<story><title>Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/why-writers-are-the-worst-procrastinators/283773/?single_page=true</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kdamken</author><text>Don&amp;#x27;t worry about what this article talks about. If you&amp;#x27;re a writer, or an artist, or a musician, etc and are having trouble getting things done, the solution is as simple as this:&lt;p&gt;Set a time slot everyday where you will sit down and do nothing but work on creating your art. Doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if it&amp;#x27;s good or bad, your only job is to sit there and create for the whole time period. That&amp;#x27;s the key, is consistently trying to do it.&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend reading the The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, he goes into this a lot more - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;1936891026&amp;#x2F;ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=&amp;amp;sr=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;1...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;He also talks about the concept of &amp;quot;Resistance&amp;quot;, which is basically a force of nature that&amp;#x27;s works against you getting things done, and that gets stronger the closer you are towards doing work that is meaningful to you.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ramblerman</author><text>The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the &amp;quot;quantity&amp;quot; group: fifty pound of pots rated an &amp;quot;A&amp;quot;, forty pounds a &amp;quot;B&amp;quot;, and so on. Those being graded on &amp;quot;quality&amp;quot;, however, needed to produce only one pot -- albeit a perfect one -- to get an &amp;quot;A&amp;quot;. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the &amp;quot;quantity&amp;quot; group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes -- the &amp;quot;quality&amp;quot; group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.&lt;p&gt;-- From &amp;quot;Art and Fear&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/why-writers-are-the-worst-procrastinators/283773/?single_page=true</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kdamken</author><text>Don&amp;#x27;t worry about what this article talks about. If you&amp;#x27;re a writer, or an artist, or a musician, etc and are having trouble getting things done, the solution is as simple as this:&lt;p&gt;Set a time slot everyday where you will sit down and do nothing but work on creating your art. Doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if it&amp;#x27;s good or bad, your only job is to sit there and create for the whole time period. That&amp;#x27;s the key, is consistently trying to do it.&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend reading the The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, he goes into this a lot more - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;1936891026&amp;#x2F;ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=&amp;amp;sr=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;1...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;He also talks about the concept of &amp;quot;Resistance&amp;quot;, which is basically a force of nature that&amp;#x27;s works against you getting things done, and that gets stronger the closer you are towards doing work that is meaningful to you.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>salemh</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m an amateur writer &amp;#x2F; hobbyist. Having had a decade+ practice of this back-and-forth procrastination with my writing, I&amp;#x27;d add &amp;quot;blank page&amp;quot; to War of Art and your excellent comment.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Blank Page&amp;quot; refers to having a separate notebook, or open document page on your computer, that you write why you don&amp;#x27;t want to write, during your time period.&lt;p&gt;If I don&amp;#x27;t want to write, I write that: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t feel like writing today. It&amp;#x27;s not going to mean anything, or I&amp;#x27;m bored with the story. Today wasn&amp;#x27;t that good of a day..&amp;quot; etc. Eventually, it dumps the things distracting you, and after five minutes I&amp;#x27;m typically back into writing my actual work.&lt;p&gt;Creative endeavors&amp;#x2F;procrastination has always been interesting to me, as I haven&amp;#x27;t had an issue dumping 90-120 hours into different employers, but have the issue with my own writing.&lt;p&gt;This is also a tool used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in various forms of use, namely, sleep. If you can&amp;#x27;t sleep at night, sometimes you need to dump everything in your brain on paper (which many times turns into a huge to-do list).</text></comment>