Your solutions to creative procrastination

Tips from the community

Hey everyone,

So nice to see some new faces join the newsletter last week. You are so welcome here! This newsletter, for creative and entrepreneurial people making the most of their hours on this planet, is normally fortnightly, but there were so many thoughtful and useful suggestions following the last post on creative procrastination, that I wanted to share them with the wider community.

Here’s a quick roundup of what everyone said helped them with creative procrastination. I imagine most people can’t check the comments section every day, so I wanted to share the wisdom here! Let’s dig in:

We asked: How do you avoid creative procrastination?

Tactic 1: strip down your to-do list

Caroline and Tresor both swore by focusing on one thing at a time, and reducing the size of your to-do list. It’s easy for creative and entrepreneurial people to struggle a lot with wanting to do a lot, fast - but the irony is it leads to doing less. The key, Tresor said, is to “give yourself small chunks of work”. This might look like a 1 item to-do list, and it needs to be “something super achievable”. Soon you’ll be mastering the tasks and over delivering.

Tactic 2: be honest:

Inga asks herself: is this task actually important enough, or are you procrastinating because you know it’s not important? Sometimes it’s helpful to not stress out about it, and trust the fact that if you’re not doing it, it probably isn’t that important after all.

Tactic 3: work on the task you’re procrastinating on for 5 minutes

Both Rainbow and George swore by the idea of starting small. George suggested the simple trick of committing to 2 minutes of the task you’re putting off and trusting the rest will take care of itself. He said: “Want to get healthier - just commit to going to the gym/yoga for 2 minutes… Want to get that proposal sent? Just commit to 2 minutes of writing it”. Once you’ve done the two minutes you generally get into a flow and stay - and it makes starting less scary.

Rainbow, a self-confessed lifelong procrastinator, said that sometimes it’s a fear of a failure: a fear of good enough can put us off. Rainbow pointed to the fact that Instagram founder Kevin Systrom also works on something for five minutes to fight procrastination. Systrom said in an interview with Axios: "If you don't want to do something, make a deal with yourself to do at least five minutes of it. After five minutes, you'll end up doing the whole thing."

Tactic 4: keep going and wait for the joy to return

Jacquelyn said focusing on ‘doing things for the sake of doing things’ can help - essentially removing the expectation from the task. The pandemic has made everything feel harder, and made lots of people feel a bit “blah” - a mood Adam Grant termed ‘languishing’.

As creative people we often want to wait for inspiration to strike, but Jacquelyn reiterated the important of keeping going: “Last year taught me a lot about just doing things for the sake of doing them… one day you'll actually feel motivated to do them and the joy that might have been missing turns up!”

This reminded me of the conversation I had with famed illustrator Lisa Congdon on the Out of Hours podcast. She reminded us that even artists - who people expect to be spontaneous - are deeply routine-driven. We can’t rely on inspiration - we just need to keep showing up.

Thanks again for reading this note - have a great week, and see you next week!

Georgia