I have really struggled this week. Procrastination became my enemy.
My goal was to spend many hours working exclusively on The Grateful Pessimist; my new self-help book but I faltered. I deliberately distracted myself constantly. I would bounce from Facebook to my Twitter feed throughout the day, never really accomplishing much.
At one point, I just gave in to the Netflix craving. I consumed more online digital media than a bored thirteen-year-old with an IPad this week.
“You are a little soul carrying around a corpse”
-Epictetus
During my unrelenting digital media consumption binge, I came across the above quote by the famous Roman Stoic Epictetus. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know the fondness I hold for the Roman Stoics.
The reason I placed that particular quote in this blog entry is when I mindlessly consume, I feel like a corpse without any kind of soul or what many ancient people called the divine spark. I’m like one of those zombies from the Walking Dead; searching for live meat to gorge myself upon.
During my current book writing journey, I have discovered there are times when my fear of failure becomes so great that I resort to this particular form of wastefulness. If I’m busy consuming blogs, videos and tweets then I don’t have to face that anxiety which is centered around my thoughts; which are full of self-doubt .
Will anyone read my book?, Will people find it useful? and of course the ever-present: Am I really a good enough writer to pull this off?). I can distract myself from these thoughts though by binge-watching Season 2 of Daredevil.
Ultimately, when I find myself falling into this digital hole, I eventually get myself out of it. I challenge and change my negative self-talk. Still, it is never easy though to get back on track.
The self-punishment I administer to myself is incessant…at least until the next media feasting rampage. One behavioral tactic which I found that has helped is: change the environment.
It doesn’t have to be much to stop the procrastination in my case. Sometimes just changing coffee shops, if I am working in coffee shops. If I’m doing remote work and working out of a hotel or apartment, then I got to a coffee shop or sometimes just a lounge area, if I am staying at a hotel.
This environmental shift seems to hit an internal reset button in my mind and my behavior then changes.
I am in the process of moving from one country to another tomorrow. I am planning to use this transition to not only reset my writing behavior but other goals I have allowed to falter as well, such as martial arts training and eating a cleaner, healthier diet. I love these major transitions now, these shifts.
Before I began working on resiliency, I used to fear them. I hated traveling from one place to the next. Now, I have discovered that these traveling transitions can be used as a powerful means to refocus both my work and personal goals.
If you are struggling with procrastination and your digital media consumption, try changing your work environment, even temporarily, and see if that helps.
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