www.hillaryrettig.com/page 1 TITLE The Little Guide To Beating Procrastination, Perfectionism and Blocks: A Manual for Artists, Activists, Entrepreneurs, Academics and Other Ambitious Dreamers by Hillary Rettig, http://www.hillaryrettig.co m lifelongactivist@yahoo.com VERSION INFORMATION Version 1.0 released 12/10/07 AUTHORSHIP This e-book is adapted from my book The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way (Lantern Books, 2006). For more information on The Lifelong Activist please visit http://www.hillaryrettig.com. I do life and career coaching that help activists, artists, entrepreneurs, students and other ambitious dreamers break free of procrastination, perfectionism, fear, negativity and other blocks to success so that they can achieve their life goals. I also help people succeed at their job searches (that’s what the subject of my next book will be). If you like the approach in this e-book, and think my coaching would be helpful to you, please email me at lifelongactivist@yahoo.com. You can also read more about my coaching and workshop services at http://www.hillaryrettig.com. If this e-book has helped you, and/or if you have suggestions for the next edition, I would welcome hearing from you. Thanks, Hillary. lifelongactivist@yahoo.com WARRANTY The information in this e-book is presented without warranty of any kind. It has helped www.hillaryrettig.com/page 2 many people, and it is my sincere wish that it help you, but I can’t accept responsibility for any negative result you feel you may have obtained from using it. If you are suffering from an intractable procrastination problem, or panic attacks, anxiety, depression, addiction or any other psychological or physical condition, please seek professional help before following the advice herein. - Hillary LICENSE This e-book is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license, which means you are allowed to copy, alter and distribute it non- commercially so long as you include the above Title, Version, Authorship and Warranty statements, as well as this License statement. If you choose to distribute your altered version to others, you must permit them the same freedom to copy, alter and distribute non-commercially under the same terms. For more details click on this link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/. TEXT NOTES *Throughout The Little Guide, I use the term “artist” to refer to creative people of all types, including fine artists, musicians, writers, and performers, as well as craftspeople, designers, and other commercial or “applied” artists. *I often use the word “student” to refer both to students I have taught in classes and workshops, and individuals I have coached. *Please note that although the techniques described in The Little Guide work on their own, you’ll probably achieve better results using them in conjunction with the Mission Management and Time Management techniques described in Parts I and II of The Lifelong Activist. I didn’t include those topics here because I wanted to write a little guide that focused just on the topic that most people seem most urgently interested in, overcoming procrastination. I do, however, occasionally refer to the importance of managing your mission and time in this e-book, and urge you to pick up The Lifelong Activist to read up on those topics. www.hillaryrettig.com/page 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I. THE PROBLEM DEFINED 1. An Early Morning in May (or September, or January…) 2. Things That Bump Us Off Our Path 3. Despair…and Hope 4. The Problem You Think You’re Solving 5. The Problems You Should Be Solving 6. Fear 1. Introduction to Fear and Fear of Change 7. Fear II. Fear of Failure 8. Fear III. Fear of Success 9. No Such Thing as Pure Failure or Success 10. Don’t Compound Fear With Shame 11. Fear Creates Obstacles to Success 12. The Most Important Thing You Need to Know About Your Obstacles 13. Non Obstacles 14. Beware Myths that Promote and Excuse Failure 15. Perfectionism 16. Negativity 17. Negativity II 18. Hypersensitivity 19. Panic: The Fear-Amplifier PART II. THE SOLUTIONS 20. False Solution I: “Mean Mommy/Mean Daddy” 21. False Solutions II and III: “Selling Out” and “Stalling Out” 22. False Solution IV: Dithering 23. Solution I: The Three Productivity Behaviors 24. Practicing the Three Productivity Behaviors 25. Five Success Tips 26. Solution II: A Process for Overcoming Fear-Based Procrastination and Panic 27. Tools for Change I: Journaling 28. Tools for Change II: Therapy and Self-Care 29. Tools for Change II: A Created Community www.hillaryrettig.com/page 4 30. Finding and Cultivating Mentors 31. The Ultimate Solution (Solution III) to Managing Your Fears 32. Developing an Empowered Personality 33. What Empowered People Do www.hillaryrettig.com/page 5 PART I. THE PROBLEM DEFINED Chapter 1. An Early Morning in May (or September, or January…) So here’s what happens: You have a plan – let’s say, to wake up at 7; be washed and dressed and breakfasted by 8; at your desk, easel or other workspace by 9; work three hours; exercise during your lunch break; eat a healthy salad at your desk; work four more hours; come home; eat dinner with your partner; work a couple more hours in the evening; and then curl up in bed with a good book. But you don’t follow the plan. Maybe you wake up late - at 8, or 9, or…noon! The plan is trashed before you even get started. Or, maybe, it takes you not one, but three hours to make it to your desk. And then, once you’re there, you spend an hour or three reading the newspaper, Web surfing, and making personal calls. Or, maybe when lunchtime rolls around you don’t exercise and instead of a salad eat a gigantic submarine sandwich - and then spend the rest of the afternoon feeling sluggish and don’t get much done. Etc. Procrastination is when you get bumped off the “path” you set for yourself for the day. Meaning, you start the day with a plan, but somehow, by the time bedtime rolls around, you haven’t accomplished some, or all, of what you had intended. There are other definitions of procrastination, but I like mine because it reflects the notion that, at every moment, you’re making a choice to either stay on your path (or schedule) or leave it. The challenge of beating procrastination is the challenge of resisting the urge to leave your path. This is also the challenge of beating blocks, since a block is really an ongoing procrastination problem that lasts weeks, months, years or decades. This e-book will help you figure out what is causing you to leave your daily path, and what you can do to stay on it. It offers not one, but three proven solutions to procrastination: I’ve used these solutions myself with great success, and so have many of my students and coaching clients. Moreover, these solutions work fast. Students who www.hillaryrettig.com/page 6 employ them often shoot ahead like arrows on their goals, even if they’ve been blocked for years. I’ll explain why that is so later in the book. For now, just relax and read on, and rest assured that, by the time you finish, you will be much more empowered to finally defeat your procrastination problem and live the productive and happy life you’ve always yearned for. Chapter 2. Things That Bump Us Off Our Path Let’s say you planned to be at your computer, working on a project, at 10 a.m. on a Monday morning, but you’re not. Why not? The answer could be one or more of the following: *Got up late. *Quarreled with your lover last night, and keep reliving the quarrel in your mind. *Are too tired – the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet. *Are too hyper – drank too much coffee and can’t sit still. *Are distracted by the weather – it’s beautiful out and you’d love to take a walk or bike ride. *Are distracted by the weather – it’s awful and depressing. *Got a call (or email or instant message) from a friend, who is depressed (though not in crisis) and needed to talk. *Got a call from a friend (or email or instant message) who is happy and wanted to share good news. *Are reading the newspaper – every last word of it. *Are Web surfing or Web shopping. *Are playing Solitaire. *Just realized that it is highly important to work on some other project. Or, if you work in a home office: *Turned on the TV for “a minute” and saw that one of your favorite actors was being interviewed, so you decide to watch the interview. *Just realized that the laundry desperately needs to get done! These are typical of the kinds of things that can bump you off your path. It’s only a partial list, of course - you can probably add many other entries to it. There are www.hillaryrettig.com/page 7 probably hundreds of potential “bumps” that can knock you off your path. One important thing to notice is that, while some of these bumps seem “good” or “worthwhile” (like commiserating with your unhappy friend or doing the laundry), and some seem “bad” or “frivolous” (like playing Solitaire), they are all equally unacceptable from the standpoint of beating your procrastination habit. You will need to learn to resist the urge to get sucked into activities not on your schedule, no matter how important or virtuous they seem at the moment. The one exception, of course, is emergencies, by which I mean activities that can’t be postponed without significant hurt to yourself or others. But even with an emergency, after you’ve dealt with it, ask yourself whether it could have been prevented by better planning, or whether someone else could have handled it. If you’ve got an ambitious goal, it is very important to learn to minimize the number of preventable emergencies in your life, and to learn to delegate as much as possible. If it sounds like I’m taking a hard line, I am. I