Tip 1: How to know if you are procrastinating

You're happily writing away but then for one reason or another, you get distracted by 'that urgent task over there'. So what do you do?

For the next few weeks, we’re running a little experiment to share some of our best tips and tactics to see if you find them useful. These are the things we say to writers most often and they’re all drawn from the Writer’s Sandbox section of our book Written: How to Keep Writing and Build a Habit that Lasts.

If you find them helpful, we’ll keep writing them. Please let us know so by giving us a ❤️  or leaving us a comment. So without further ado… 

Tip 1: Am I procrastinating?

This week's tip is a simple but very powerful way to manage procrastination and distraction in the moment. 

Imagine this: you’ve found the time to write, settled down to your writing session and it’s all going swimmingly. Then, you’re struck by something you absolutely must attend to this moment. It could be a new idea, the need to do extra research or reading, checking out something on Google or YouTube, the list of seemingly urgent writing tasks goes on and on...

Ask yourself: do I need to do this now?

✅  YES. You do need to do it now (even if that’s just to take a break). So go and do it and stop worrying or feeling guilty about stopping writing. 

❌  NO (or not really). This means you are procrastinating! So, make a note of the task that you’re drawn towards and come back to it later on. Capturing the task will calm down the urge to do it and stop you getting distracted by it. 

The important thing is to:

👉 Pause

👉 Acknowledge the thought and,

👉 Question it rather than rush off and do the task unthinkingly.

See you on Wednesday for our regular Breakthroughs & Blocks newsletter where we’re continue this month’s theme of stopping. Missed last week’s? Read: What stops you writing?

Cheerio, Bec and Chris