You’ve blocked off your freelance blogging time, you have your clients and assignments all lined up, everything is ready to go…
…and you’re cruising around on social media, not sure why you can’t get started. You’re miserable and overwhelmed with stress. You open your word processing program, check the client’s requirements, and take a few seconds to research one last thing…
…and it’s three hours later, your mental energy has drained like a tub with a leaky plug, and you’re playing a video game with your neighbor’s six-year-old kid (and losing). You’ve done solitaire, Words With Friends, Angry Birds, Farmville and…
You still haven’t started your blogging for the day. You mean to. Really you do. But every time you try to get started, your throat tightens up, your stomach clenches, you get distracted by a Facebook ad for car insurance, and before you realize it, you’ve wasted the day.
On top of which, you haven’t made your earning goals, and…you start going broke doing nothing when you very much want to be doing something.
So much for following your dreams.
Here’s how to start recognizing the habit of procrastination and learn what steps you can take to negotiate with your inner two-year-old and their delaying tactics.
Instead of continuing a cycle of trying to guilt yourself into writing, using up all your willpower, then collapsing into mindless time-killers, let’s look at procrastination itself: if it were mere laziness, then you wouldn’t be so stressed!
Procrastination comes from another source: fear.
When you’re trapped between something you must do (like write that blog article) and something you can’t do (like write that blog article, because of a variety of reasons), it causes stress. It feels like any action that you can possibly take is the wrong one; if you do manage to work on your article, you second-guess your work and that feeds right back into the stress.
The mind is tricky and likes to avoid stress when possible. Which is when you find your attention sliding away from your article and back to social media, games, even housework…anything to put off the complex problems ahead of you.
However, this vicious cycle of can’t-do/must-do can usually be stopped.
First, start with the requirements.
Make sure you understand them thoroughly. What does the client want, when do they want it, what will it be used for, and how will you know if you’ve succeeded—or if you’ve failed? If the requirements aren’t clear, communicate with the client to find out.
If a client can’t communicate their requirements clearly, then their project may not be ready to take off yet. (Your client might be procrastinating, too!) Getting clarification on requirements can lead to a better project all around. Sure, the client has deadlines—but you will be able to write your articles far more efficiently and quickly if they take a few moments to clarify exactly what they want.
You have the right not to spin your wheels on a project!
Second, keep your plans flexible.
Research and plan the way that feels most comfortable to you…but when it’s time to put the words on the page or screen, be ready to abandon the plan in favor of inspiration. Make sure to talk to your client ahead of time about this if you don’t already have an understanding about what happens if things don’t go according to plan, for whatever reason: it’s almost inevitable that no matter how well you plan, things won’t go according to plan. Find out when to contact the client and when to run with your own good ideas. It’s a good rule regardless. Sometimes life throws things your way that you couldn’t imagine.
If your subconscious knows which constraints are non-negotiable, which are negotiable, and that it won’t get yelled at for changing the plan as long as it meets certain constraints and goals…it’s a lot easier to become inspired.
Third, put yourself in a growth mindset.
A growth mindset is when you assume that any skill can be learned…and that you’re not perfect at it yet. When you approach every project as practice, you give yourself the opportunity to get better and more confident as a blogger.
The opposite of a growth mindset is a talent mindset—where you approach every job as though you have a limited (but great!) amount of talent as a writer, limited to certain areas under certain conditions. A talent mindset often contributes to being in a can’t-do/must-do situation. I can’t finish this project…what was I thinking? I bit off more than I can chew.
When you work in a growth mindset, it can help to have a plan for what to do if you fail to achieve perfection on the first try. Deliver the first draft early, make sure that time for rewrites is included in the plan (and that you won’t be left with a lot of work and no income during that time), and give yourself time to mentally process editing requests so you don’t bite the client’s head off! It often helps to tackle the easiest changes first so that you don’t have minor distractions while trying to pare down to the essentials of the client’s feedback. If necessary…go back to the requirements of the project and clarify them with your client.
Finally, once you start writing, the only person’s opinion who matters is your inner blogger’s.
Not the nagging, critical, editorial voice, but the one who got into blogging because of their love of writing. What you love, what you hate, what you know, what you believe, what you think—your most valuable asset as a writer is the way you see the world. Your point of view.
Letting your inner editor take control on a first draft is a mistake. Your inner editor would like nothing more than to be perfectly correct…and perfectly anonymous. Letting your inner editor run the show is one last can’t-do/must-do trap: you can’t be yourself…but yourself is the best thing you can be, as a writer.
Bloggers and other writers talk about “finding their niche.” If you haven’t found yours yet, it might be because you’re trying to be all things to all clients—and not listening to your inner writing voice. You’re stripping out all the things that make you “you.”
But even when you’re blogging for someone else, you get to write the things that make you interested and satisfied. You get to do the research that inspires you. You get to say “no” to the jobs that don’t fit your muse.
If you do, you’ll find that your earnings go up—not down—as your clients start to appreciate the vitality and passion you bring to your projects.
Everything else can wait until the draft is done.
If you understand the requirements of the project, if you know when to follow your inspiration versus when to check in with the client, and if you have a process for feedback and updates…there’s no reason to be afraid of turning in a less-than-perfect first draft.
When you’ve opened up a space where you can do your current best without fear of a harsh, out-of-left-field reprisal, the can’t-do/must-do trap disappears…and it becomes a hundred times easier to take feedback from clients when it does show up. You’re growing, not delivering perfection.
And when you allow your creativity a safe place to play with the projects you take on, the thought of one more predictable round of solitaire isn’t quite as appealing as it once was. Blogging is a fun process, when we’re not making ourselves miserable trying to fight it.
