A Procrastination Hack for Creative Minds

People will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself, not by external pressure. In other words, nothing kills a good creative project like laying on some of that thick, creamy external pressure peanut butter. You know, it looks good for a minute, but, you know, we can only eat so many peanut butter sandwiches before it starts to get old. And when we feel that external pressure, we start to procrastinate. So how do we help this? So I want to show you an exercise real quick that helps me. I use this often when start to procrastinate. I was actually procrastinating today making this video. I got lost in a sea of, like, Aubrey Plaza videos. I was watching Kevin Nealon hikes. So, I mean, it happens to all of us and we're not immune to it no matter what. So grab a pen and paper, do this exercise with me. This could seriously make a big change in your life right now. I'm Lennon, by the way. I have a company called Stop the Starving Artist. I've been a professional musician, artist, or creative in some form or fashion for the past almost 20 years. And our goal is to help creatives like you leverage your individuality so you can have successful creative careers, whatever success looks like for you. Okay, so the first part of this exercise is make a list of all the creative projects that you want to work on. I mean, this should feel exhaustive. Set a timer for five minutes, you know, longer if you need to. But every single little thing that you've been wanting to get to it, just write it down. And then once you have them written down, which ones feel the most interesting to you? Maybe put a star next to them based on those most interesting ones. Which ones do you actually have time to work on? I want you to try to narrow it down to the three projects that you could start working on tomorrow, even if it meant you had to sit down something else to get started on it. And remember, you'd start working on it because you're interested in it and you have time for it. Okay, take those three projects and put 10 minutes on a stopwatch. And I want you to answer this question for each of the three projects. What are all the potential physical, emotional, relational, and financial benefits that I could have if I worked on this project? Once you make this list, you should start to see pretty quickly that some are going to have a higher return on their investment than others, maybe in a more emotional standpoint or a more relational standpoint. And based on your priorities right now, you know, this can be A great way to decide which one should have top priority for now. So now I want you to pick a project and I want you to put a date on it. And that date will represent the day that this project will be complete. Because if we don't put a date on it, if we don't set some sort of time frame to it, it's a lot harder for, for us to make progress. Okay, awesome. Congratulations. Look, you got this new beautiful little project baby that's sitting there just waiting to nurse. Maybe not nurse, just waiting to like be brought up and parented into the world. Consider all the other projects that you wrote down. Little sperms and eggs still, they're there, they're swimming around, they're still good, they're just not ready to be conceived yet. And that is okay. But we all know that when we take cute little baby project and they turn into teenagers, like teenagers don't always get along with their parents. And so we have to ask ourselves, how can we push through and continue to raise this thing to full completion? I want you to set 10 minutes on your timer, so remember that completion date that you set. So let's say maybe it's 90 days from now. Just to make it simple, I want you to write a journal entry as if it is 90 days from today. And in this journal entry I want you to answer the following questions. Alright? Question number one, what do you see that's different about your life? Number two, how do you feel about having accomplished this project? Number three, what does accomplishing this project do for you as a person? Does it give you more confidence? Does it bring you more joy? Number four, who have you become by completing this project? So I want to hear in this section, like, what's the transformation that's happened for you? Maybe you feel more just like excited about your capability. Maybe this is something you've been wanting to do for a long time, but you've just never stuck to it. And finally you have. So describe how you feel differently about yourself. And number five, what were some of the challenges that you overcame and how did you overcome them? So this is you kind of taking a stab at like, I know I'm probably gonna not want to push through, you know, on certain days when I'm exhausted from work. But how would you overcome that if you were your future self? Whatever it is that's made you accountable to the thing or whatever problem you know you're going to have to overcome, just try to guess how you would solve it. Now we should have a document that has the project, a completion date for said project, all of the emotional, physical, financial and relational benefits that you're going to get from accomplishing this project. And a journal entry from you 90 days from now saying the problems you've had to overcome, how different you feel because you've accomplished it, all these kinds of things. And I want you to have that and print it out. You should be reading this at least once a week, if not a couple times a week, especially on the days when things get hard. This is an opportunity for you to look and re gather yourself around why this project is so important to you and why you should stick to it. Because the point here is not to just do something, but to be somebody different, to be the person that executes on this project. And you've now spelled it out like you know what this person looks like. You know how beneficial it is to be that person. And you can check yourself and say, am I being this person that I've spelled out here or not? Will it be perfect? No. Not even close, right? I mean, we're freaking raising our little creative kid here. And any real parent is going to say, like, I ain't the best at this, but I'm doing the best I can. Perfection, though, is not the goal. Completion is the goal. Perfection is not the goal. Completion is the goal. Because when we complete something, we can always refine it later. What are you coming up against when it comes to your creative career, your art career? What are your big struggles right now? Type them in the comments. And I'm not saying I have all the answers, but if I can help in any way, shape or form, I am happy to make a video about it, talk about it. And so I'm sending you tons of love. Let me know in the comments and I'll see you in the next one.