The Place For My Writers Notes

original posting: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 09:24:01 EST

From Organize Yourself by Ronni Eisenberg...
(p. 6) "Some of the reasons people procrastinate are the following:

• They feel overwhelmed. This usually happens when there is an overload of information or too many details
• They overestimate the time needed. They think the task is too time-consuming, that it will take _forever_. A variation of this is thinking that they have forever to finish something.
• They'd rather be doing something else. Anything seems better than what awaits them.
• They think that if they wait long enough, it will go away. The project will be cancelled; the appointment postponed, and so forth.
• They want to do it perfectly. People often fear turning in a report or finishing a project because they worry about failing on 'judgment day.' They delay until the last minute, and then if it doesn't measure up, they say, "Oh, I would have done better if I'd had more time."
• They don't want to assume responsibility. After all, if they never complete the project, no one will hold them responsible.
• They fear success. If they complete something and succeed, whill they be able to continue to life up to that standard? How will others relate to them once they are successful?
• They say they enjoy the last-minute adrenaline rush. Often people feel that they do their best work 'under pressure.' What they fail to remember are the times when they had a terrible cold or there was a family emergency during the time they had intended to devote to the project."

Eisenburg goes on to suggest that you identify your reasons for procrastinating.

1. Which situations generally cause you to procrastinate? What types of situations? What price do you pay for the delay? When you finally do the work, what gets you going (deadline? reward? outside pressure?)
2. When you find yourself procrastinating about something specific, consider: What about this causes conflict for you? What are you avoiding? If you delay, what will happen? If the question really is _when_ to do it, ask yourself if it is worth paying the price of the delay?

(whoops, that wasn't the right one...let's try this one...)

How to be organized: in spite of yourself by Sunny Schlenger and Roberta Roesch

(this might be the one?) They list ten (10!) operational styles, five time, five space:

Time: hopper, perfectionist plus, allergic to detail, fence sitter, cliff hanger
Space: everything out, nothing out, right angler, pack rat, total slob

(darn, that's a reasonably good one too, but it isn't the one I was thinking of...I don't think I'm going to find it right now, so let's just yackity-yack about it, okay?)

Somewhere, someone had the notion that various people work best with various kinds of goal setting. Some folks thrive with deadlines...keep their feet to the fire and they love it! (not me, but I have known people who really did work best that way) Others prefer the slow steady drop of water, timing the minutes, hours, and days of their appointed rounds...i.e., give them a time-based schedule to keep, and they are steady workers putting in their hours. Yet others prefer piece-work thumping: setting a quota (words, pages, scenes, etc.) per (day|week|month) works well for them.

There may have been more variations, but those are the ones I remember: deadline, scheduled time each day, production quota per day.

I recommend contemplating your navel (being honest with yourself, maybe experimenting a bit--oh, and get the fuzz out, too) as a way to decide which one works for you. Don't dive into it, just consider which one you think works best, and try it for a while...if it doesn't seem to be working, switch!

I also strongly recommend giving yourself room--you need to slow down sometimes. You need to leave yourself the "breathing" times when you put the current piece on the back shelf and let the umbilicus that ties you to it fade away...so that you can look at it afresh and clean up those embarrassing blotches, confusions, and tangles that slipped in when you were too close to see them. You need to allow for Murphy--you thought you were going to work on this over the last weekend before you needed it? And your favorite relative just flew into town...

(interjectively, while contemplating the umbilical knotting, the omphalos around which the generations churn, consider this--time can be considered in many ways, including the notions of being late, procrastinating, etc., but also including the notion that you can neither gain time nor lose it--you are always at the present, not one second sooner or later. I.e., you have 24 hours every day at your disposal--but you can't squeeze one extra second out of that allotment nor can you force one extra iota of time into it to do something extra. So use the now well, but accept that you can only do so much...and don't forget to watch the clouds sometimes, as they dance for you! consider the metaphors of time, and which ones you choose to honor and obey.)

Or, of course, you could try something like this...

Delay of the Land

Procrastination is the game,
Dilatory takes the blame,
But speed kills,
haste makes waste, and
Time fled when you were
n't
having fun.

Don't kill time,
embrace it.

[well, that's helped me avoid doing whatever I was supposed to be doing for a while... hope it helps you, too :]

original posting: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 23:39:10 -0500

aka the resurrection shuffle?

Watching the Arts channel recently, and a phrase from the opera in progress
caught my eye.


Here's the premise.  Suppose that (heaven, magic, advanced medical technology, the whim of the whisp, something) has brought our protagonist back from the dead, for 24 hours.  One extra day.

What do they do with that day?  Who do they see, where do they go, why do they do these things?

A simple tale, but what would you do with one more day?

Go ahead, ponder it, mix well with characterization, scenery, a good shot of plot and plunder, and let the words jell.

Write!