You know that Peanuts comic strip gag where Lucy is trying to get Charlie Brown to kick the football? She always promises not to pull the ball away, and Charlie Brown always runs full tilt at it and kicks himself into summersaults. Well, I'm Charlie Brown. I run full tilt at everything. That wouldn't be so bad, except that I'm Lucy, too. I keep pulling that football out of my own path so that I end up on my ass complaining that I always fall for my tricks. Aaargh!
Anyway, I'm working on my thesis (as most of you know by now, and if you don't, then you haven't been paying attention to me, because I talk about it constantly in one form or another). Well, I guess I should say that I'm trying to work on my thesis. I've got 14 pages of a 60 page (or so) rough draft, but I keep finding excuses to not get any farther. I've got outlines and notes jotted all over the place, but I find that rooting my butt to the chair in front of my computer gets harder and harder (unless I'm going to catch up on my Freecell, that is.) I'm meeting with my advisor today, and I have no new pages to give her. I've got lots of ideas, but no clue how to put them on paper. It all sounds so stupid when I do, like I'm the pretend graduate student. This makes me want to work even less. (See that football being moved?)
Furthermore, rather than using that valuable procrastination time to work on the short story I started last year, I've let the story rot in revision hell. This is a story that means a lot to me, and I think it has the potential to be really good, so why can't I bring myself to get back to it? I haven't even looked at it in at least 2 months. It whispers to me every day, but I ignore it, saying that I shouldn't be speaking to it since I'm supposed to be concentrating on my thesis. "I can't divide my creativity, right now." What the hell is that? What does that mean? I don't know, but I think I see Lucy holding the ball on this one, too.
I tell myself that this procrastination is caused by the fact that I don't have a job, and I'm constantly worrying about getting one and how I'll pay the rent if I don't. I keep trying to get on at the university. In fact, I have a resume in there right now. I put off applying for other jobs because this is the one I really, really, really want, but on Sunday I decided that I couldn't wait anymore. I'm out of money, and unless I want to become the Bag Lady of Belmont, I need to work. Well, Wednesday I got hired for a job I'm not sure I want to do. I know I'll do it, but I wonder if it's going to help my procrastination or just give me another excuse not to do the two things I love most.
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4 comments:
Mishell, sometimes I find the best way to get back into doing the stuff I'm supposed to be doing (like school work) is to do something else for a while. I also suffer from severe procrastination syndrome but one of the games I play to deal with that is to commit to doing something else first. If I have a paper to write that I can't bring myself to do, I'll clean the bathroom. That doesn't sound like it'll help write the paper, right? But giving in to your impulses is sometime helpful. After I've cleaned the toilet, I feel like I've wasted enough time, still done something productive, indulged my inner procrastinator, and am resigned to start working on the paper. We procrastinators procrastinate because we thrive under pressure (at least that's what I tell myself) so create some pressure by wasting some time. Is that crazy advice? Maybe. Maybe crazy like a fox.
The Mythbuster guys did a segment on Chinese water torture. Somehow, I'm reminded of that (and yes, one staffer they tried it on did freak out a bit).
The more you focus on a problem, especially when you think of is AS a problem, the more daunting and undoable the thing becomes. Looming deadlines help shift the problem from some theoretical plague to something more akin to a fire in the next room. The fire allows you to remove all that thinking and just get down to your natural fight or flight response.
Anyway, on to my advice. Try distraction. Unfortunately, most of us pick passive distractions (TV, games, etc.). But try more active distractions: clean like Lydia suggested, or exercise, or something else physical in nature. Then try to jump on the project and see how that goes. For my last few papers, I remember staying up quite late (trying, but failing to get much done), then going to bed for 2 hours (the all-nighter is so high school). When I got up, I found I was oddly alert and far less critical of myself. I'm hoping a good physical distraction might do the same thing since the subsequent 11 am crash is quite painful.
I was going to read this, but I think I'll do it later.
It's a momentum thing. You were kind of in a holding pattern for a while, with a number of things you knew you needed to make progress on, but which were hard to get started. Now, with the new job, one of those things is getting in motion. You're building good momentum.
It seems when I'm staring at something, trying to get started, getting started on anything helps me get to that first thing. It's kind of the same as what Lydia and Shane are saying about distraction, but more of it is that once you get moving on one thing, it's easier to get moving on another.
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