28. Turning Procrastination from an Enemy into an Asset: Part 2

EPISODE DESCRIPTION:     

Every artist I know has struggled against the enemy of procrastination. But what if procrastination was not actually an enemy, but rather, a clue from your subconscious about what you really want to do, which, if you understood yourself better, could actually be used for your own benefit? This is precisely the approach Zena Dell Lowe takes in this episode, laying out three simple principles that artists can use to turn procrastination from an enemy into an asset. 

1.     People do what they want to do. If you’re procrastinating, it’s because you don’t actually want to do it.

2.     The question is why. Fortunately, your subconscious knows what’s true. Procrastination is less about self-discipline and more about your subconscious giving you a clue to your own psyche.

3.     Let your subconscious show you what’s REALLY going on inside of you. Are you avoiding everything about a task because you committed to it out of obligation, or is there only one particular part that’s blocking you? 

Once you understand the truth behind your tendency to procrastinate, you can learn to see it as a helpful tool, rather than something to loath about yourself.

UP NEXT

Next week, we will start a multi-part series on how to write great dialogue.  No matter what kind of stories you tell, and regardless of the medium, there are universal principles to writing great dialogue that you can learn and apply to your own work

QUESTIONS OR TOPIC REQUESTS? 

If you have a question or a specific writing related topic that you would like Zena to consider addressing in a future podcast, click on the link below to leave a voicemail recording with your problem, question, or issue.

https://www.speakpipe.com/ZenaDellLowe

SPECIAL THANKS

The Mission with Zena Dell Lowe would like to thank composer Carla Patullo for the original music she graciously permits us to use in the intro and outro of this podcast. To find out more about this amazing talent, go to  www.carlapatullo.com

Tags: Artist, Artists, Psychology, Procrastination, Self-sabotage, Self-help, Writing tips, Writing, Writers, Story, Storytelling, Storytellers, Zena Dell Lowe, Mission Ranch Films, The Storytellers Mission, The Mission with Zena Dell Lowe

Transcript

The Storyteller's Mission with Zena Dell Lowe

Ep. 28 - Procrastination 2

Thu, 10/1 5:18PM • 15:20

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

procrastinating, procrastination, avoiding, felt, writing, episode, asset, subconscious, project, storyteller, working, podcast, schedule, needed, big picture, tendency, part, overwhelmed, artists, clue

SPEAKERS

Zena Dell Lowe

Zena Dell Lowe  00:01

INTRO: Hello, and welcome to the Storyteller's Mission with Zena Dell Lowe. A podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better through story.

Zena Dell Lowe  00:07

At the beginning of last week's episode I said that I wanted to thank you and reward you for your loyalty. To that end, I want to start today's episode with two announcements. The first, which you may have heard in the opening greeting, is that the name of this podcast is already being rebranded, so instead of being the mission with Zena Dell Lowe, from now on, the name of this podcast will be The Storyteller's Mission. The second announcement is that I am currently in the process of setting up a website where you will be able to download any transcript that you'd like from any of the episodes so far and any of the ones in the future, and you will also be able to get the cheat sheets, the basic bullet points of each episode. You'll also be able to get some suggested writing prompts or exercises for any of the episodes. Now this is important to me because I want to equip you, I want to help you, I want to empower you and give you the tools that you need to truly succeed. To that end, if you're interested in receiving any or all of these things, would you please send me an email to Zena@missionranchfilms.com and I'll add you to my email list, and every week, you will get an email with all three of those attachments. 

Zena Dell Lowe  01:34

PRESENTATION: Alright, so those two announcements, out of the way, let's get back to this week's episode, which is about procrastination. So last week I introduced the concept of procrastination, and we went through all of the things that procrastination does; all of the ways in which procrastination undermines the creative abilities of the artist. A nd I ended the episode with a very personal story, which is what brought me to a new understanding of procrastination and how I can use it how I could transform it from an enemy into an asset. The basic principle that underlines the entire concept is that people do what they want to do. So if I'm procrastinating something because deep down, I really don't want to do it. And yet that doesn't seem sufficient to really cover everything that goes into this whole process of procrastination. 

