Procrastination

Procrastinating is deferring or postponing, the action or habit of delaying activities or situations that must be addressed, replacing them with other more irrelevant or pleasant situations for fear of facing them. That being said, today's topic centers in the Achilles' heel of many of writers: being unfocused and postponing our writing time to do something else.

How many times has it happened to you that you say I am going to write and you come home with that mood on but you get distracted watching a movie or so, ending the productive day in this way. It is very easy to stop writing for those of us who tend to procrastinate for anything, call yourself watching something on Netflix, chatting on chat, watching Facebook, Twitter or Instagram or just taking a nap. We can find a thousand things that distract us and that is the question: How can we manage not to distract ourselves to meet our goals?

It is not easy, for a creative and dispersed mind it is difficult to focus but not impossible. So today we analyze five basic tips to help you get out of procrastination:

1.- Define your times: Setting limit times always helps to want to meet them. If you decide to write an hour a day, add a timer or alarm to your pc, mobile or tablet to mark the time you spend writing.

2.- Concrete your ideas: The worst thing we can do as writers is to sit and just wonder what will happen next in our writing. You need to identify what sparks your inspiration to write and research. Example: You write a romance story about an architect and a designer, but then you get to the chapter where you describe a bit about the profession and yet you don't know anything about it. Then you start googling and you end up watching over evening dresses for a lady of about XV years or the latest episode of that new Netflix series. This usually happens more than you can imagine, so I suggest that you dedicate a day solely and exclusively to research. Write down the points you need to research first and go one by one until they are all tackled. This way you will not be distracted, you will feel rewarded with every achievement, and you will make your time more productive.

3.- Write silently: Try to do it when you do not have many people around you calling for attention. We know sometimes it's hard to avoid, but we should commit to try to find an ideal space and setting to write in solitude. If you start writing in your classroom sooner than later, a classmate will talk to you and you will end up postponing what you write. In my case as a mom, I write in the late evenings when my children get their things ready for the next day or when they are already in bed. This brings me better concentration and more fluency in my writing.

4.- Turn off the phone: Try it, or put it somewhere away from you. Having the phone aside is one of the biggest distractions one has when sitting down to write. If you write from your mobile, try to put it in airplane mode at least for the time you have defined for your writing. This way you will not receive distractions that impede your purpose.

5.- Have clear goals: If you are one of those people who think that in a month they are going to write a book and feel motivated at the beginning to do it but do not know why they do not succeed, I will tell you that it is cause of frustration. Setting such high goals without having previously exercised writing will make you feel frustrated and said feeling will cause you to abandon or postpone what you write in the long run. My personal motto is: one day at a time. Every day I set real goals and try to meet them, in this way I feel satisfied and also motivated to meet the goals of the next day. Split the long roadmap in mini wins: milestones are key to make you feel rewarded while seeing progress.

Procrastinating is very common, but we should not allow it to dictate our lives. Consciously creating a calendar or defining goals helps to achieve them. Get your mind into finishing something, it may take time but if you try hard you will achieve it.

Article originally written by Gin Les (@ginyales)