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Monday, November 28, 2011

Creativity Coaching Hint #1

Procrastination is a form of fear, so confront the thing you've been putting off, and just get it over with!

I write this as a master procrastinator. A skill I truly became proficient at while in law school. Here's an excellent example of how I would procrastinate: let's say, my legal writing prof assigned me two weeks to write a soul-crushingly boring research exercise about Title IX issues in women's sports. Or land rights for the indigenous peoples of Alaska. Or some other subject which makes me want to start drinking right now just thinking about it.

Two weeks! Two weeks is an eternity! In reality, I have 13 gloriously care-free days to avoid even reading the assignment, until it's about 10pm the night before the paper's due. Now: the magic begins. Now, I shall be up all night, cursing and writing till the last possible minute. Which means that if class is at 9am, I'll be printing the finished paper at 8:55am, and speeding like a maniac through town, as ahead of me some idiot in a Hummer with a John Birch Society bumper sticker goes extra s-l-o-w. Good times.

Now, being self-employed, I can't do that. Procrastination is a form of self-sabotage, if you want to get all Soviet about it. Now, I'm forced to do the thing I dread immediately, in order to get it out of the way, so my to-do list doesn't end up reading like Sophie's Choice. And here's, of course, what always happens: I do the thing I've been dreading and it's...not that horrendous. (*shifty eyes*) There's a lesson here, if we knew of a talented creativity yenta to teach it...

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