Dreaded P-Word
On Motivating the Unmotivatable
It feels fitting to be writing this article tonight, the closest I have ever been to the Shelf Life go-live wire. I shall not say which night I am writing this. I did not start on Wednesday night. It could have been worse. But it’s pretty bad.
Today’s post is about the worst p-word we all know. No, not phlegm. It’s that other one.
Storytime: When I was living in Los Angeles and started getting depressed I coincidentally also started having some trouble at work. Or maybe I was having trouble at work because I was getting depressed. It’s hard to say. The organization had a coach in HR who was really helpful and just all around great to talk to so I went to see her to work through the problems I was having.
Even though I am a high-performer, I was having trouble getting certain things done on time—largely because my boss was not into setting deadlines. For a person like me, “no rush!” or “when you get around to it!” means “never” because in my role I’m always getting urgent, high-priority tasks and devoting time to putting out fires. Even when I got a deadline from them, my boss wanted project updates and information available before the deadline arrived and I just don’t get to things that far in advance.
“Ah,” said the coach. “You don’t start stuff till the last minute. You’re one of those p-word people.”
“It’s true,” I said. “Big-time procrastinatrix.”
“No!” she said. “You’re a pressure-prompted person!”
I’m not going to drag you through the whole business of it and the outcome. At the time I think I rolled my eyes—but internally, because you don’t roll your eyes at someone who outranks you, that’s not smart—because everybody knows that’s just a fancy way of saying procrastinator but, like, make it Myers-Briggsy. Astrology for executives.
Over time I’ve given it more thought. People procrastinate, including (especially) me; not everybody does it, but a lot of people do. Why do we do that? Why is it so much easier for me to focus on something when I’m down to the wire on time rather than two weeks ago when I could have done it and felt accomplished and on top of things?
Different people get motivated in different ways. There’s a lot of psychology around intrinsic versus extrinsic motivators, introjected versus identified motivation. But when it comes to the thing that motivates—whether your desire is intrinsic or extrinsic—I think you can break it down into people who are motivated by the positive (rewards) and people who are motivated by the negative (fear). The pressure-prompted person gets motivated when a deadline looms because they experience fear of the consequence that will come from missing that deadline. If that’s you—it’s definitely me—then it can be incredibly hard to get motivated when you don’t feel that the stakes are high.
If you don’t write for a living—if it’s not your job (or even if it is your job)—but you want to make it part of your life, then you’re probably not going to have a lot of deadlines associated with writing. If you sell a manuscript, you’ll get deadlines. Oh will you ever get deadlines, and more deadlines, deadline after deadline. But you won’t get those deadlines until after you have written something salable. If you’re writing for pleasure or a hobby or because you have a story you want to tell and then sell, and you’re a pressure-prompted person, then it can be really hard to motivate yourself to write.
What I’m offering today: Four strategies I use to get myself writing and keep myself writing, as a deadline-driven, pressure-prompted person, even though there are no actual deadlines and very little pressure to produce and time isn’t even real and, anyway, who cares since we’re all just sloughing off these decaying mortal coils day by day?
Look, I’ve tried everything to motivate myself to do stuff I don’t want to do. I know all the tricks that don’t work. I can’t reward myself with a funner activity after I complete the dreaded activity, because if there’s something I want to do more I already know I can just go ahead and do that. I can’t fool myself by setting the clock ahead a little bit to trick me into getting up earlier, because I can do the math while I’m still groggy. And if I pay for a year of gym membership in advance because “surely, I won’t let that money go to waste!?” Two days later Evil CF is perched on my shoulder reminding me all about the sunk-cost fallacy.
If you are a high-performing, pressure-prompted person, then you probably already know these two facts about motivating yourself:
Rewards will not work on you, and
You can’t fool or trick yourself.
If pressure is what motivates you, then you need to generate some pressure. You need to create actual consequences.
Get an Accountabilibuddy
Your accountabilibuddy is someone who will hold you accountable for writing on a regular basis. While you want to have someone supportive—someone who encourages you to write and brings you tea while you’re writing so you don’t have to stop and comes by every now and then to remind you to stop browsing Amazon and write Shelf Life (thanks, H!)—that person isn’t your accountabilibuddy. You need somebody who scares or intimidates you a little bit, but who is a friend and willing to do you a favor. Find someone you would hate to let down. If you can, make a short list of people who fit these criteria so that you don’t need to rely on the same person all the time.
Tell them what you’re doing. Tell them what kind of writing you’re doing, what you’re writing about, and what your writing goals are. Get them excited about what you’re working on. Tell them about the schedule you have set for your writing (see below) and ask them if they would be willing to read it on that schedule and help you stay on task. Don’t make it a huge ask—you probably won’t be throwing a whole short story or novel chapter at them every week (unless you are possessed by the ghost of Ray Bradbury). But let them know what to expect. And, importantly, let them know that pressure is a motivator for you so they don’t misunderstand the kind of encouragement you want.
Running up against a deadline to give material to a slightly intimidating friend who expects it is a great motivator. Asking a busy friend to set aside time and then failing to deliver the content they set aside time to review has meaningful consequences for me.
Commit to Meaningful a Schedule
When I say commit to a schedule, I don’t mean block off your calendar with “I will write for 30 minutes before work” or “I will write on Tuesdays and Thursdays right after reading Shelf Life when I’m feeling very inspired.” I mean, do set that schedule. It’s great to have a schedule. But don’t rely on just having it in the calendar. That works for a lot of people but it will not work well for the pressure-prompted person, because you will get to 8:58 AM or 11:58 PM on Tuesday night and when you realize you haven’t written anything you’ll just say—“Meh, whatever. It’s not like anyone was counting on it” and the first time you don’t do it and experience that blissful freedom from any real consequences, that schedule is going in the garbage can.
