Why "Good" Habits Can't Save You - Overcome Procrastination Edition Part 2
Most people approach overcoming procrastination like they would solving other practical problems they have. First, they identify the problem, then they create some smart goals and action steps to meet them, and then they begin taking those action steps toward meeting the goals.
Using this approach, if you think the reason you’re not writing as much as you’d like is due to your habits, you would probably decide to change your habits to ones that make it easier or more likely for you to write more.
And while that’s not technically a wrong assessment and better habits could certainly make it less tempting to procrastinate, “bad” habits are not necessarily the cause of your procrastination. They are more likely just another result of whatever is causing your procrastination. So changing habits won’t necessarily fix the problem permanently. It’s more likely a strategy that is helpful sometimes and doesn’t work other times. In fact, like with diet and exercise, if you fail to “clean up” your habits, this can actually exacerbate your problem if you aren’t aware of what’s going on from the big picture standpoint.
This blog series is my attempt to give you a zoomed out, big picture standpoint.
In the next few parts of this series on procrastination, I’m going to highlight some of the most common ways we try to solve or deal with procrastination, and I’ll explain some of the reasons why they don’t work. If you’re looking for solutions, you might be tempted to skip these parts, and just get to the latter half of the series, giving you all the goods. But I’m a firm believer that in order to make lasting change, especially when it comes to defying what we think is logical or engaging in a growth process, we need to digest WHY we might need to embrace a different approach or model. And one way we can do that is by poking holes in our faulty logic so we’re more willing to step back and accept that not all problems have a quick fix.
So, if you’re looking for quick and easy solutions to the problem of procrastination, you will not find them here. And if you’ve solved your procrastination problems, I want to congratulate you. But for many people, this is a complex issue that has haunted them for years. And if you procrastinate, it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with you. It simply means you’re human. This stuff can be HARD to reprogram. And if we’re looking for solutions, we have to be willing to engage on the level of our humanity, not just the level of our minds.
Back to habits…And Since most of my readers are writers, Let’s look at the habit of not writing
Say you aren’t writing all that much, and you’d like to establish a daily writing practice. Note: I’m not saying you need a daily writing practice. I certainly do not write every single day. But some writers really want to do that, and it could be a very productive thing to do.
Perhaps, like me, you have always seen the evening hours, after dinner, as the best time of day for you to write uninterrupted. You’ve decided that’s your daily writing time. You’ve made a date with yourself.
But you have a pattern of standing yourself up. Maybe you fall onto the couch after dinner to watch television too easily or something. Or maybe you’re like me and you peel yourself off the sofa, make yourself go to your writing space to write, blink twice, and find yourself playing a video game into the wee hours of the morning. (It can be hard to admit that you were too tired to write for an hour, but somehow it’s now 3AM and you want to complete one more storyline that isn’t yours.)
A habits approach might involve labelling the couch collapse or the video gaming a “bad” habit. Another note: I’m going to keep using the words good or bad when it comes to habits, but if you don’t like the words good or bad, you can substitute wanted or unwanted, or healthy and unhealthy, because a so-called bad habit is often just an unwanted or unhealthy one. I have already worked this out in my consciousness, but I know a lot of people don’t like the way certain words make them feel. And that’s okay.
Next, you start thinking about what kind of “good” habits could you have instead that would lead to writing. You might come up with:
not walking by the couch on the way to write
uninstalling games on your writing computer
placing a special object or a vision board and some affirmations near your writing space to anchor you in your intention to write
creating some sort of pre-writing routine or ritual that in theory makes showing up to writing more appealing than the couch or the video game (I always say to be careful with pre-writing rituals because they can easily add up to more procrastination if done in a certain mindset)
rewarding yourself with game time after you’ve written
Or maybe you would identify the problem here as being tired or spent at the end of the day! Thus, the “bad” habit is waiting until the end of the day to write, and the “good” habit would be to:
write first thing in the morning while you’re energy is fully charged
get up even earlier, at 5AM, to sneak in a few hundred words before anyone else in your house gets up
write on your lunch break at work
Am I dunking on the idea that your writing habits matter? No.
Your writing habits actually matter a lot. What you do every day, or at least on the regular, can make or break your success, however you define it. But habits themselves are not really the root of the problem we’re talking about. The root of the problem is what is underneath the bad habit, what you’re getting out of it, and I’ll go into that later in this series.
For now, just know that “good” habits aren’t going to save you from procrastination because creating any new habits requires repetition and consistency over a period of time. It requires you to be already be showing up for yourselves, which you’re not doing when you’re in a procrastination rut.
When you are forming a habit is NOT the time for it to save you from the reason you needed to create that habit in the first place.
In order to save you from procrastination, these habits need to already be in place.
Next up in this series, I’ll be taking on planner culture and it’s pretty pens and colorful post-its in an article titled: WHY YOUR PLANNER CAN’T SAVE YOU.
This one hurts because I love dreaming big, making vision boards, writing out action plans, and spending intimate time with my planner. But I’ve coached enough writers in the weeds of self-sabotage and planner obsession to know that planners don’t do the work for you. Spoiler alert: I will NOT be asking you to ditch your planner OR your strategic plan. But before this series is over, I will be showing you how to get in a right relationship with it.