Procrastinate Better!

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I forgot to mention in yesterday's post about in medias res journalism that I'm working on improving my blogging game at Forbes, where I've been underperforming.

As a Forbes blogger, I'm required to post a minimum of five times a month. For several reasons, I was procrastinating, waiting until the final days of the month, and then doing them all at once.

Here are some ways I'm resolving my procrastination problem:

Set the bar low

I've asked myself to publish one post a week this month. That's very doable. So far, I'm on track.

Make yourself accountable

This blog helps me hold myself accountable. Without it, the failure is private. With it, procrastination will lead to public humiliation. Faced with a choice between doing it and admitting to not doing it, I'd rather just get it done.

Figure out what your procrastination is telling you

I really enjoyed a recent post by my friend Damon Brown at Inc.: "Why Procrastination Is the Key to Your Business." Typically, we pathologize procrastination. Damon suggests otherwise:

Procrastination is usually viewed as the absence of work (and, therefore, the loss of profit and productivity), but what if it was a compass to your true calling?

Damon says you should ask yourself: "What are you doing now that you're doing to prevent you from going back to the work you claim to enjoy?"

For me, the answer is: blogging.

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