Whatever you write, or would like to write, think about whether there’s a way to publish it—or pieces of it—routinely so that people are looking for it. This is an extension of having an accountabilibuddy. While I have a few of those, I also have my small but reliable Shelf Life audience, who I love very much and who are also very good-looking people. Because I have committed to having something publish each Tuesday and Thursday at 9:00AM, there is a very real consequence for not writing to my schedule. People who have signed up to receive it won’t receive what they were expecting.
It doesn’t have to be a novel or part of a novel or a whole story or anything like that, and it doesn’t have to be public (although “public” is, indeed, the root of the word publish). This could be any writing you want to do, going out to anyone, on any schedule you’ve committed to. I heard about a friend of a friend who sends around a weekly email to friends and family with a thoughtful review of a different famous song each time. That’s an incredible idea. If you were someone who wanted to be a music critic but you weren’t sure how to start writing about music? Genius-level move right there.
Make a plan about what content you want to write on a regular basis.
Choose the venue you will use to distribute it: Social media? A newsletter? Blog? Email?
Commit to a realistic schedule: Daily? Twice a week? Once a month? Twice a month?
Find a few interested people—a group of friends, or family members, or colleagues, whatever.
Tell those people exactly what to expect and when to expect it; and finally:
Deliver the content.
When you have even a small handful of people counting on getting your writing regularly, you have a very real built-in consequence that will pressure you not to drop that ball.
Build a Streak
As you get going with your writing you will start to build momentum. I said above that simply putting something on the calendar doesn’t work for me, because I know there’s no consequence for ignoring my calendar obligations if I’m only accountable to yours truly.
But there is one and only one time I can be accountable to myself, and that is when—as I discussed in Little Habit Tracker That Could—I have created a running streak and I don’t want to break it. The psychological power of the unbroken chain of Xs on a calendar is unreasonably strong. Momentum can help you keep going. So as you get started on your writing according to the schedule you’ve set above, make some kind of tracking system so you can check off when it’s done. After you get a few Xs in the tracker, you may feel the pressure from yourself not to break that continuous chain of successes. Before you know it, you’ll have built a habit.
Bonus pressure: Put your tracker or calendar somewhere in your home or online where others can see it for a little added shame if you let that streak break.
Join or Start a Critique Group
Finally, when you reach a point where you have some writing you’d like to get feedback on to begin getting it publication-ready, or you want to begin shaping the direction your story is taking while you’re still writing, join a group that critiques writing—or start your own.
Critique groups, if you haven’t participated in one before, are small groups of people who make the same kind of art. There are critique groups for everything, but writing and photography groups are popular. Members of the group submit the piece they would like critiqued ahead of time so that all members have time to read or review the work, and then during the group each member will give their feedback on the piece. I’ve been in groups where multiple pieces by different members get critiqued each meeting, and groups where one person’s piece is the focus each time in a rotation, and lower-pressure groups with a “bring whatever you have” mindset.
If you’re looking for an existing group to join, both Eventbrite and Meetup are great places to start. You can filter Eventbrite by free admission and searching on “writing” turned up a number of January events. Meetup is usually used for local, in-person activities but in the current climate just about everything is online and there are lots of writing critique groups to choose from.
Starting your own group is also a great option. Consider how often you’d like the group to meet, how many members is ideal, and how you want to spread out the critiques. Some suggestions I have from past experience putting this kind of group together as well as participating in groups made by others, include:
Set a deadline to have critique material distributed to the group in advance of each meeting to give members adequate time to review.
Don’t be afraid to seek a commitment from members at the end of each meeting as to their “homework” for the next meeting. Some of my friends reading this are probably nodding because at the end of each instance I always go “Hey wait, what’s everybody’s homework going to be?” and then I email the group afterward with a reminder of what everyone committed to, when it’s due, and when the next meeting is.
Consider building the group with one or two more people than what you think is your ideal number. Not everyone will make it every time, and folks will drop out over time. If you are interested in adding new members to the group from time to time, make sure everyone in the group is comfortable with that strategy.
Figure out ahead of time what the plan is if meeting day rolls around and nobody has provided material to review. Will you cancel? Postpone? Meet anyway to discuss goals and strategize? Establish an understood consequence of not having material ready on time.
Not everybody wants to have this kind of pressure associated with their hobby or pastime, which makes perfect sense to me. But if you know that you’re this p-word type of person, and you’ve found yourself repeatedly wanting to get into writing and unable to motivate yourself to start, consider that you might need to make yourself just a little bit uncomfortable to start moving toward where you want to be. I hope my fellow procrastinators and procrastinatrixes have found something in today’s article to help get you writing—or pursuing whatever passion may have.
Brief housekeeping item before I go: Of the four remaining Shelf Lifes for 2020, one of them falls on Christmas Eve and one of them on New Year’s Eve. Shelf Life will be publishing on those days! I’ve got a kindness-themed article coming your way for December 24 and thoughts on 2021 planning and goal-setting for December 31. The other two remaining articles are wildcards. They’re not written yet, so if there’s a particular topic you were hoping to see before you ring in the new year—it’s not too late to let me know in the comments!
If you have questions that you'd like to see answered in Shelf Life, ideas for topics that you'd like to explore, or feedback on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.
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There are so many P words! Procrastination was the last thing to come to mind lol