need to, because procrastinators are often adept at rationalizing their diversions. Obviously, if someone is sick or otherwise incapacitated, we should help them, but to what extent? It’s not always clear, and many procrastinators misjudge, sacrificing too much of their own time to help others, even when those others aren’t particularly needy or when someone else is available to help. This problem can be hard to identify, much less solve, because the (deservedly) virtuous feeling one gets from helping often offsets the guilt that the procrastination normally engenders. Look at Your Commitments With a Fresh Eye When you start looking at your commitments from the standpoint of someone who is determined to succeed at their ambitious dream – meaning, someone who must use their time optimally - fresh solutions to formerly “unsolvable” dilemmas often present themselves. So, for instance: *Your elderly parents could probably find someone else to mow their lawn and pick up the groceries - like another family member, or the high school kid down the block who needs a few extra bucks. Or, *Your spouse and kids could probably survive on take-out (or cook their own food!) a few nights a week. Or, *Your friend who needs a lot of support could find others - friends or even professionals, such as a therapist - to help provide it. If you didn’t have an ambitious dream that you were pursuing on top of life’s ordinary demands, then maybe you could get away with mowing the lawn, cooking all www.hillaryrettig.com/page 8 the meals, and talking for hours each day with your friend. But once you own up to your ambitious dream, you are essentially declaring that you will be very particular and self- directed in how you spend your time, because you need to reserve as much time as possible for your dream. This is in direct contrast to most people, who let others - including loved ones, friends, neighbors, coworkers and corporations - control their time for them. Almost all ambitious dreamers, for instance, need to reduce the time they spend on tedious household chores to as close as possible to zero, so that they can use the reclaimed time and energy to work on their dream. Okay, if you enjoy gardening and it feeds your soul, then don’t give that up. But laundry? Yard work? Mopping floors? Standing in line at the grocery store? To the extent you’re able to, find someone else to do it. Send your laundry out to be done, hire someone to maintain the lawn (or get your spouse or kids to do it), buy a floor-mopping robot, and have your groceries delivered. If you feel funny doing any of that, get over it: reducing your housework burden is an investment in yourself. Besides, it’s unrealistic to think that you can spend your time the same way non-ambitious dreamers do and still accomplish your ambitious dream. None of this should be taken to mean that you abandon your family or friends. It just means you invest your time judiciously. Even though you’re not mowing your parents’ lawn, for instance, you could still be taking them to medical appointments: that’s a much higher value activity that is probably a far better use of your time. And even though you’re not cooking home-cooked dinners every night, you could still do it a couple of times a week. And even though you’re not going to be able to talk to your friend for hours every day, you could still be available to her in times of real need. It can be scary to change the terms of our interaction with someone, especially if we’ve been interacting with them a certain way for years. (Double-especially if we’ve been taught to subordinate our needs to others, as many women in particular are.) People often react badly when we tell them we can’t do as much for them, or spend as much time with them, as we have been. Often, however, if we take the time to share our situation, dreams and needs, they are surprisingly understanding and eager to help. So don’t just tell people you will be less available - tell them why, and ask for their support and help. If, after you share your story, some people still aren’t understanding, or are actively hostile, that’s a sad problem to have, but a common one. That’s why successful people learn to say “no,” and also to distance themselves from unsupportive or toxic people, even if they happen to be related to them. Whatever time you decide to spend helping others you should build into your weekly or monthly schedule. You should also build in time both for your own relaxation and for unplanned events and emergencies. Many people think time management is about www.hillaryrettig.com/page 9 trying to stuff as much as possible into one’s schedule, but it’s not; it’s about clearing as much as possible off your schedule so you can work, at a comfortable, non-stressful pace, on your important goals. To sum up: whatever bumps you off your path that is not an unpreventable