Resistance comes in alluring packaging

November 20, 2014 1:29 PM

I once coached a writer whose biggest challenge was
creative procrastination.

She was a master of artfully creating constant
distractions instead of working.

During our brain rental session, she showed me the list of her peer review team for
her upcoming book. It was massive. At least twenty different editors intended
to comment on her manuscript. Which seemed a bit excessive, considering for the
scope of the book.

So I probed deeper. And the irony was, she wasn’t even
planning to listen to their feedback. She actually completely trusted her
own voice as a writer. In fact, without her peer review team, she told me, her
readers wouldn’t have noticed the difference anyway.

However, by sending the
manuscript out for three months of editing gave her another reason to
procrastinate.

Isn’t it astonishing the calories we are willing to burn in
order to avoid the real work?

We seem to spend half our time planning for
things we could create if we didn’t
spend half our time planning. And it’s not just planning, it everything on the
day’s long list of distractions.

It breaks my heart.

I’m reminded of an
interview I read with a startup founder, who said that releasing people from
their dependency on email will free up the time and mental space needed to move
the species forward.

Amen to that.

Every time I hear someone talking about
getting their inbox to zero, I just want to scream at them and say, all the
time you spent answering email, you could have been doing the one thing people
really love about you.

What excuses do
you make to justify your procrastination?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.

[email protected]