Welcome to Procrastinate B. #001

A Weekly Look at How I Battle Procrastination and the Lure of Doing Nothing.

(Unless I get distracted.)

In what’s either a brilliant start to this journey, or the worst possible one, this draft has been sat in Ulysses since the beginning of the year while I start, juggle, then abandon a plethora of other projects.

I’ve always been a procrastinator, even when I had no idea the word existed. Looking back at school, at college, university, then work; there’s been a self-induced nagging that has held me back. An indescribable something that eats away at my brain when confronted with a task, a hobby, an important form or even preparing a meal.

I mean, I want to eat a delicious meal rather than a frozen, tasteless, mass-produced, slab of nothing. That important form that’s been sitting on my desk for weeks, that I keep pushing back and pushing back in Reminders to fool myself that I’m still in charge of when I decide to start it? And the sooner I start it, the sooner it will be completed, won’t it? I know this. So what is wrong with my brain?

Am I lazy?

Am I stupid?

Am I incapable of multitasking?

Has sailing through life relying solely on my pretty face and winning smile caught up with me now I am middle-aged?

No.

What am I Doing?

I’ve tried, with varying success, to chip away at this lifelong issue. Occasionally, I get in a great routine, but once that routine inevitably evaporates, I’m back to square one again.

Every. Single. Time.

I read self-help books, I use habit trackers. The Pomodoro method, Atomic Habits. And it works, it really works, until it doesn’t.

So why doesn’t it? Am I not using them properly? Are they no good?

Procrastinate B.

Cards on the table, this blog is for me and me alone. That’s not to say anyone reading won’t enjoy it or find it useful, but it’s not intended as a guide to procrastination and how to battle it. Maybe it will turn into that over time (won’t that be great?) but for the present moment, it's a journal by me, for me, only posted online for everyone to read.

I doubt it will be too serious, I certainly don’t intend it to be, but it will be honest.

Given the nature of my procrastination, this initial post is likely to be a little on the rough side. It’s important for me to get it out there or it will remain forever in a folder, never to be seen again.

The Dream.

The task I haven’t mentioned, the biggie that has defied me more times than any other.

I would dearly love to be a children’s writer. I have the ideas, I have great faith in their strength, but procrastination has stopped me making any meaningful progress. I’m not exaggerating when I say the idea I’m most excited about has been rattling around for two-decades. I’ve started the drafts numerous times, stopped, and restarted.

This is, clearly, a problem.

Rule number one of writing? Get to the end by any means necessary.

And I’ve come to a decision over those myriad of drafts, sat there in folders all over the place. They’re holding me back and will do for as long as they exist.

So I’m going to delete them. The great lines, the poor ones. The dross, the beauty. They’re all going to go and all I’ll be left with is the idea, and time. I’ll be starting afresh, without the temptation to waste time looking for that draft that’s somewhere that was nicely written, just so I can cut and paste it in and derail any proper progress.

It’s the most extreme manner I can think to nip my procrastination in the bud, but I think it will free me.

So this inaugural newsletter is the start of a new era. I will battle procrastination by writing about procrastination.

Next Time.

What’s with the squirrel?