by Felicia Day
Procrastination
We all have long-term creative goals we’d like to realize, but we allow everything short-term to get in the way. Let’s hear it for the guilt-inducing yoke of procrastination! It’s the naggy mother-in-law of emotional afflictions. Rest assured, no one is alone in falling victim to it. Many of us decide to binge Brooklyn Nine-Nine instead of learning Chinese brush painting. (In fact, most of us.) Hell, I just tabbed over to my browser to retweet a post about some political thing I immediately forgot about instead of finishing this paragraph. GUILTY!
The concept is not new in the slightest. The ancient Greeks even had a term for it: akrasia. Meaning “a state of acting against one’s better judgment, or lack of will that prevents one from doing the right thing.” I guess tons of people back then would rather have gone out to hear a lyre concert or watch naked wrestling than compose philosophy treatises like good citizens. #justlikeus
We’re not fooling ourselves in the least with whatever it is we’re doing instead of working on our creative goals. “Oh, gee, I could have been working on my poetry instead of playing iPhone games all night? Totally forgot while I spent the night flinging pigs into the air!” But we fling those pigs anyway! Against our best interests. And once we develop this habit of avoidance, well… we get REALLY good at it. Practice makes imperfect! Procrastination starts to suck everything into a quicksand-like vortex of inaction—especially around our creativity. After a while, we realize, “Dude, I’m drowning myself. Very. Very. Slowly.”
When something lingers in our lives and goes unacted on for too long, what we’re avoiding becomes heavier and heavier until it becomes WAY too heavy to tackle at all. It’s like procrastination makes us into mental alchemists, morphing hydrogen tasks all the way down to uranium tasks! (Lightest to heaviest elements, FYI.
Hold up, Mr./Mrs./Ms. Pessimism! We’ve already learned from the Powerlessness section that we CAN act! We KNOW we have the power inside us RIGHT NOW to overcome anything! Feel that chest-burster of forward energy! If we continue channeling the “I have the power to get stuff done, even if it sucks!” attitude by attacking small things we’re procrastinating about, then bigger, weightier items, like “Compose a song to my dead gerbil,” will seem that much easier to tackle. Because we are demonstrating to ourselves on every level, “I am powerful enough to tackle any problem. Mundane or creative! This one’s for you, precious Squeaky! RIP!”
* * *
What are you avoiding right now? Write each item on a box blocking you from enjoying your house of creativity. From small to big, from “clean kitchen counter” to “ask boss for raise,” put everything on your life to-do list on a box. (Draw new ones if you need to.)
With each item, think about how you can remove this box. Are there some that could be removed more easily than others?
Below, make a to-do list of three of the easy boxes you can start to clear. These are your focus until you complete them. Then move on to three others.
Does making a plan help you feel lighter? Good! You are making space for your creativity. And it will fill up as much space as you offer it. So offer it as much as you can!
Look back at your remaining boxes. What will happen if you simply DON’T DO SOME OF THEM? Draw a box below and write one of the tasks you don’t care about in it. Then think: “I give myself permission not to do that task.”
Mentally put that box on the curb and walk away.
How does that feel? Are you sad? Put it back! Relieved? Great!
Now, think it through: Can you accept the consequences of removing a goal from your life entirely? Even one thing on the curb could free you to concentrate on the boxes you genuinely care about. And help you start moving them from box to reality.
* * *
It’s helpful to understand that procrastination is not laziness or shiftlessness. It’s often a result of feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to start. The modern world is not kind to our attention spans. We are not meant to deal with a thousand text messages a day, seven choices of toothpaste, and every kind of TV show known to man. I mean, just the act of browsing Netflix alone gives me a panic attack and I usually end up turning the TV off to knit. With all the things available to eat up our attention, it’s much easier to do THOSE than peck away at creating. So we put it off. And off. And off.
How do we overcome THAT?
When we walk across a room, do we fix our eyes on where we want to go and start walking, with no regard to what’s between us and that goal? No! That’s a great way to trip and break a face. Unless you want to go as a mummy for Halloween and don’t want to fake it, don’t do that. We complete a journey step by step. The trick to overcoming procrastination is to make every single step toward our goals actionable and within our control.
Actionable means each step is possible and as unstressful as we can make it. If that means breaking the simplest goal down to hundreds of steps, that’s okay. If the goal Get a drink of water has the steps Open cabinet Get glass and we feel stress between those two? ADD ANOTHER FEW STEPS! Move hand up Grasp glass are perfectly fine to shove in there. Because when we reduce the stress of moving from point to point, we make it much easier to attack the next task with confidence.
The other qualifier, within our control, means that each step should be something we can accomplish without depending on luck or other people. Goals that are not entirely in our power invite procrastination. “I can’t really achieve this step for myself, so come on in, lethargy and bad feelings! Put your feet up on the coffee table and stay a while!”
For example, say our goal is to become an Oscar winner:
Walk down Hollywood Blvd. Director discovers me on sidewalk. Win Oscar.
The last two steps aren’t within our power. They involve luck and the actions of others. And the first includes the disgusting stress of visiting Hollywood Blvd. I always feel so sorry for tourists who go there expecting… anything but what they get. Sorry, German people. Definitely wear socks with those sandals when you visit.
