On abandoned drafts

Why I “almost” never published this article

Bless me reader, for I have sinned.
I have a list that says: “Top 3 main things to do this week”…
It has 32 items on it.

Bless me reader, for I have sinned
… again
Once again, I have taken so long to write an article on Medium.
I had originally planned to write one every month.

It’s not that I did not have time to write. I had the time. And I wrote.
For example:

• I started a draft for an article with the title: “Experimenting with chocolate for performance”
• A draft on “Lessons from using a continuous glucose monitor”.
• And then, I started a new article on “What data organisations really need”

The problem: procrastination as a hobby

There was no issue with the drafts themselves. However, from the date of the last article I wrote, here’s what the data looks like:

• Number of article drafts started: more than 30.
• Number of articles sent: 0.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fig 1 — on the left side you can see the drafts, on the right side the published articles

This is why I started writing this article instead… And if you’re reading it, it means at least I succeeded with this one.

Why is publishing an article so hard?

Ideally the process of writing an article is easy, as long as you are consistent, and it would go like this:

• Step 1 — select an article idea → Step 2. start a draft → Step 3. improve draft → Step 4. publish the article → go back to step 1.
  Simple as that? Where do problems happen?

Well at each on of those steps, there are “alternative routes”.
For example: Not only do the last tasks in the pipeline feel less rewarding, but the ideation part is almost always fun.

Which means the pipeline becomes

• Step 1 “select email content”, could turn into:
  1.a. Select an idea→ 1. b. Get more ideas → 1. c. Question the purpose of existence → 1.d Freak out

• Or Step 2 “start a draft”
  → Realise no one will like this content idea
  → Realise no one will ever love you
  → Roll back into the corner of shame (non-figuratively speaking)

And when you finally publish and no one reads your article, it acts as a confirmation that you will never be enough.

So there is a high likelihood, of ending up in either:

1. rolling back into a corner, or
2. having an existential freak out.

“How you do anything is how you do everything” The reason I really decided to write this article is not to apologise, nor to write it as a form of self-therapy. It is the realisation that this does not only happen to me when writing an article, but in many other things too. And because I know that some of you probably get lost in the same dark woods of procrastination. Perhaps the antidote to it is quite simple. Perhaps the antidote to it is just the acceptance that it will happen again.

The Antidote: procrastinators will procrastinate

Bless me reader, for I will sin again… just saying… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To avoiding spending too much time on this draft, I’ll make it as short and blunt as possible.
Whenever I managed to actually get something useful done, here are the main principles that helped:

• Just spend time: The only thing you need to do is spend time on the task you need to accomplish. Whatever time you have. It doesn’t matter whether you achieve anything, Or spend all that time lost or wandering. As long as you sit down (or stand up if that’s what your work is about) that’s all you need to do. If you do this every time, one day you’ll do a little bit, and another day a little more.
• Just pretend to do it: if spending time on the task is too much, just pretend. Don’t have time for your online yoga class? Open the yoga mat. Then close it back. Don’t have time for running? Put your shoes on, and then take them off. That start is enough to keep the habit alive. Because the hard days are more important than the good ones.
• Write a shitty draft: or as Anne Lamott puts it in her book Bird by bird “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper”. So when you feel like you want to get something to be perfect: do the exact opposite, write something really bad. You’ll have time to worry about improving it later. You’ll have time for the existential crisis later. For now, just do a terrible job at it.
• Small things, compound: You don’t need to do big things: small things, done consistently, compound over the long term.
• Be patient at the macro level, be impatient at the micro level: For example, many people who start going to the gym, start worrying about getting results. And getting them as soon as possible, they feel impatient at the macro level. They want the results and they want them now. But the results take time. And they take work. But on the smaller level they may not feel the same way, spending 20 minutes in the gym will neither grow bigger calves, nor reveal hidden abs. So skipping it this time may not make a difference. Right? The truth is: that 20 minutes is the only thing that matters. It is also the only thing that can be controlled. You cannot guarantee the results, and no one can do the work for you. The only thing you can guarantee is trying to get there. Remember, small things compound over time. If you don’t see results, take a deep breathe and stick to what’s right.
• To be or to do which road will you take: we often want to “be” someone as opposed to “do”-ing what is useful. To be a researcher can sound cool, to do research is work. To be a writer can feel rewarding, to write requires discipline.
• Ego is your enemy, so invite your enemy to have tea: your ego will tell you it’s not good enough. Your ego will tell you you’re better than those small tasks. Your ego will always be on the way. But don’t fight your ego. Befriend it. It’s okay that some days you’re worried what people will think of what you do. It’s okay that some days you’ll be worried whether you achieved anything useful. Or whether you ever will.
  The truth is, none of these things matter, it doesn’t matter what people think of you. But the fact that you worry about it, only means one thing: “you are human”. And if you wanna reduce the amount of ideas you want to work on, here’s a question to ask yourself: “would you do this even if no one paid you for it, if no one praised you for it, if no one ever read it, if no one ever knew you did? Would you do this simply because it’s worth doing?”
• Keep the goal small, but not too small: focus on smaller goals, that are small enough to achieve, but big enough to be motivating. If you’re climbing a big mountain, it may be motivating. Planning for it may be rewarding, the start is exciting. But when you see that you’re still at the bottom of the mountain, after two weeks, the motivation turns to despair. The road back down looks a lot more pleasant than the climb. If the mountain is too small, however, then it may not feel rewarding. Ideally, the reward should be in the climbing, but realistically, just go for a “big enough”-mountain.

Hope you find something helpful here.
Thank you for reading through this and have a lovely day.

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