I am the Get It Done Girl in all areas of my life except writing. I despise having incomplete tasks hanging over my head.

So, why does procrastination sneak up on me time and time again in my personal pursuits? Why did it take me almost three years to complete my most recent manuscript?

Many of us will immediately jump to procrastination as the enemy and in society that is exactly how procrastination is labelled.

But, after a lengthy reflection and getting myself back into writing, I believe that procrastination was just a symptom of a larger issue- namely fear of failure.

Today, I don’t want to dwell on the negative outcomes of procrastination. Instead, I want to flip procrastination’s negative persona on its head. 

This post will share the benefits that active procrastination can have on your creativity and productivity.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, procrastination means to delay the completion of a task that must be done, often because it is perceived as unpleasant.

That’s a bit confusing because as writers, we crave writing. We do it because it’s our creative outlet- or, it was fulfilling initially. 

That is until we began dreaming about literary success and publication. At that point, the worries and fears of failure, the comparisons to highly acclaimed published authors set in and writing lost its spark.

So, the unpleasantness that we are avoiding here is our self-doubts- a normal mountain that we all climb at some point in our writing careers. 

Here, procrastination can be used as a band-aid solution to shield us from our fears.

If we aren’t writing then we don’t have anything to compare to the writing of others and our dreams, although no closer to realization, can remain safely untarnished by the struggles of actively pursuing our goals. 

So, we procrastinate by putting off our writing project to not risk encountering our self-doubts and fear of failure. 

Does that sound about right? Let me know in the comments below if you’ve got another definition of procrastination for writers.

Procrastination is often viewed as laziness.

But, this is not true!

If I’m putting off writing then I must fill my time with other tasks to convince myself that I didn’t have time to write today.

I may clean the dishes, do laundry, walk my dog, head to the gym, fold the laundry, pay my bills and so on. 

I’m being productive. I’m just not focusing my energy on my goals. Instead, I’m completing easily manageable tasks rather than taking steps toward more intricate pursuits.

I could also spend my time on social media or watching Netflix and these may seem like unproductive forms of procrastination.

Yet, even those who indulge in these forms of procrastination are only doing so because of their self-doubts. They’re reaching for quick dopamine hits from their favourite shows.

We can’t deny that there are forms of procrastination that negatively affect our productivity, hindering us from achieving our goals.

There are many articles out there that can provide you with a psychological dive into why we procrastinate and what tools or apps we can utilize to become more productive.

But, I want to jump right into looking at the role that procrastination plays in the lives of writers, starting with a reflection on active and passive procrastination. 

Take a guess, which of these will benefit you more?

Passive procrastination is strongly connected to those fears of failure we’ve talked about.

When you’re constantly ruminating on your worries, you paralyze yourself. 

You fill your days with alternative tasks and come up with valid-sounding excuses for why you can’t write at the moment. 

You do anything to stop what you believe is inevitable- putting your heart and soul into a manuscript only to realize that it is lacking in comparison to the great writers of this world. 

When you avoid writing through passive procrastination it does not serve you. 

You do not have the intention to return to your writing. You may even be lying to yourself when you say “tomorrow, next week, next month…”

Subconsciously, you know that you more than likely will continue to avoid this task.

When you passively procrastinate, you view your writing as an unpleasant task to be avoided at all costs.

So, when we are talking about procrastination in today’s post, we are talking about active procrastination. 

Can actively procrastinating be a writer’s best friend?

Let’s define active procrastination as intentionally postponing the completion of a task.

Here, you are aware that the task needs to be completed and you are making the decision to wait before attending to it.

There are a few different reasons for doing so.

You may have heard that when a problem arises, you’ve struggled with it, and just can’t find a solution, it’s a great idea to set it aside for a while. 

Often, a solution will come to you when you’re not thinking about the problem– and it may be a creative solution that you wouldn’t have thought of if you kept grinding away at it. 

Knowing that your subconscious will be doing the work for you in the background and trusting it to do so is a form of active procrastination.