An amended path that COULD lead to winning an Oscar would be more like:
Study acting. Get acting work. Do best work possible. Rinse and repeat while earning great acting roles. Possibly win Oscar but keep doing best work.
It’s fine to have aspirational goals to inspire ourselves with, but if it’s not within our power to accomplish on the effort of our work alone, it’s not actionable and doesn’t make the procrastination-overcoming cut. We can only show up and place ourselves in the best positions to achieve our pie-in-the-sky dreams. THAT’S ALL WE CAN DO. AND IT IS ENOUGH!
* * *
Take one of your bigger creative goals and write it on the bottom of the page, inside the butterfly. In the cocoon, write the most rudimentary first step you can think of to start accomplishing that goal—one you could literally do right now. Now start filling in the lines on the right with actionable steps that are within your control.
Make the list as long as you need to connect the two. If you feel discouraged at any point, you broke it down too fast!
If you can do the first step, you have the power to do ALL the steps. And put yourself in the best place to have a CHANCE at your end dream. Do you see how easily a path like this can enable you to fly?
* * *
The process of breaking down goals can be fun. Honest! Because it’s a creative process in itself! No one else will break down the steps of a goal from A to B like we do individually, because our vision of what we want to accomplish is unique to us. Yes, we might have to do research, learn skills, even reinvent ourselves to accomplish what we want to accomplish (just that), but by breaking down the steps, we demonstrate to ourselves that eac
h goal is an ACHIEVABLE JOURNEY we could indeed take ourselves on.
In the end, beating procrastination comes down to resource management. Which is, coincidentally, my favorite type of video game. In these kinds of games, the player is given a problem and currency with which to buy tools to deal with said problem. That’s it. Simple. Clean. Just like life. Unlike in life, the currency is imaginary gold, the problem is usually orcs, and the tools are fireballs, but aside from all that, the analogy is one-to-one.
Perfectionism
As you read this book, you’re reading a version that has been written and rewritten probably a dozen times. Hopefully what you end up with reads effortlessly. (Thanks, editor, copyeditor, illustrator, and a few dozen other people whose job it is to make me look good.) But I can assure you that my first attempt at composing this paragraph was absolute torture. Like running through water. Getting-in-the-car-to-go-to-the-gym-January-2nd awful. I’m doubting myself with every letter I type. I probably just ate a self-pity chocolate and sighed heavily. Why? Because I fall victim to perfectionism. All. The. Time.
Too often, I allow myself to focus on the endgame, dozen-times-rewritten version of a paragraph, and not accept the messy first version as part of the process of getting there. If my prose isn’t amazing the first time I put my pen on paper, I feel like a failure. Like, if something doesn’t fall out of my head fully formed, like Athena springing out of her dad’s skull, I have the attitude, “Hang it the Hades up, lady. You’re no god. You’re not even a lame-ass naiad.”
This is the burden of perfectionism that many of us bear, and it stops creativity dead in its tracks.
* * *
Draw a circle below.
It’s not perfect. You suck. Never draw again.
* * *
In the space below, write five sentences about a superhero saving a cat from a burning building. Don’t think, just write SOMETHING FUN AND RIDICULOUS. GO GO GO!
Now rewrite your five sentences. Then do it again. Rewrite either here or on another sheet of paper over and over until you are happy with what you wrote. If you aren’t excited about what you’re writing, throw it out. Risk throwing out something good to find something even better.
* * *
Now let’s try something different. Below, write five sentences about a supervillain destroying a city. BUT YOU ONLY GET ONE CHANCE. This work will determine whether you are worthy of being called a creator. Don’t mess it up. Honestly, every word needs to be perfect. Don’t be stupid and use the wrong words together. Also use an ink pen: don’t cheat by using pencil. And use exactly the space allotted too, no more, no less. GO!
How did that exercise feel compared to the last? Terrible? Good! Don’t work like that!
* * *
It’s tempting to imagine that if we’re clothed in the armor of perfection, we’ll be able to withstand the slings and arrows of criticism better. “I got it RIGHT! Come at me, brosephs!” The problem is that this armor is so SO HEAVY. We can’t experience the joy of creating while carrying around all that heavy metal. Plate mail went out of fashion for a reason, guys.
Perfectionism is great at throwing up roadblocks in the middle of a creative process (in the form of writer’s block), and it’s even better at preventing us from starting at all (perfectionism hiding in procrastination sheep’s clothing). It is the bouncer guarding the entrance to our Club Creativity. And it will not let us inside the joyful place with great cocktails unless we qualify in one thousand tiny, ever-shifting ways. Basically, it’s a dick. And what does it represent anyway?
Something that doesn’t exist.
Nothing is perfect. Literally nothing. Everything has a flaw. Look at the internet. Someone somewhere can always point out something wrong with ANYTHING. Even Beyoncé. (Gasp!)
