You’ll Never Be Perfect

“Because to procrastinate is easier than working.”

It’s true. You never will be be. But you can use the gold standard of perfection to better yourself, to push yourself forward. How? One word – procrastination. Let’s explain that. Procrastination is something we do in order to avoid working. It’s natural, but it can be pretty habit-forming and time-consuming. You might find yourself  with six spare hours, a quiet house, and a blank computer. You’ll think – ‘Perfect! All the peace and quiet I need to polish off the last three chapters of my thriller mystery novel!’. Six hours later, you’re still on Reddit. Or Facebook. Or whatever you do to waste time. Because to procrastinate is easier than working.

The subject of procrastination has been, as we say in the field, ‘run into the ground’. So we won’t go into too much detail about the subject. In fact, we’ll cut the procrastination and get right to the point – how to avoid it.

If you write a lot, or even a little, there’s probably several projects you’re working on, a few separate things you’re writing. So write them down. Make a little list of what you could be writing. For me, it goes something like this – a post for The Writer’s Corp, a Hebrew short story for a book, a chapter in another book, a post for my site, or an article for a newspaper. These are all things I need to write. So I make a list of them.

The secret to solving procrastination is to define your goals. Knowing exactly what you have to do is the first step to getting them done. So write down all the things you have to do, and start with the one that looks the most enjoyable to write. Try to do all the things on your list.

Now, the point is that you will not accomplish everything on your list. You might only do one or two of them. Don’t let that discourage you – remember, just a minute ago you were having trouble starting. The trick is to get going, to start writing – to start is the hard part. Aim higher than you can realistically do at once, and just knowing what you want to write can be an excellent way to get yourself writing.

At the end of the day, you may not have accomplished all your goals. Not every checkbox will have a check in it. But you’ll have made progress, and you’ll have beaten your procrastination.

When Nesher Ehrman succeeds in beating his procrastination, he also writes poems and short stories, which can be found at his site.