Sunday, February 28, 2010

Blogging: The Ultimate Form of Productive Procrastination

Spaz post alert - I feel like writing again even though it's only been one day since my last post. Pour que? Because I have two projects to complete tonight and a blog post is the perfect form of productive procrastination. Take that whirling-yet-lazy mind that keeps avoiding projects because you think they are too big and don't know where to start. I will blog some sense into you!

When I finish a blog post or any other project that you can actually tell is done, I feel a sense of completion, and that sense of completion gives me confidence. I need confidence right now like Popeye needs spinach.

The projects I'm working on tonight require a superhuman mental energy to complete. A completed project - such as this blog post will soon be - is the ultimate spinach. A dose of spinach and I'll get 'er done tonight (click on that, I promise it's funny). In other words, as I once eloquently said in a facebook status update, it's time to rev up my get'rdunitude. What do you do to get on a roll and feel confident?

Ok, so here are the two projects I'm tackling first by writing about them (classic procrastination strategy but it really does help). This is why I need someone other than this creature (Clementine, CraterCom's VP of Business Development) to talk to about work stuff. Good thing today I met with my first potential hire.

Project A: This is a research project for a new, very exciting client. It's a really cool assignment but one I've avoided sitting down to finish because it involves spreadsheets. Spreadsheets freak me out, don't ask me why, usually because I don't get the formatting. I have all kinds of words for the nightmare that is excel - such as when in Exhell I need an excelpert who can lend me their excelpertise...oh how I love the wordplay. Boxes across a scrolling screen - my skin is crawling just thinking about it, especially google docs. I'd sooner clean the litter box than populate a Google doc spreadsheet. Mostly I don't like them because your boss/client can check in on your work at any moment. I prefer to keep it all to myself until it's ready to show, no peeking in on where I'm at with something (usually because 90% of a project is in my head and/or scattered throughout notebooks at any given moment).

Project B: Messaging document. Sigh....one-pager selling a new service. Involves thinking, positioning, writing, etc. I know this stuff but really need to crank it out. That verb choice sounds awful but, hey, it rings true. Let's be honest, as much as I love it, writing is hard work, n'est-ce pas? That's why people pay other people to do it. But it's very rewarding and for this particular assignment, it's pretty exciting where this one-pager is leading.

Ok so there, I wrote a blog post and it's done. That them there was some good spinach! Bleck...but hopefully once I push "publish post" the energy rush will kick in and I'll have fun with my work. Thanks for listening!








2 comments:

  1. That's very true--the process is painful but rewarding at the same time. We feel the pain because we care, we care so we pay extra effort, we pay extra effort so we need extra mental strength. We all need certain type of "spinach" to be superPopeye. Glad you manage to find a way, by all means, to get you going. By reading your blog, I feel motivated as well.

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  2. Thank you so much for your kind comments Monica!

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