I have work, but I don’t have a work-day, per se, where I go into an office and sit at a desk for eight hours then go home. I’m a self-employed copywriter with one main client, so I have an editor I video-conference with once a week, sometimes twice, and from time to time I have phone calls with the company’s head of marketing. I love and respect these people, and they seem to really like what I do for them.
I do my writing for them — which I quite enjoy, since I respect what the company is about, I can work wherever I like, and then I’m free to record my podcast, write and make books, go out and play… It’s a perfect set-up, really.
But sometimes it’s hard. The work is great, but getting to the work can really put my head into the walnut-crusher. If a day goes by and I haven’t produced anything, I feel guilty about it, which wrecks my free time.
My tactic up until now has been to make up all kinds of rules for myself, to bully myself into getting stuff done — and that’s often just as fun as it sounds.
Looking in from the outside at all the stuff I do, I don’t imagine many people would call me a procrastinator, but my tactics for getting work out of myself have often led me to a lot of avoidance and wasted time. I don’t even get to enjoy that time, ’cause I know there’s something else I should be doing.
Fed up with this crazy cycle, I ordered a book. That’s what I do when I want to learn something: I get a book. (I’ve been buying a lot of books lately; I feel a bout of creative output is coming on, and I think I’m stocking the pond for that.) So after reading reviews about several books on procrastination, I ordered The Now Habit by Neil Fiore.
As someone who’s a writer, I don’t particularly like my approach as a reader: I read books to get something. With fiction, I want to see how someone does something stylistically. In non-fiction, I usually choose instructional books: I want to be able to understand or do something after reading them. These books usually turn out to be one small idea wrapped up in a lot of pages — sometimes the title alone gives you the whole idea. (I’ve never read Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway because… y’know, I got it.)
The Now Habit was a pleasant surprise. Not only did it contain a lot of different angles on procrastination and give lots of practical strategies for dealing with it, more importantly, it shifted the whole topic for me. Before I even did a thing, my whole experience of work was transformed.
My approach to work this past week was entirely different. It was fun!I’m getting more done, but not because I should or I have to, but because I want to and I got a real sense of accomplishment out of it. If that wasn’t enough, I’ve also found great pockets of truly free time that I’m allowed to fully enjoy — like now, hanging out on a Friday afternoon with no guilt, nothing hanging over my head, and with a big project now behind me.
I won’t try to summarise it here, because others have already done an excellent job of it. I recommend reading the book, though. These summaries are helpful as a reminder, but I don’t think you’d really get the whole impact of the book from them.
- A mind-map of the concepts in The Now Habit.
- Atextual summary of the book.
- Adiscussion of the book with some MP3 downloads.
I love making progress, and I love finding things that work. This book is a win on both counts, and I’m grateful for the difference it’s making to my experience of daily work. Today, for instance, was a five-star day. That’ll only make sense to me, but it’s a really good thing and makes me feel like a champ.
Admittedly, The Now Habit has an awful cover that makes it look like a cross between a generic business book and a hot dog slathered in ketchup and mustard. But it’s good. If you’re in charge of motivating yourself to produce work, I tell you that this book will make a difference for the better.
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