In which our heroine attempts to slay The Dragon of Procrastination, one more time.
Revising my book for its second edition is almost done. Hurray! I want to finish. Really, really, really want to finish this book so I can move on to the next one, which will be way more fun.
One teensy problem.
Between me and the finish line stands The Dragon of Procrastination. I don’t want to work on my revisions. With the best of intentions, I block off nice big chunks of uninterrupted time. I sit down to work. And then it becomes very, very important to check Twitter. Or write something helpful for my Fans. Or dust. Anything, practically, that doesn’t look like revising will do just fine, thank you very much.
Cleaning out the oven will not drive Procrastination away. Nope, it’s going to take something a lot stronger than Easy Off. It will require cake.
First, I stop running around–The Procrastination Dragon is a hunter and I’m acting like prey. When I can stop running and it will stop chasing me. Taking a deep breath; I smile. Now that I am alert and still, I find that I am in the present moment. I notice that once I’m no longer distracting myself with trivialities, The Dragon suddenly gets a lot smaller.
Then to vanquish Procrastination altogether, I use the “dear enemy” ploy. Put another way, I offer friendship to this thing that I’ve been trying run away from. Metaphorically speaking, I invite it in and offer it some cake.
This isn’t as kooky as it sounds.
It is said: whatever you resist, persists. When I resist doing my work, The Procrastination Dragon gets bigger and uglier than ever. The more I put my work off, the harder it gets to take on. When I settle down and focus on it, invite it in and feed it some attention (the metaphorical cake), we get along very nicely. I actually enjoy my revisions. Time flies. Progress is made. Productivity occurs. Yum!
Turns out Procrastination isn’t a Dragon after all. It’s more like the cute little Gecko on those insurance commercials. But less obsequious.
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