Do you suffer from the can’t-do/must-do loop? What other procrastination problems do you suffer from? Let us know in the comments below!
I really like your viewpoint of procrastination and I truly believe that it affects the blogger’s psychology if not decently subdued. Also the following line is really expressive of the daily dilemma of trying to satisfy others over your own self: “Letting your inner editor run the show is one last can’t-do/must-do trap: you can’t be yourself…but yourself is the best thing you can be, as a writer.” “You Do You”, by Shailene Woodley, sincerely depicts what each and every human should adhere to in portraying himself.
Thank you!
Nice one there but you know it takes self awareness to know your strengths and weaknesses. You just inspired me DeAnna!
I’m glad to hear it.
Thanks for this, Deanna! I’m super-impressed with your “can’t do / must do” principle – it describes exactly how I feel when I get stuck in my own procrastination cycle. 🙂
Thanks!
This was a brilliant article – it really gave me some great insight to my own procrastination habits that have been keeping me from doing what I know I NEED to do. The introduction was a practically perfect description of what I’ve been going through lately (almost daily) as I work on launching my own blog/site and continue the search for new clients. It really does help to know that you’re not the only one who feels this way!
Thank you for the motivation to keep moving forward!
Additional tip: this stuff is kind of like online newsletter subscriptions. It builds up, and once every six months, you’ll have to unsubscribe from a procrastination mentality all over again. No big; just keep in mind that you’re not failing all over again, it’s just time to clean things out.
I’ve always considered myself to be a professional procrastinator. This part of me has really come out since becoming a freelance blogger. I don’t know why but I’m great at putting assignments off until the last minute. I always think to myself that I have more time than I really do at the end of the day. I think that’s my problem – putting things off. I keep thinking that I’m going to get all of this stuff done int he day but it never ends up that way. It’s one of the more annoying aspects of my personality, I suppose. I do get my assignments done on time 9 times out of 10 but I need to get better at making sure they get done in plenty of time.
Granted that this blog focuses on fear, so this is kind of a tangent, but–I’ve seen articles *also* showing that we procrastinate so that we spend less time overall on a task. If you do something at the last minute, there are no more changes that can suddenly arise, no more new research that can pop up–no chance for anything triggering rework to occur.
For example, if you do a job due on Friday first thing Monday, then there’s the chance that the client will say on Wednesday, “Well, I know I told you X, but really I needed Y instead, so please make sure you deliver that,” and now you have to do extra work.
This shouldn’t be happening to you very often, but if you’re like me, it’s once bitten, ten thousand times shy. You’re still going back to a subconscious fear, but it probably just feels like being lazy (or a personality problem).
My advice here is to eyeball your assignments and go, “This one client never changes their requirements. This one’s safe to work on,” or “This other client has issues with sticking to requirements. I’ll do a little research, but I’m gonna wait a couple of days on this and see if they change their mind YET AGAIN.”
It can help to make this stuff conscious.
If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t need to sweat over every single word and writes good first drafts, you’re probably getting away with procrastinating most of the time, as you say. Cool! Write the good first drafts and don’t worry about “working hard enough.” I used to feel guilty for getting a draft done ahead of time, like I hadn’t worked hard enough. It turns out I did work hard enough; the client was happy 🙂
And on days when I still feel like I need to procrastinate, I set up a countdown timer to go off every ten minutes, so I can try to get X number of words written before it rings. It scratches the itch to feel like I’m a superstar writer, at least long enough to get a draft done.
Great concepts to apply to – oh, almost anything! Thanks Deanna.
One’s Inner Editor strikes at the most inopportune times, no matter what specific thing you’re trying (hoping, needing) to accomplish!
Blessings on everyone’s efforts today 🙂
Good luck to you, too, and thanks 🙂
To be a successful freelance writer, you have to be willing to put yourself out there. You have to tell people you want freelance gigs.
Nice one there but you know it takes self awareness to know your strengths and weaknesses. You just inspired me.
Thanks!
This is the crux, ain’t it? It’s so powerful to name the fears surrounding writing so we can move through them.
Thanks for the reminder, DeAnna!
Well, I think so 🙂 Thank you!
This is an insightful post. I find that it is easier for freelance bloggers to fall into the trap of procrastination. This is because you don’t have a boss looking over your shoulder.
You’re now the boss. Having daily targets and working towards them can go a long way. Nice post DeAnna.
Thank you!
Its so true that we procrastinate as writers at times. I mean you know you love to write because why would you chose this career if you didn’t like to! Being on a writing schedule, getting enough rest, and being fully interested in the topic your writing about helps me in so many ways
My daughter and I developed a “human list,” a list of ten (really eleven) things to do when you’re not feeling human. Self-care is essential.
It reminds me of being at uni and having multiple assignments due within the same week. You need that inner drive to keep pushing through the procrastination. Hard to do sometimes but if you want good end results you self-manage and get the job done. In this case the client is who you are answerable to so it’s really important to be able to push through. Sometimes you literally have to grit your teeth and glue yourself to the chair and pump the words out, just getting words on screen. Once you have a skeleton of a project up, you seem to relax into it and then you get a flow going.
Good description 🙂
Starting is the hardest part. I usually make sure everything is closed on my computer except what I must have open. Then, I set a timer. For some reason, this timer thing gets me going. As soon as I hear it ticking, I know I have to get writing and starting becomes easy.
When I simply can’t get going on a project, even with the timer, I will write something for my own blog. Then, it’s easier to get into a client’s project.
It seems like you wrote this article for me, everything you wrote at the beginning is the exact thing that I do. I know want to do freelance writing full time but I cant seem to do it because of this word “Procrastination”. I have setup everything accordingly but I lack the will to move forward. Anyways thanks for your help
<3 Good luck!!! <3