The Career Author Podcast is a podcast where co-authors J. Thorn and Zach Bohannon share their struggles and successes as full-time authors, advice for improving your writing craft, and honest discussions of what it takes to build a successful career as an author.
We’ve put it off long enough. Let’s finally talk about procrastination as a writer.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
The most common reasons writers procrastinate. From such things as:
- overwhelm
- chronic pain
- distractions
How to stop procrastination in its tracks. By doing things like:
- scheduling and organizing tasks
- starting your day right
- developing a writing routine
Also, learn why Zach loves the Streaks app.
Thanks to our newest Patrons: Jon Cronshaw, RJ Beam
Podcast sponsored by Kobo Writing Life – https://writinglife.kobobooks.com
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Links:
Streaks app – https://streaksapp.com/
The Writer’s Well with Sophie Littlefield – https://shows.pippa.io/thewriterswell/episodes/ep132
Absurd Hypotheticals podcast with Chris Yee and Ben Storms – https://www.nerdchomp.com/absurdhypotheticals/episode55
Benefits of a.m. exercising – https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/9-really-good-reasons-exercise-early-morning-ncna795656
“Abacus for Co-authors” royalty split, by Publish Drive – https://account.publishdrive.com/register/thecareerauthor
2020 Events – https://thecareerauthor.com/events/
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Comments
4 responses to “The Career Author Podcast: Episode 82 – Finally, a Procrastination Episode”
Morning guys. That streaks app sounds interesting Zach; I like doing streaks; they give me a sense of accomplishment.
I am not efficient like J and I have an aversion to timetabling myself, but my mantra is to achieve one step forward net per day. I think this is what Confucius was on about. As long as I complete my one step forward net per day, I am happy.
Writing procrastination may be your brain giving you a message. Could be, as you suggest, you’re writing in the wrong genre or it might be your brain saying “I need a rest or a defrag.” Or it could be your brain saying “hey you, I’ve got other skills, abilities and uses, why not try some of them?”
If you think the latter, I recommend the Monty Python way to avoid procrastination. “And now for something completely different.” I often write something completely different, which is why I love Scrivener because it is easy to start something completely different and in my Confucian one step net per day way, I satisfy myself I have achieved something. Although if I was to live another hundred years I probably wouldn’t have time to write all the books I would like to write because I love writing. Great show.
Hey Chris!
I think you’re right about procrastination. It is definitely a message about some underlying cause.
Great episode about procrastination.
I find it useful to differentiate between activities that are productive vs consuming. For example, writing is productive because you’re working towards creating something new, whereas watching a movie or playing a video game is consuming because you are consuming something that someone else created.
Consuming activities can help you relax and keep your sanity, and it’s important to make time for these types of things, but when it comes to procrastination, they can hurt productivity. If I don’t feel like doing a certain productive task, I often procrastinate by doing a different productive task. I find this very useful, because when I get tired of one thing, I can switch to the other, and when I get tired of that, I switch back to the first thing. Alternating between two productive tasks has worked well for me and also helps me avoid burnout because of the variety.
Another interesting thing I find myself doing is procrastinating sleep by writing. I often don’t want to go to sleep at night when I probably should, and end up writing instead. The hour or so before I go to sleep is usually my most productive time of day because of this.
P.S. Thanks for mentioning our podcast! It was great to have Zach on the show. He did a great job, even though he says he was unprepared. Both of you are always welcome back on the show.
Thanks for the comment, Chris!
Zach never gets to talk to me about video games so thanks for taking care of that for me 😉