Zena Dell Lowe  01:34

So this week, I would like to start with another story that happened to a friend of mine that I think gives us another key piece of insight into this concept of procrastination. So fast forward to maybe a year later, I was contacted by a gentleman friend of mine who needed some advice. He had been talking about visiting a woman that he'd met online. They had been chatting and talking a lot on the phone, and he had expressed interest in her romantically, but since they had never met in person, she asked if he would like to come and visit her, so they could actually see if there was anything going on, anything worth exploring, any potential for a relationship. And he had said, "Yes, I would like that." He'd even thrown out a couple of possible calendar dates, which worked for her so he said he'd look into it. However, anytime it got brought up, he would explain to her, "Oh, I just haven't done it yet. I just haven't done it yet." And he kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. And he was explaining to me how it just hadn't worked out yet because of this or because of that, but he was still interested in trying to figure out a possible date. And I said to him, "No, you don't want to go." And he was like, "What?" And I said, "Listen, if you wanted to go visit this woman, you would have made whatever arrangements needed to be made to do it, but you haven't done that, which means that on some subconscious level, you're avoiding it because you don't want to go."

Zena Dell Lowe  04:04

So the first principle for today is number one, people do what they want to do. 

Zena Dell Lowe  04:11

If you find yourself procrastinating about anything, here's what you need to remind yourself: if you really wanted to do it, and would have found a way to make it happen. But you didn't, because you don't want to. You are procrastinating because deep down, you don't want to do it. There's something stopping you, and that's okay. You don't have to feel bad that you don't want to do it, but you need to be realistic or honest with yourself that that's what's going on. For some unknown reason, you don't want to do it. And that's why you're procrastinating. You're putting it off. 

Zena Dell Lowe  04:42

Now, when I told my gentleman friend that people do what they want to do, which meant he didn't want to do it, it was an a-ha moment for him. It rang true, but this naturally led into a long discussion about why. Why becomes the next question. Why don't you want to do it? What's holding you back? What are you avoiding or dreading? And this is the part where we start turning the enemy into an asset. 

Zena Dell Lowe  05:07

So Principle number two. The answer to the question of why we're avoiding something gives you a clue into your own psyche, and it will help you to understand what your subconscious already knows. 

Zena Dell Lowe  05:22

So what areas in your life, do you find yourself repeatedly or continually procrastinating about? Because these tendencies are a clue that you can use to help guide you into the things you truly want to do, or to see areas you need to address first, before you can move forward with the project that you're avoiding. In essence, once you start thinking about procrastination as a clue from your subconscious as to what you truly want, you can now access that truth in your conscious mind and start figuring out what's really holding you back. Sometimes we don't want to do something because there's some part of it that we dread. It's not about the whole thing it's just about a part, which we'll get to in a little bit. But the good news is, this is how we start to be able to change our tendency to avoid into an asset. Once you start seeing procrastination as your subconscious, revealing to you what you truly want, you can be like, "Oh, okay. Wow, now I see it. So that's what I want or don't want." And now you have an opportunity to change your approach, or adjust your strategy, depending on what you were learning about yourself. 

Zena Dell Lowe  06:36

Which leads us to Principle number three. Let your subconscious teach you what's really going on with you. 

Zena Dell Lowe  06:43

For example, if you're writing a novel, and you really do love your story and you really do want to keep writing but you can't seem to establish a daily routine, and you can't seem to be disciplined and you start and stop and you're struggling with consistency and you procrastinate and procrastinate, well, sometimes it's not like, "Well, I guess I just shouldn't be a writer. I guess I shouldn't write this novel." No. There might be something else behind the procrastination that is causing that; some sense of obligation, some sense of fear. Something else that is causing you to procrastinate. 

Zena Dell Lowe  07:17

So I had a client who struggled with this very exact thing. As it turned out, the reason why she couldn't get herself to write is because deep down, she felt guilty for writing. She felt guilty because it seemed self indulgent to her. She felt guilty because she needed to make a living. And once she was able to make a living doing whatever she was doing, then, she thought, "Then I can write. Then I can spend time working on my novel." So she kept pouring her time into her business, so that she could get to a point where she was making enough financially, that she wouldn't feel bad about spending a couple of hours a day writing. And the other part behind that, when we unpacked it, was that she realized she didn't truly believe that there was ever going to be any financial reward or any sort of success at the end of the day, which made her efforts seem even more frivolous. When it came right down to it, she felt that she was writing just for her. And that wasn't enough in her mind. Now, she didn't know this consciously, she didn't realize this on a conscious level, but at the end of the day, she was procrastinating, not because she didn't want to do it, but because she was sort of self sabotaging and devaluing her artistry and her calling because she thought it was wrong for her to do it. It was wrong for her to spend time doing it when she wasn't yet making enough money to help support her family. And you know what? Maybe she's right. The thing is, maybe that was true in her case, in which case though, instead of calling it procrastination and then feeling like crap about yourself, there's another way to deal with it that won't demoralize you.