Nature hates perfection. In fact, we evolved because nature itself is imperfect. Every generation is born slightly different from the last and that process has allowed our species to exist in the version that we do now. But when we use perfection as a benchmark, we’re begging to stay stuck in an unnatural holding pattern, without growth or improvement. “I’m perfect as I am now, thanks! I don’t want to evolve like Nature wants me to! She’s dumb! Look at the platypus, what an idiot!” No wonder the perfectionist mindset feels so wrong. Platypuses are literally the best animals out there!
And what about those rare cases where there are not enough flaws in something? The concept “uncanny valley” is a good illustration. This is humanlike objects (usually computer-generated) that elicit certain feelings because they appear so similar to, but not quite the same as, humans. FEELINGS OF REVULSION! BECAUSE THEY’RE TOO PERFECT! Is THAT what’s holding us back from creating? A need to be repulsive? Back the truck up, because the whole thing sounds NUTS!
The things that make us different are our greatest strengths. That includes our flaws. Our flaws make us unique. Memorable. And they make our creativity worth sharing. Because they make what we create different from what anyone else creates. What a beautiful reason to embrace our flaws rather than rejecting them! Perfectionism is rolling its beady little judgmental eyes right now, but it’s true.
* * *
Make a list of your flaws below. Beside each item write one thing that is positive about it. If you can think of more than one positive thing, WRITE IT!
* * *
What creative work do you consider “perfect” in this world? Write it below.
Take some time to research it. Read the biography of the creator or the history of how it came to be. How many more flaws did they have to deal with than you thought before?
Everything is work. Everything is failure. Until it is a success.
* * *
Nothing comes overnight to anyone. Ever see a contortionist do that thing with their butts on their heads? That didn’t come after one hamstring stretch. Your perfectionism has to be taught that creativity is a process. It will be dirty. And ugly. And we have to remind ourselves of that fact. Over and over again. How?
What do people who take themselves too seriously hate most? Being teased and subverted. It takes their power of “importance” away from them. I’ve seen this on Twitter a lot, mostly with people who have anime avatars. So yeah, let’s do that!
Perfectionism teaches us the lie that there is only one “right” solution. So open the fire hose and spill out every single alternate solution there is. Make it a game. If you’re stuck on a painting, take a sketch pad and draw twenty different iterations that move you past the point where you’re stuck. If you’re writing a novel, write a paragraph ten different ways, then keep writing. See how far you have to go until you start to feel like you’re doing good work again. Channel that inner smartass. You know it likes to be channeled!
If experimenting with alternate “real” solutions to a problem doesn’t shake perfectionism away and allow you to progress (it can be pretty persistent, like a dog on a beef jerky stick), just… be worse. WAY worse! Like, act like you’re a five-year-old and the word fart is so funny you have to write it over and over again in every sentence. “Fart.” Hehe. (Five or not, it’s always funny.) During this process of total screw-aroundedness, if you feel Perfectionism leaning over your shoulder while adjusting its monocle a bit (I dunno why I’m visualizing a personality trait as the Monopoly guy, but just go with it), do WORSE WORK! It is perfectly legal to say, “I am going to spend an hour writing the worst poetry in existence.” Show Perfectionism that THERE IS NO LAW TELLING US WE CAN’T SUCK. “Pass Go with this, stupid top-hat gentleman!”
* * *
Think of a creative problem you’re having. Now write the WORST SOLUTIONS EVER KNOWN TO MAN BELOW.
Wait, wait… It’s too good, do worse! I believe you can be more awful. Get back in there!
How FREE do you feel now? Are you inspired to have fun coming up with possible REAL solutions to your issues? Could it be that being “naughty” and reckless and subversive and joyful makes the hard work of creativity… FUN? GASP!
; * * *
A big challenge with shedding our perfectionism, specifically around creative work, is that we often think of ourselves as “fixed” at birth, coming out of the womb with a set of skills that we’re preprogrammed to be good at. If we have to attack our creativity with WORK, well, we must not be talented, so why bother? This is so wrong!
We are not fixed. Everything we do, everything we’re exposed to, changes us bit by bit. A fixed mindset about ourselves is incredibly destructive. It also sells ourselves short. To think we can never improve? Why not have more faith than that? We are ever-changeable, magical, awesome creatures. We are fully in control of our destinies and abilities. Yes, go ahead and say it, “I’m a special unicorn who is fully capable of kicking ass!”
Creative work means signing up for the process, not the result. If you take on the creative WORK and sign up for the GRIND, then failure or success will be a moot point: we have already gotten our reward in the DOING of it. So go ahead and DO it!
When I wrote my memoir, I agonized and cried and moaned and ate so many cookies I gained five pounds in a month. Then one day I had an epiphany: What if I allow myself to feel joy before I start writing this book every day? Would it help? Because right now I hate it. So every morning after that I sat down and, in a separate file, I TOOK OUT THE TRASH. I wrote stream-of-consciousness, whiny, dumb-jokey observations about life. Half diary entries, half “What should I have for lunch?” musings. I wrote for a minimum of fifteen minutes without stopping. It wasn’t about the words at all, it was a process of cleansing. Popping the cork on the wine bottle before pouring out the tastiness. Then, when I started working on my book afterward… well, I still ate too many cookies, but I enjoyed myself a thousand percent more than I had before.