100 Day Creative Challenge Day 63: The Art of Procrastination
I revisited Capture: 30 Days of Inspiration by Amanda Viviers today. I had a retreat day with Amanda last week where I contemplated the year ahead with the hindsight of the year just passed and one of the things she highlighted was my habit of procrastination. I could totally relate to Mindy Kaling’s description:
I’ve found my productive-writing-to-screwing-around ratio to be one to seven. So, for every eight hour day of writing, there is only one good productive hour of work being done. The other seven hours are preparing for writing: pacing around the house, collapsing cardboard bxes for recycling, reading the DVD extras pamphlet from BBC Pride & Prejudice, getting snacks lined up for writing, and YouTubing toddlers who learned the ‘Single Ladies’ dance. I know. Isn’t that horrible? So, basically, writing this piece took me the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Amanda reminded me of her chapter entitled The Art of Procrastination. In it she writes that perhaps we should reframe procrastination and make it part of our creative process. It’s sort of what I wrote about yesterday when I said I was writing this series of blog posts to keep my creative juices flowing.
However, there’s no substitute for actually writing when you’re a full-time writer, even if it is more writing!
The other thing we talked about was exercise in the morning. I too often put off exercise until later in the day and things come — legitimate things. Work, visitors, cleaning, cooking, shopping —life. I hate exercising in the morning. I’ve just about made the morning pages a habit, I just need to make morning exercise a habit!
I’m reframing my year and procrastination, even legitimate creative procrastination, has to end with productivity. I still haven’t exercised today, but I will be going out there in an hour or so. I’ve written my blog. I wrote a little more of my YA novel. So today is a day of progress.
Tomorrow I have a plan. 1. Boxing class. 2. Blog post. 3. Check in with my adult novel and put enough together to send off to my mentor. (My last deadline was December and it’s now February!)
I’ll let you know how I go!
