I toss off Tony's harmful bullshit about how to deal with depression, and I give to you these tips for dealing with procrastination. This stuff really works for me, and I hope you'll try it for yourself. 

I stopped doing this ritual awhile ago when I was sick and down. Now like Pavlov's dog, I'm doing it again, working better, getting shit done.

Here it is.

I bet if you procrastinate, you have a ritual you engage in almost every time you do it, behaviors and habits that enable you to put your art off.

You go to your computer, You web surf. You check out twitter. You check your email. You look at your drawing board. You walk away from your drawing board. You do some busy work. Busybusybusy work.

Why, look at that dust bunny over there!

I must deal with it before I meet this deadline!

Art didn't get done for hours, and the next thing you know, it's kinda late, do I really want to dig into that now, OMG, I can't deal with that level of concentration at this hour, I'll get to it tomorrow.

And tomorrow.

And tomorrow.

And a week has gone by.

And no art got done.

Does this sound like you?

OK then, get a notebook and a pen and paper, and start writing.

Think about what you do whenever you procrastinate. Visualize it. If you're doing it now, if you do it tomorrow, write down in detail exactly what it is you do at that time. 

I bet you repeat the same behaviors. 100 times. I bet you've done 'em 1000 times!

Your fall-back habits that keep you from doing the thing you love most.

If you love it so much, why aren't you doing it?

Is it because you are afraid of being judged? Afraid of not being very good? Afraid of having people ridicule your effort?

Afraid of...failing?

Here is where I admit how terrified I am to finish A DISTANT SOIL.

Will the wait be worth it?

Do you ever get the feeling your art is that really gorgeous person in school you could never work up the courage to ask out on a date?

Yeah.

OK. Think about all that for awhile. 

Write it down.

Did you write it all down? All your niggling habits, those things that eat your time away? 

How did you stand when you procrastinated? How did you sit? How did you feel? What was the expression on your face? Did you feel...dead inside?

Write it down.

Did you write like you meant it? Keep those papers. They'll come in handy later.

OK, now, here comes the hard part. The part that may hurt. 

A lot.

Think about everything procrastination has cost you.

EVERYTHING.

Think about the books that didn't get written. The pictures that didn't get made.

The time you'll never get back.

Think about the opportunities you missed. The events you didn't attend. The progress you didn't make. The awards you never even got near.

Think about the impact on the world your art never got to have. The pride you never got to feel.

The characters you never got to give life.

Ouch.

Write it all down.

Write it down and keep writing. 

Make it hurt. Make it REALLY hurt.

Remind yourself of the PRICE you pay...for procrastination.

Whatever it is you think you are GAINING by procrastinating, it can't be nearly as bad as what you are LOSING by not making your art.

Did you write it down?

It's easy to forget how much pain procrastination costs. Procrastination is death by a thousand nothings. 

Keep this list of the pain of procrastination around to remind yourself of what you are losing drop by drop. If you have to do this exercise every single week, do it.

Make it sink in.

Now, here comes the fun part. We're going to fill up the hole in your soul made by the negative reinforcement with positive reinforcement.

Think about how your life will change if you STOP procrastinating.

Think about all you will gain. Think about all the art you will make. Think about all the stories you will tell. Think about the connection you will make with the world through your art. Think about the people you will come to know. The things you will do, the places you will go.

Think of the pride you will feel, the pride of craftsmanship and accomplishment. Think of the things you will learn. Think of leaving behind a job you hate for a job you love. Think of being able to do the thing you love most every single day of your life. Bringing joy to yourself and others, coming up with interesting ideas, new ways to say things, beautiful things, ugly things, important things.

Think of how cool it would be to be doing the coolest thing you can imagine whenever you want to do it.

How much better will your life be, if you give to your art the life it deserves?

Write it down. ALL of it.

Feel that, feel how good that feels. Better than a million bucks of good.

Jazzy. Hunh?

Did you write it down?

OK, now while you're in this happy place, I want to you write down on a card or some piece of paper you can put where you will see it every single day, "I don't have to, I WANT to."

If art becomes something you HAVE to do because RENT MONEY, you lose the love. It feels negative, an imperative, painful. So saying I WANT instead of I NEED is more empowering on a daily basis.

Art is the thing you do because you LOVE it. You WANT it. 

Put it on a card. Tape it to the computer, the drawing board.

Say it every single day.

And lastly,  create a pattern breaking ritual to do every time you sense yourself slipping. 

Did you sneak off to the net and stay on too long and not make that picture and...OUCH! 

Pinch yourself.

Or maybe you get up and shake your body.

Or you start singing at the top of your lungs.

Whatever your pattern break is, it should be something physical, something to get the new behavior to sink in on another level.

I make a loud noise and shake it off. Taylor Swift would be proud.

So, shake it off.

I'll admit right now, after YEARS of not being able to manage my state due to illness, I am having to relearn a lot of these positive patterns and habits. I find this almost impossible to do when I am sick. I get so anxious every time I sat down to draw, you'd think I didn't know how to make a straight line with a ruler - and with my shaking hands, I couldn’t.

I am working on a job now with cars and guns and motorcycles that I tried and tried to draw months ago, and simply couldn't manage it. 

It seemed so hard.

I know that was illness induced, and had nothing to do with lingering bad feeling about my work as it did in the past.

But I still have issues.

My big anxiety today is wrapped around feeling badly about being behind schedule, how I feel I've let people down, how I have so much work to make up. How I feel so much responsibility for completing this project. 

How can I ever make up all this time?

I feel like years of art that didn't get produced is a terrible burden to carry even when there wasn't always a lot I could have done about it.

Or when there was.

But, you know what?

I can't fix that.

Because I don't have a time turner, and I can't make my doctor discover what was wrong back in 2006, and I had no idea I was going to get flattened by cancer this past year, and I can't get all those years of productivity returned to me, and I can't get jobs that I lost because I could not complete them, and money I lost, and medical bills, and I can't feel better ten years ago instead of ten weeks ago.

I can't.

All I can do is move forward.

All I can do is draw a page now.

And that's the way it is.

One page at a time.