21 Day Challenge: The Anti-procrastination Workbook for Writers

By Deborah Courtney

Part exploration of procrastination and creativity and part workbook, 21 Day Challenge is a brief journey through the creative process and why we don't always dedicate time to our art. It is intended to help you gain some insight into your process and refocus you on completing the writing projects that are close to your heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WDES Publishing, LLC
• Release date: May 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215597026

Book preview

THE POWER OF POSITIVE MANIPULATION

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We are surrounded by forces seeking to manipulate us every day. From our choices in stores, to selecting a car (or a garage to repair what we have).

We are told what is on trend clothing wise. Our favorite coffee shops have commissioned studies in order to nudge us into making beverage selections which positively impact THEIR bottom line. Advertising, marketing, health care. Sometimes the ways in which we are manipulated are positive for us. Mostly they benefit others.

And we tend to view that as a negative. When we bother to think about it.

But mostly we accept it as a fundamental precept of modern living.

What if you could turn all that into a benefit for YOU? Well, not all that, because coffee size isn’t going to get your novel written. But what it you could dig into the ways in which we are manipulated by external factors and begin to use those methods to positively influence yourself?

Sounds pretty okay, right?

Manipulation generally falls into two categories – persuasion, which is getting people to do things they already want to do, and coercion is about getting people to do things they don’t want to do. In both cases, the idea is to work with risk/reward and intent. Your intent.

Let’s say you are managing Person X. You need Person X to be on time, productive, and to have a great attitude because one person with low morale can bring down the entire office. Person X likely wants to keep their job (if not we have a whole different issue). So you create incentives for employees who are on time, and professional development opportunities for those who are super productive. Your intent is to persuade Person X that the behaviors you desire from them are in fact behaviors they themselves want to exhibit, and you are providing positive reinforcement via rewards and opportunities. And here’s a weird little fact – the rewards and opportunities for development don’t really have to be much – they demonstrate to Person X that you are paying attention, and sometimes that is all the positive reinforcement people need – they are seen, therefore they perform better and adhere to policy more.

The bottom line is that the performance of Person X impacts your bottom line, and persuading Person X that they want to have these behaviors is in their interest and in yours.

Coercion is a little tougher, but the entire business of marketing is built around getting people to make purchases and/or behave in ways that they may not necessarily want to. It also works, though it may leave you FEELING

manipulated after you’ve experienced it.

But let’s focus on behaviors which impact the bottom line. Like, for instance, your behaviors and feelings and your bottom line. Like for instance, every time you sleep through a planned writing session, or pick some other activity than writing. Which, ostensibly, you WANT to do. There are a lot of creative folks – writers – for whom the work is (or seems) easy – they are prolific and excited about being prolific and they have seemingly endless bucket of time and words and regularly have 10,000 word days.

Then there are the rest of us.

I am not prolific. I am an avoider, a procrastinator. I will look in the refrigerator for the 17th time to avoid writing. I will plan to write after my day job and then find something else to do and excuse it. Over and over. I will sleep through my planned morning writing sessions on a regular basis, sometimes even turning the alarm off at 3 am when I wake up to use the restroom, on account of being up at 3 will make it hard to wake up at 5:45. I will excuse it EVERY TIME. And I will feel bad about it after the fact. EVERY TIME.

My entire coaching approach was borne out of working around my own avoidance and procrastination. Because I DO want to write. And I am good at it. When I get it done, it is usually good, or as good as first drafts are expected to be.

This book was also borne out of that same place in me – the need to share how I have addressed, and continue to address – my avoidance and procrastination to get things done.

Some of what you will read here will dig into the psychology of pain and avoidance and procrastination. A lot of the solutions come out of subtle manipulations, re-learning rewards systems, and learning to be kind to yourself and to nurture yourself. Mostly, it comes down to positively manipulating yourself into getting out of your own way.

I do want to be clear – I am not talking just about positive thinking, although I am definitely going to spend some time on eliminating negative self thought. Positive thinking – faking happy until you get there – probably a good idea for a lot of people, but it also will not get your book written.

What I am talking about is recontexting how we avoid writing, and the obstacles we put in the way of writing, in order to eliminate them. Well not really eliminate them. We will go around, go under, climb over, and bust through.

But acknowledging what is REALLY at play in our procrastination, anxiety, avoidance and fear of success, we will eliminate the control those things have over our writing productivity, and