emergency is procrastination, no matter how important it may seem at the time. Chapter 3. Despair…and Hope Most procrastinators tell themselves things like: “I’m lazy. I’m undisciplined. I’m a failure. I’m hopeless. I’ve got no willpower. I’ll never succeed at anything.” Many artists, activists, and other ambitious dreamers take the self-abuse a step further, framing their procrastination as a moral flaw: “I’m a sell-out, uncommitted, shallow.” Many procrastinators lead a double life, pretending to be happy and productive while really feeling besieged. Their boasts about their huge workloads, ability to work under pressure, and constant need to pull all-nighters are often just a cover for shame and desperation; and often, when things get really hot - when they are about to miss a serious deadline, thereby revealing their true, “shameful” nature - they cut and run, abandoning a project, course, job, relationship or other commitment. Often, procrastinators become depressed almost as soon as they wake up because they know they are destined to procrastinate that day. Procrastination can also feel very confusing. At bedtime, you look back on the day and can’t figure out where your time went. You remember reading the headlines, drinking a cup of coffee with your officemates, watching some television, and surfing the Web, but those random activities couldn’t possibly have filled the entire day, could they? But, of course, they did. That’s what Charles Dickens meant, in David Copperfield, when he had Mr. Macawber call procrastination, “the thief of time.” To a procrastinator, it really does feel as if his or her time were somehow stolen. If a procrastination problem is serious enough, and lasts long enough, it is often called a “block,” as in “writer’s block.” Anyone can be blocked, and many people, perhaps most, are. Sometimes, blocks last for weeks or months, but often, tragically, they last for years, decades or even entire lifetimes. Being blocked is one of the worst feelings in the world; it drives some people to absolute despair. www.hillaryrettig.com/page 10 Wait - There’s Good News! But wait - there’s no need to feel ashamed or despairing! When one of my students confesses to a procrastination problem, I congratulate her. Yes, congratulate. Here’s why: *Procrastination is an affliction of ambitious people. If you don’t believe me, do a Web search on procrastination: you’ll get links to hundreds of pages advising you on how not to procrastinate when writing your novel or thesis, pursuing a fitness program, or looking for a new job. These are all ambitious endeavors, and people who pursue them should be admired even if they do procrastinate. *All procrastinators, no matter how thwarted, can boast at least one achievement: they haven’t given up on their dream. If they had, they wouldn’t be worried about procrastinating on it. To hold onto an ambitious dream despite one’s fears, and also (frequently) despite discouragement and disapproval from those around us and society itself, takes vision, dedication and courage. So, instead of seeing your procrastination problem as a shameful flaw, try seeing it instead as a symbol of something great within you. Yeah, you’ve got some work to do to realize your full potential - like who hasn’t? But at least you keep showing up and fighting the good fight. Another reason not to feel bad about your procrastination problem is that pretty much everyone procrastinates. Ever since I became interested in procrastination, a few years back, I’ve made a point of asking many of the people I talk with whether they procrastinate. I’ve asked very successful people and people who were less successful; people with long-established careers and those just starting out. And guess what? I’ve only met one or two people who said they never procrastinated. So, pretty much everyone has days when they get bumped off their path. Everyone has goals - often, the goals nearest and dearest to their hearts - that they are not making progress on as fast as they would like. It’s true that successful people tend to procrastinate less than the unsuccessful ones - that is, I believe, the very thing that makes them successful-but sometimes they do it, too. This book is written specifically for artists, activists, entrepreneurs, academics and other ambitious dreamers. Are these groups particularly prone to procrastination? Maybe. As the late, great novelist and teacher John Gardner said in his book On Becoming a Novelist: “Theoretically there’s no reason one should get [writer’s block], if one understands that [...]... In my experience, many people, and especially many men, are ashamed of their  fears. They see them as disgraceful and a sign of weakness.  I disagree. As humans, we are subject to death, disease, disappointment, loss,  heartbreak, natural disaster and human­made disaster, among many other afflictions. Fear  is, in my view, an entirely reasonable response to this reality.  