Zena Dell Lowe  08:56

 In my clients case, we reframed it. So she got to a point where she was like, "Okay, I need to set it aside. I'm going to put it on the shelf, until I get to a place where I can really do this." And so she did. She set clear boundaries or goals for herself that she needed to reach in her business in order to feel that she had permission to start exploring her novel again. So she literally set it aside until she'd reached those goals. And that was freeing for her. She didn't chastise herself anymore She let it go. She wasn't constantly wrestling with herself or thinking that she was a great big failure because she understood now what was holding her back and what she needed to do in order to give herself permission to move forward. So that was success that empowered her. It empowered her to put her full efforts into her business. And then once she achieved that particular level of income, she would start writing again. So this is one of the ways that we turn the struggles of procrastination into an asset. 

Zena Dell Lowe  10:05

Which leads us to the final principle of today, which is, if you find yourself procrastinating in certain areas, try scheduling it for short bursts of time.

Zena Dell Lowe  10:17

One of my very favorite sayings that I have to use a lot, and I remind myself of it all the time, "What's the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time." A novel, or any script or any sort of writing project is an elephant; you cannot do it in a day. And I find that a lot of people are overwhelmed by big projects. They're overwhelming. And you can't see immediate results. One of the reasons I love gardening is because when I garden I get to see immediate results. But that's not how it works with a novel or with a screenplay. Yes, maybe you finished a scene, but in the big picture of it, it feels like such small potatoes. So I think one of the main reasons why we as artists will often procrastinate is because when we look at the big picture of what's before us, it's daunting. We're simply overwhelmed by it. We don't know where to begin. So we don't. It paralyzes us and we just don't start. We avoid it. Because sometimes it's not that you don't want to do a particular project. It's that there's one particular part of the project that confounds you. That means I can come up with a plan to attack that particular part. It means the whole project doesn't have to be thrown away or avoided, it means I actually can tackle that particular part and move towards being able to achieve the bigger picture. What's the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time. 

Zena Dell Lowe  11:56

So in my own life, what I have had to do is get on a regular schedule or routine, where I literally give myself short periods of time to work. That's it. 30 minutes. 30 minutes, all I have to do today is 30 minutes of this [particular project] . Because, see, my tendency is that I want to get it all done at once, and there're just some projects that are too big to do that. The website that I'm working on right now for the storyteller's mission is a case in point. I can't do it all at once. I have to do it in incremental chunks. So I schedule for it. I get on a routine, I schedule a short amount of time. And sometimes I have to do this because the stuff that I'm working on is daunting, also, because I don't like that particular part of it. I love building my classes but I don't like learning the technology that I need to learn to be able to build the classes. But if I can do it in a short incremental chunk, it's like, "Okay, I only have to face this part of the technology that I dread for 15 minutes. That's it." And I can do that. I can face it for 15 minutes. Whereas if I have to sit down and spend the whole day, deep diving into an area of technology that overwhelms me, I'm going to keep avoiding it forever and ever and ever. So this is another way that I can use my tendency to procrastinate as an asset. I can understand what part of it I'm avoiding, what daunts me, and then I can schedule it. I can use the tool of scheduling it for a short amount of time to try to address it, to try to make small baby steps towards accomplishing or achieving the final goal.

Zena Dell Lowe  13:44

So I felt like it was important at this stage in the game for us to address procrastination, especially because I've been hearing from some of the listeners that they're listening to the podcast, but they don't know when to actually begin their projects. It's like they want to keep gathering all this information. I think a lot of times we feel like we're not equipped where we are right now to begin, so we keep putting it off and keep learning and that sort of thing. And that's great. Always keep learning, but don't procrastinate. Start now. Start where you are. Use the tools that you have right now. And as you write, greater tools will become available. Don't wait till you know everything. Just start. You can always go back and fix it because that's what writing is: writing is rewriting. So it seemed important that we talk about procrastination before we move into next week's topic, which is dialogue. 

Zena Dell Lowe  14:45

OUTRO: So I want to thank you so much for joining me today on The Storyteller's Mission with Zena Dell Lowe. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better through story.