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For Writers (And Everyone Else): 12 Tips on Overcoming Procrastination

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These are from my notes on writing and are pulled from a bunch of books I read last summer. While the focus is how to overcome procrastination in writing, these principles can easily be adapted to be applicable for anyone, in about any context:

  1. “Almost all writers procrastinate.”
  2. Turn it into rehearsal.
  3. Lower your standards. Writers block is a product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and your performance. Get rid of the standards that inhibit you, write, then raise your standards during revision.
  4. Just start typing.
  5. Adopt a daily routine. “Fluent writers prefer mornings.”
  6. Draft sooner. Avoid over research, which makes writing seem tougher. Write earlier in the process so you discover the information you need.
  7. Discount nothing.
  8. Limit self criticism in early drafts.
  9. Rewrite.
  10. Set the table (= pull everything together and get things ready; make short plan).
  11. Find a helper.
  12. Keep a daily record of accomplishment.

When you Get Stuck

  1. Just start writing. “Writing is the means to achieving the clarity of what you should write.”
  2. It’s OK if you just produce a few pages a day for the first several weeks. Things will snowball if you get momentum.

How to Discover Your Calling

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A great article by Mike Horton on discovering your calling. Here’s a key point:

God does give us the desires of our hearts. He is not out to get us, or to make us wander the vocational wilderness forever. Sometimes we are “dumped” into short-term vocations which to us seem utterly meaningless and yet in some way providentially equip us with a skill which will be vital in our as yet unknown calling in life. We just cannot figure out God’s secret plan, but we can trust it and learn from natural as well as biblical sources how we might better discern our calling.

The questions, What are your skills?, What do you really enjoy?, What would get you up on Monday morning?, are in the realm of nature. Super-spirituality may look down on such mundane questions and try to steal into God’s secret chamber, but biblical piety is content to leaf through the book of nature. God has created us a certain way, given us certain habits, skills, longings, and drives.

Sometimes we over-spiritualize things and think God doesn’t care about whether we are in a role that is a good fit, or that considering our own desires and giftings in choosing what to do is somehow unspiritual.

Not true. Sometimes God will have us doing something that is not the best fit, but seeking the right fit is a good — and spiritual — thing to do. It is a matter of good stewardship to seek the best way to maximize the gifts, skills, and interests that he has given us.

All Moral Knowledge and Business Skill Are From God

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Jonathan Edwards, in A Divine and Supernatural Light Immediately Imparted to the Soul:

All Moral Knowledge and business Skill from God
God is the author of all knowledge and understanding whatsoever. He is the author of the knowledge that is obtained by human learning: he is the author of all moral prudence, and of the knowledge and skill that men have in their secular business. Thus it is said of all in Israel that were wise-hearted, and skilled in embroidering, that God had filled them with the spirit of wisdom, Exodus 28:3.

Yet Flesh and Blood Reveals It
God is the author of such knowledge; but yet not so but that flesh and blood reveals it. Mortal men are capable of imparting the knowledge of human arts and sciences, and skill in temporal affairs. God is the author of such knowledge by those means: flesh and blood is employed as the mediate or second cause of it; he conveys it by the power and influence of natural means.

This is not Edward’s main point in the sermon — his main point is that apprehension of the truth of the Gospel and the beauty of Christ is given immediately by God (illuminating Scripture), whereas he uses means to bring about moral knowledge and skill.

But this is still a helpful and important point: All knowledge, including your knowledge of how to do your job and be effective in it, ultimate comes from God.

Mind Like Water?

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Mind like water is one of the main metaphors utilized by GTD. I’m not so sure, however, that it’s actually a good or biblical state of mind.

Note, for example, Tim Chester’s excellent description of the Christian’s prayer life in Total Church:

Calvin however, says a “sweet and perfect repose” is not the characteristic of the spiritually advanced but simply of those whose “affairs are flowing to their liking.” “For the stains,” he continues, “the occasion that best stimulates them to call upon God is when, distressed by their own need, they are troubled by the greatest unrest, and are almost driven out of their senses, until faith opportunely comes to their relief” (Institutes 3.20.11).

Biblical spirituality is not a spirituality of silence; it is a spirituality of passionate petition. If we are engaged with the world around us, we will care about that world. We will be passionate about people’s needs, our holiness, and God’s glory. We will not be still in prayer. We will cry out for mercy with a holy violence. If we are silent, it will be because in our distress, words have failed us. This is the spirituality of the psalms—a spirituality in which all of our emotions are engaged.

Filed Under: GTD

4 Steps to Good Decision Making

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I would like to address decision-making in my book, as that is a key part of getting things done, but there isn’t space.

So, I’m posting here the four steps to making effective decisions that I would have developed a bit in the book. They are:

  1. Understand the objectives
  2. Consider the alternatives
  3. Consider risk
  4. Decide

Very basic, to be sure. But it is surprising how often we go into important decisions haphazardly, without taking an intentional (albeit simple) approach.