{"id":15552,"date":"2009-11-13T10:42:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-13T15:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2009\/11\/13\/the-now-habit\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:49:43","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:49:43","slug":"the-now-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2009\/11\/13\/the-now-habit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Now Habit"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have work, but I don’t have a work-day, per se<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I do my writing for them — which I quite enjoy, since I respect what the company<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But sometimes it’s hard. The work is great, but getting to the work<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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<\/em> that time, ’cause I know there’s something else I should be doing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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<\/em> by Neil Fiore.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As someone who’s a writer, I don’t particularly like my approach as a reader: I read books to get<\/em> 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<\/em> because… y’know, I got it.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Now Habit<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

My approach to work this past week was entirely different. It was fun!<\/em>I’m getting more done, but not because I should or I have to, but because I want<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n