You may also intentionally procrastinate when you feel the first ripples of burnout or overwork arising. 

Perhaps, there’s a deadline looming or a daily word count you’d like to meet, but listening to your body and leaving that word count for now will nurture you in the long run.

When you sit down to write, your creativity is on fire, you’re in flow. 

Active procrastination is intentionally taking a break from writing to positively serve you and your creativity.

Whatever you’ve chosen to temporarily replace writing with is done to serve you and your craft’s wellbeing.

If we engage in active procrastination, how will it support our writing pursuits?

Generally speaking as writers, we already have at least a spark of an idea for a story brewing in our minds.

When we utilize intentional procrastination, we can allow that idea to percolate a little longer thus developing further. 

Even while in the midst of writing a manuscript, we can use procrastination to determine how best to depict that fight scene or intricate revelation. 

Sometimes, our ideas are better off being left to stew in our imagination a little longer. 

I keep a notebook and pen by my bedside.

Why? Because some of my best ideas come to me at 2 am when I’m not actively seeking them. 

Embrace the opportunity for inspiration to strike when you are not actively in writer mode!

We can use active procrastination as a much-needed mental break from our creative pursuits.

 In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron calls these artist dates- a time to explore and create alone, outside of our regular creative goals. 

So, instead of writing, I take a pottery class or head to a museum solo.

I unleash my curiosity and reignite my inspiration so that once I sit down to write, my creative neurons are firing! 

An intentional, scheduled break lets me become excited about these solo adventures and gives me a start and end time, thus reinforcing the habit of returning to my writing when the time comes.

Taking breaks from writing is necessary to regulate our body, mind and spirit. 

Stress builds when we are running on the hamster wheel.

Depending on what our writing goals are, it can be a long time- sometimes years before we see them to completion.

Plus, most of us have numerous stories we want to write. Heck! We want to be writing for a lifetime. 

Writing fills us up, but without taking time off to reflect, celebrate our milestones and recharge, even our creative inspiration can become drained.

Julia Cameron states that artist dates should be scheduled in advance. 

Whether you prescribe yourself artist dates as a means of procrastination or decide to procrastinate in a less structured way, it’s still useful to determine the timespan for your break.

Without doing so, you may fall from active to passive procrastination.

Over-procrastination can happen if we aren’t setting boundaries for our writerly brains to accept.

Check out this blog post on researching to discover how over-researching can become a form of procrastination.

I don’t mean you must clean your house from top to bottom (although this might be your procrastination style). I just want you to pick tasks that will fuel you creatively. 

Your intentional break won’t recharge you if you end a movie marathon feeling exhausted and like you now need a nap. 

Hanging out with friends is productive. Attending a paint night is productive. You want to maintain momentum. 

To paraphrase Newton’s First Law of Motion… “a body in motion stays in motion.” 

Choose tasks that will motivate you into writing mode when the time comes to end your procrastination session. The activity you choose should leave you energized.

J.K. Rowling, Mozart, Margaret Atwood and Leonardo da Vinci are all procrastinators.

Scour the internet and you’ll find many successful individuals who have admitted to procrastinating. Yet, they’ve found success!

While contributing to a podcast episode on procrastination, Margaret Atwood stated that despite being a procrastinator she “would consider it dishonourable to miss a deadline.”

Finding the balance between productive procrastination and making strides toward accomplishing your writing goals is a lifelong struggle that you will need to work at consistently.

Procrastination is all too human. We all fear failure on occasion. We all hide from our worries every once in a while. 

Yet, if we can learn to harness procrastination so that it works with us, not against us, then we can align our need for mental breaks with our creative goals.

I’d like you to rethink your relationship with procrastination.

Active Procrastination, when used mindfully, can ignite your creativity. 

Experiment with some of the above techniques and build in intentional breaks that work for you. 

Share your own stories of how active procrastination has unexpectedly helped your writing process.

What inspirational moments have struck you while procrastinating? Comment below!

Talk soon!

Julia