By Sean Brenner
A writer’s workday is mostly spent writing, right?
Wrong. Writers spend most of their time, on average, procrastinating.
Procrastination is endemic to many workers, but writers and other creative professionals elevate it to an art form, often exploring any possible avenue to delay the inevitable for as long as can be.
Unless you have superhuman discipline, procrastination will come for you eventually, so it’s important to learn to manage it—and maybe even take advantage of it.
The methods I prefer tend to be tailored specifically for writing, but they can be applied to other aspects of life as well. In today’s blog post, I’ll go through three ways I like to handle procrastination.
Plan for It
Perhaps the most important way to respond to procrastination is to accept its inevitability. Procrastination isn’t the consequence of any sort of personal failure on your part; it’s just a part of being human. As a result, it’s usually better to just plan for it rather than try to prevent it. Go with the current rather than fight against it.
When you’re planning a project, expect that you will procrastinate. On most workdays, I build two hours for procrastination into my work schedule. That way, when I’m struggling to start work at my scheduled time, I can take my time or become distracted (within reason) without causing myself problems. As a consequence, I find that when I do eventually get around to writing, I end writing faster, with fewer of those lengthy breaks we writers seem accustomed to.
Trying to stop procrastination entirely is usually setting yourself up to fail. It’s almost always better to be honest with yourself about how your brain works and adjust your schedule accordingly.
Work with It
Procrastination doesn’t have to be something you work around, though. You can sometimes work with it, using it as a tool to improve your writing project.
Some people work better under pressure. Not everyone’s like that, of course, and even for those who are, there are limits. But for many people, a little added pressure can not only provide motivation but also focus, helping them do better work.
If you fit that description, then procrastination can actually be useful. Giving yourself less time for a project, intentionally or otherwise, forces you to engage in a little triage (which I’ll cover in a future post). It makes you look more critically at an outline than you otherwise might, helping you identify and cut some of the fat from your manuscript in advance.
Analyze It
Alternatively, you could analyze your procrastination to try to understand what your brain is telling you about whatever you’re working on. If you’re consistently unable to make yourself do a specific task, then it’s worth asking why – because there might be a good reason for it.
When I find myself procrastinating heavily on writing a section of a manuscript, it almost always ends with me seeing a better way to do the work I’d been avoiding. Sometimes the troublesome section isn’t necessary at all; sometimes I can get the same point across more clearly and naturally by moving it to a different section; and sometimes what I thought needed to be several paragraphs really only needed to be a few sentences.
Many of humanity’s great inventions began with someone wishing there was an easier way to complete a task they didn’t want to do. When your brain seems desperate to prevent you from doing something, take a moment to examine why. You just might discover something useful.
Don’t Fight the Current
Procrastination might not be your friend, but it doesn’t have to be your enemy, either. You can often find a way to make it useful. Procrastination is a common human trait. If you prepare for it, it might even make things easier for you.
Sean Brenner is a freelance writer specializing in scripts for video essays and similar forms of content. He writes scripts for YouTube videos covering Star Wars lore for Frontier Media and Star Trek for Trek Central. You can learn more about his work at Imagined Worlds Writing Services and find him on Bluesky.
