Three Rules from an Avid Procrastinator

Does anyone else have trouble finishing things? I know I have. Even as I’m writing this there is a deep urge to drop this and go clean my shower, change my sheets or if I’m being more honest, see if I can eat an orange whilst lying on a sofa without nearly choking to death, (third time’s the charm).

I’ve heard it said that focus is like a muscle that you can train, if that’s the case I think I might have the equivalent of muscular atrophy. There was a pause between these two paragraphs lasting about 50 minutes and in that time, I was honestly thinking about what kind of world we would live in if we swapped police sirens with the chimes of an ice cream van; would we capture more criminals who have a sweet tooth? Would children be healthier as a result of running in terror from the shrieking ice cream vans in the park? I’m not well.

But even people who don’t have a pinball brain like myself find it extremely hard to see personal projects through to the end, and it’s no wonder. Lockdown withstanding it’s necessary to remind ourselves that we live in a time where all forms of media and advertising online are promising us the world so long as we give them our precious attention. And when we’re all expected to be competitive, to “hustle”, then there is tremendous pressure to say yes to all things that comes our way, more things than we could ever possibly finish. So, I’d like this piece to be a rallying cry to all other procrastinators out there to help find the drive to finish things. Disclaimer, many of these principles I struggle intensely to follow; I am no productivity guru offering revelatory insight, I am a lazy, ill-motivated thesp trying to make some damn difficult habits stick. So, if any of this rings true to you and you’re looking for a sledgehammer to break through your creative barriers, try these three rules for size.

Perfection is a direction, not a destination

During my first year of drama school, I was trying to learn to play some music on the tabla for a world music project, and it took weeks of my hands becoming blistered, cut, calloused, and blistered again before I was finally able to play some passable rhythms. Naturally, the pain and disappointment was immensely frustrating and I did more than my fair share of whinging about it. That is until my then girlfriend asked me in a matter-of-fact way, “Do you know what they call people who can play instruments perfectly right away?... Mozart!”, that shut me up. Almost nothing we do will ever be as good as what we envisioned in our minds, but what’s worse than falling short of an ideal, is falling short of our basic requirements. Any idiot can imagine something perfect, but it takes real courage to bring something to life, and that process can be as traumatic and messy as childbirth. By all means let’s set out for the promised land, but enjoy the other place we’ll inevitably end up in.

Only when you accept discomfort can you be truly relaxed

Every time I sit down to write, or set up my recording studio, I still get surprised at how much resistance I feel, and I don’t know where I get the nerve being surprised as it it’s happened almost every time for the last eight f*****g years! The same thoughts always emerge, “is it worth it?”, “can’t I do it later?”, “after this podcast”. Due to the repetitive and self-fulfilling nature of these thoughts, I have frequently felt powerless in the face of my impulses and held my esteem in very low regard. That is until I’ve learnt more about evolutionary biology and its impacts on human psyche. Avoiding discomfort is a powerful natural instinct amongst all creatures as an extension of our imperative to life. “Why punish yourself with something difficult?”, we say to ourselves, “you have food, shelter, don’t rock the boat”. Once you realise that this is the extent of what we’re dealing with, it becomes less of a shock, as to why we feel resistance. Doing anything creative is hard, but life is hard too. When did things being hard stop us before? But the wonderful irony is that once we’ve accepted that it’s going to be difficult, it surprisingly makes it a lot easier to deal with.

Build your arsenal of secret weapons

I’ve always loved hearing about miracle cures, lifehacks and old wife’s tales, drinking water upside down for hiccups, ginger compresses for joint pains, standing desks and mind palaces. I don’t know much of anything about either medicine or psychology, save for the power of the placebo. A placebo in the task of creation is mana from heaven. If you can get one, or better, get a few unorthodox habits to supplement to your craft, you will be amazed by the effects. One of my favourite bands comes up with songs by writing as many titles as they can in under a minute and have found a few of their best hits that way. Herman Melville famously unclogged his mental block by having his wife chain him to his writing desk. My current best one for writing is to listen to music with heavy rhythm as I type. The way I think of it is that my fingers aren’t doing something as hard as writing, they’re instead just having a little boogie on the keyboard. But I’m sure that I’ll run into trouble again before long which is why one needs to be always on the search for more things to add to their own personal cheat sheet.

I hope you’ve found these musings to be somewhat helpful, if not then maybe it might spark some of your own discoveries. I like to think at any rate that procrastination is like mental illness that we might mitigate with open discussion and try out best to remove the shame attached. So, here’s to the long path of continual improvement and here’s to seeing things through to the e