Kickstarter, Day 24: Up, Up, and Away

Show of hands: All those who love taking on unpleasant tasks?

No takers? No surprise.

That's about how much enthusiasm people feel for assigned writing.

Many people falsely equate literacy with writing talent. But force those people into a writing task, and all of a sudden, "Wow! That's difficult! That's…could someone else please do this instead?"

As a writer who also teaches writing, I see this all the time. Without confidence in the ability to write, fear of writing grows. Overshadows. Overwhelms.

The same behavior produces equally toxic results in other endeavors.

The first symptom of that toxicity? Procrastination.

I've wrestled with it myself, and I'm no novice. I could tell you stories about how I ducked and dodged and slithered through due dates and deadlines in college and in graduate school.

A few years ago, I analyzed my thought process for an explanation of the brinkmanship involved in starting major papers the night before they're due. I found the key to my own behavior and instantly realized that it explained many responses to assignments and requirements, in school or in the workplace.

Another show of hands: How focused are you on doing well? Would you call yourself a perfectionist? Do you fiddle with your work endlessly and always walk away from it certain that it could be better?

Yes, you out there with the sheepish grin, nodding as your hand inches skyward.

Me, too.

That's what I figured out: Perfectionism and procrastination co-occur for one simple reason.

If I haven't started it, I haven't bleeped it up. Whatever I'm supposed to produce, it remains perfect because it doesn't exist.

Unless and until I convince myself that I'm fully capable of the task, it remains marginally terrifying because of its potential for failure. Here's the chain of thought:

1. Need to do well.
2. Difficult task.
3. Need to do difficult task well.
4. That's probably more difficult than I thought.
5. I thought I could do that. Maybe not.
6. What was I, kidding myself? That's difficult!
7. Ew, I don't want to start that. It's just going to lead to failure.

At this point, the fear of failure does one of two things. Either it propels the procrastinator into much-delayed results that starting sooner would have allowed more time to improve—or it keeps the procrastinator frozen in fear until the deadline passes.

What do you learn from this?

Lesson 1: The task never is as difficult as you talk yourself into believing it is.

Lesson 2: If you do everything in an unreasonably short span of time, you fulfill your prophecy of difficulty and create a negative memory that conditions your behavior next time.

Lesson 3: The farther you climb into your own fear of failure, the more you inflate your perception of difficulty and increase your fear.

The solution's pretty simple. I call it "nibbling."

Break off a tiny corner of that great big task. Do that one little piece. Break off another corner. Do that. Keep nibbling away and presto! the great big task is done!

Don't let the perceived enormity of a task make your worries float away with you. That's not the "up, up, and away" you want.

As to that Kickstarter project of mine, you'll find it here.