How To Write Faster, Even If You Procrastinate - CoSchedule

How To Write Faster, Even If You Procrastinate My friend has a T-shirt that has a logo from the University of Procrastination, which proudly claims to train tomorrows leaderstomorrow.  Or maybe the day after. Procrastination seems like such an ideal solution for creating a better today. Of course, that means the next day is rushed, stressful, and panic-ridden, so its not that great of a solution.  Not every writer is a procrastinator, though. Some are very orderly and regimented. Some are super-focused on being productive.  Whichever kind of writer you might be, you all have something in common: youd like to be able to write faster. Get more writing done, in less time.  Youd like to have a system for writing blog posts that works every time. And youd like to fine tune your editing procedures so you get a great post, from start to finish, in as little time as possible. The Procrastinators Guide To Getting More Writing Done In Less Time #ContentMarketingTheres a way to do it, no matter whether your style is to put off until tomorrow or to drown in to-do lists. Its just a matter of you finding a tailor-made solution to your style of working. How Procrastinating Writers Should Work Just today I finally checked an item off of my highly vague To Do Eventually list, an item I had put on the list more than a year ago. I tried to make myself feel less guilty by titling the list with eventually but  really.  A year. It took me a year to do it. That stupid task had been nibbling at my conscience, as writer  James Surowiecki aptly put it. Lets get one thing clear: procrastination isnt bad. We assume it is, because it puts us in a high-stress rushed state when its finally time to pay the piper for deadline projects;  but procrastination is merely another working style, and not merely an example of a bad working style. Lets get one thing clear: procrastination isnt bad. Guilt-ridden procrastinators (of which I am one, and terribly) spend much of the time they arent doing their work reading about how to stop procrastinating. They look for methods to be more productive, to be the early bird that gets things done in a flash and cant stop checking things off of the list. They buy books, organizers, and apps. And still procrastinate. And are frustrated. There are two ways to approach your procrastination: fight it or work with it. Working with your procrastination. In a broad sense, procrastination has a funny way of getting our priorities straight. Look at your to-do lists. How many of them did you start with specific tasks that had specific dates until, in your eagerness, things got a little out of hand and soon you had a massive list of things you ought to do and should do and might do? Procrastination has a way of helping us not get caught up in what we subconsciously determine is unimportant. Procrastination allows perfectionists to get things done by forcing them to do adequate work under self-induced deadline pressure when they otherwise would be unable to do any work. Procrastination can keep us from fixating on things that are unimportant.In that sense, it is good procrastination. It keeps us from sweating the small stuff. The unimportant things eventually disappear if you never do them. As long as your procrastination has you meeting deadlines and getting the big stuff done, its helping you out. My solution is to use triage rubrics in different areas of life, and to hold my to-do list up against the rubric. For example, in my personal life, family always trumps work. In my work life, client deadlines before tweaking my own website. This is an over-simplification, but I know that if I have these ingrained, I dont fret about the things I procrastinated on that fall into the category of unimportant. Create your own rubric. Start at the top with the thing that will get you into serious trouble if it isnt finished and go back from there. Train your mind to understand what is important. You should work with your procrastination instead of fighting it if: You make to-do lists that are massive and full of unimportant tasks. You have not missed deadlines. You are getting important things done. Fighting your procrastination. Of course, there are times when procrastination is a bad idea, such as putting off paying your taxes and ending up with a penalty because of it. If youre missing deadlines or feeling high levels of stress because everything feels last minute, thats bad procrastination. These undone things dont disappear, they get worse. For writers, bad procrastination means you dont have time to proof and edit properly. You have to constantly deal with reminders and demands of clients wonder why your work isnt submitted. Your work and reputation suffers. This is where the  Zeigarnik effect  comes into play. Bluma Zeigarnik was a psychologist from Lithuania who noticed that restaurant servers could remember large amounts of information (without writing it down) for a limited period of time. Once the food was delivered to the table, servers forgot it all entirely. Through studies Zeigarnik learned that we remember interrupted tasks better than non-interrupted tasks. For procrastinators, this is good news. Once we start a task, we gain focus. This is helped if we arent interrupted. The Zeigarnik effect reveals that starting anywhere on the task is the path to getting it done, even if its with an easy part.  When we allow distractions and interruptions, that unfinished saved-for-later task nags at us relentlessly until we finish it. Start small.If you are procrastinating on writing a post, start with a small thing first. Begin collecting reference links and doing research. Brainstorm ideas. Try free writing techniques just to get text on the screen. Go where you wont be interrupted. Think of the restaurant server. You cant bring the food to the table until youve taken the order and delivered the beverages. Start easy.If getting started is proving impossible, try the  Pomodoro technique. Break up your work into 25-minute timed segments with a five-minute break in between. After four work periods, take a 20 minute break. Once you get in that writing zone skip the breaks and go with it. This way, you know at the start you get breaks and you can ease into the project. How List-Oriented  Writers Should Work A great chef or line cook knows what  mise-en-place  is. It means that before you even begin cooking, you have your station ordered with everything where it belongs. This way, when the rush begins, you are not scrambling for tools and ingredients. As a pastry chef, before I started actually making a recipe, I always got the tools and ingredients together first. It kept me from wasting precious time in a busy day, and it also kept me from starting something and discovering we were out of eggs halfway through. Writer Ron Friedman describes the concept aptly: the single most important ingredient of any dish is planning. This concept appeals to writers who like to make lists. To-do lists, idea lists, project lists, supply lists, editorial calendar liststhese are the people who want things in order. These are the people who are constantly planning. Friedman applies mise-en-place to any kind of work, asking a great question: what is the first thing you do when you start work? Do you check your email? Your Twitter feed? Your analytics from yesterdays blog post? Your voice mail?  These are activities that, according to Friedman, put you into a reactive mode. They make us lose our focus, and let other peoples priorities take center stage, Friedman said. They are the equivalent of entering a kitchen and looking for a spill to clean or a pot to scrub. Begin your day with a brief planning session. An intellectual mise-en-place. Ron Friedman Youre not in a good place to write after youve started with these activities, but instead youre in that no-win zone of reacting and catching up. The truth is, the emails never stop rolling in, the tweets dont stop chirping, and yesterdays analytics can be analyzed later. And people who make lists are prone to starting the day reactively. Or, I should say, people who make lists without hierarchy are prone to starting the day reactively.  Your lists of things to do will hamper you if you do not structure them with the idea of mise-en-place. How do you make a list that works? 1. Small tasks, action words. David Allen, of the well-known Get Things Done system, suggests that you break down  your tasks on your to-do lists, and start the smaller components with action verbs. Instead of: Blog post due try Write 15 headlines. Find 5 outside resources. Write introduction. Outline blog structure. Write first draft. Blog post due isnt mise-en-place. Its we have knives somewhere in the kitchen. Its vague. It tells you a deadline, and not what to do. 2. Prioritize your tasks. Your willpower is at its greatest in the morning. This means that you should  prioritize the things you have to do (not react to) by scheduling them first, in the morning. Leave the easier, less mentally challenging tasks for later. You can answer emails in the afternoon, when your mind is slowing down a bit, but youd better use that morning mental acuity for writing your content.