Then there are the many hardships, risks and rejections of the ambitious life, ... right.  Unlike Behavioral­Based Procrastination, which is usually caused by a lack of  information or training, Fear­Based Procrastination is caused by, as its name implies,  fear.  Fear is unfortunately a major force in many people’s lives: it’s often a rational, if  not optimal, response to the difficulties and stresses of life and an ambitious path The Purpose of Fear­Based Procrastination Fear­Based Procrastination (FBP) is not a random bad habit: it has a purpose, ... there is even a kind of early warning system in the amygdala  (the part of the brain that  governs emotion) that allows us to experience fear before we’ve consciously become  aware of the thing we are afraid of. It makes sense: if a leopard is about to eat you, it’s a good idea to feel fear, and react to that fear, as quickly as possible This early warning system may be the reason fear is such a difficult problem to overcome, and why it can be so disabling. It’s hard to do anything when you’re afraid ... newspapers, Web surfing, brooding about relationships or the weather, etc.? As you now  know, those aren’t the actual cause of your procrastination ­ the cause is fear ­ but they  are the activities we turn to when we are afraid, and they serve to distract us from both  the fear, and the guilty knowledge that we are procrastinating. Procrastination has, in fact,  an amazing ability to disguise itself: that is one of its most powerful weapons. What   could be the harm in talking to Jane for ten more minutes, especially as she’s having... even know why I bother to try. And this town ­ it’s full of jerks. They’re too  dumb to appreciate real music, and they’re cheap, too ­ I only sold two CDs. And the club manager must think I’m a jerk, too. I’m sure he’ll never let me perform  there again. I feel like crap. I just can’t stand it. I’m going to get a quart of ice­ cream and rent a bad movie and crawl into bed.” And here’s the other: “Darn! This is so disappointing. I guess I screwed up by not promoting the gig ... without being super­competitive and absolutely hating to lose, and yet here was Kasparov  talking about his thousands of losses ­ e.g., failures ­ and how they were essential to his  success If such a failure­averse man can have the courage to fail, so can I ­ and so can  you. Especially if you understand what failure really is If an action we take brings us the result we desired, or an even better one, we call  it a “success.” If not, we call it a “failure.” The trouble comes when we over­identify with ... ” It keeps us stuck ­ unhappily, for sure, but at least  safely protected from the possibility of even more unhappiness It is clear that, to defeat procrastination, we need to understand more about our  www.hillaryrettig.com/page 16 fears and our responses to those fears. That’s why the next few chapters are devoted to the topic of fear and its typical causes and manifestations Chapter 6 Fear I.  Introduction to Fear and Fear of Change... panic. I call these the Big Four Obstacles, as they are very frequently the key roadblocks  between procrastinators and their goals. Most procrastinators are prone to at least one of  them, and many are prone to all four, so I discuss them at length starting in Chapter 15.  Panic merits a special mention. It’s not really an obstacle in and of itself, but acts  as an obstacle “amplifier,” blowing your fears out of proportion and increasing the odds ... problem­solving standpoint, worse than useless. Not only do those labels misidentify the problem, they actually make the situation worse by undermining your self­confidence and predisposing you to failure. As I discuss in Chapter 20, parents, teachers, coaches and mentors all know that criticism, shame and blame do not inspire positive behavioral  change. Rather, encouragement and praise for any small step taken are the way to go.  And that’s not just true for kids; it’s true for everyone at any age. ... This kind of fake productivity is often exacerbated by perfectionism,  one of the four main habits of procrastination and,  hence, one of the four main “obstacles” that  procrastinators must overcome to be able to do their work.  (The other three are  negativity, hypersensitivity and panic.)  I discuss these obstacles in depth in this e­book,  starting in Chapter 15.  And let’s not forget procrastination’s other valuable tool: its ability to “thieve  . www.hillaryrettig.com/page 1 TITLE The Little Guide To Beating Procrastination, Perfectionism and Blocks: A Manual for Artists, Activists, Entrepreneurs, Academics. specifically for artists, activists, entrepreneurs, academics and other ambitious dreamers. Are these groups particularly prone to procrastination? Maybe. As the