On why I’m not posting regularly.
Reflection in action or the only nation I will ever rule is procrastination.
*short disclaimer*
This post is just a short description of my personal process, if you are looking for really effective tips on how to stop procrastinating (and find them!), let me know!
This blog post you’re reading at the moment is due tomorrow — a deadline I’ve known of for weeks. This fact describes my writing process pretty good I guess.
Before
Before I can start writing, there’s always this perpetual cycle of having seemingly great ideas in the middle of the night and second guessing them the next day. Usually I keep a note on my phone where I can dump ideas and thoughts at all times (which I can highly recommend!!).
And then, well then I procrastinate. For hours, days, weeks in which the start of the blogpost, the blank page, dangles over my head like the sword of Damocles. (Ok, I admit, it’s not THAT dramatic irl!)
During
Fast forward to the day before the deadline (e.g. today), when I finally start writing. I dig out the notes I’ve made previously and open my laptop. Not gonna lie, I’m usually a bit stressed.
First things first — leaving my phone behind. As I mentioned, I’m a professional procrastinator and on top of that, addicted to social media — perfect combination of traits if you want to get things done.
While writing the first few words there is always this feeling of relief.
I begin with listing all the things I want to write about and/or mention. The headline is most certainly the first thing I decide on — to give the whole text some kind of roof under which it can evolve. I don’t always plan how the post should look in the end and even if I do, it almost never turns out that way, because I have decided to go with another idea instead during the process.
I try to structure the text around those bullet points I’ve listed at the beginning. Then there’s normally a lot (and I mean A LOT) of deleting, rephrasing and re-arranging. Often even whole chunks of text don’t make the cut in the end. After some time of this editing-craziness I have to remind myself, that it’s never going to be perfect — I have to take a step back, maybe take a short break, have a final read through and just post it.
After
Shortly after publishing a piece of text, there are always thoughts like: should I have written less/more about this/that? Will the readers get what I meant by that? etc. etc. To not over-obsess about it and to get the opportunity to clear my head, I try to not re-read it for quite some time.
All in all, writing is a very individual process — sometimes hard, sometimes even harder, but in the end there is always this sense of accomplishment. It’s really interesting and empowering to read about other people’s process, their inspirations and their hardships. Writing about writing felt a bit weird to me at first, because it’s nothing that comes easy to me, but it also felt almost kind of cleansing too. 🌝
To see how other people tackled this exercise, head over to Daniela, an UX writer describing her writing process or Linda, talking about how writing works out for her in her agency job (in german).
And if you’re a fellow procrastinator, you will surely enjoy Tim Urban’s TED Talk where he describes what it is like “inside the mind of a master procrastinator”.
