Christopher Castellani, Sonya Larson, Eve Bridburg, and the wonderful staff and students at Grub Street Writers in Boston, who helped me find my mission.

Carolyn Benedict-Drew, with gratitude and respect.

Richard Stallman, an inspirational activist and stalwart friend.

Dan Krotz, a valued friend and mentor extraordinaire.

David Karp, who made just one suggestion but it was prime.

My wonderful landlords, Dorothy and Jack Benoit. And the crew at John Smith’s Auto Body, including John Smith and Lenny Petrone. And everyone in East Boston, MA, a community full of friendly people and interesting ships.

And Gunnar Engstrom.

Vocabulary and Text Notes

Procrastination is the problem of not being able to reliably do your writing as planned.

A writer’s block is a severe, prolonged bout of procrastination.

Throughout this book, I use the noun forms of these words interchangeably. Whenever you see me refer to “writer’s block,” you should assume I’m also talking about procrastination, and vice versa, unless I specify otherwise.

When I need a verb form, I generally use “procrastinate,” and my preferred adjective is “underproductive.” With each word, I’m again referring to the entire spectrum of underperformance, from slight procrastination to being hugely blocked.

For reasons that will become clear, I avoid using labels like “procrastinator” and “perfectionist” in conversation or when teaching, but I do use them in this book for brevity and clarity.

I use the word “prolific” not to indicate some fixed arbitrary standard of productivity, but someone writing at their own full capacity. Everyone’s situation and capacity are different, and your own capacity will probably differ at different times.

Ditto for terms like “successful” and “underproductive”: their meanings relate not to some arbitrary measure but to what you achieve relative to your own goals.

I use phrases such as “your writing career” and “your writing profession” to indicate any path involving a long-term commitment to writing, whether or not that path earns money—although I hope it does!

Throughout the book, except for Chapter 4 for reasons I will explain, I use the gender pronouns interchangeably.

Disclaimer

The information in this book is presented without warranty of any kind. It has helped many people, and it is my sincere wish that it help you, but I can’t accept responsibility for any negative result you feel you may have obtained from using it. If you are suffering from anxiety, depression, addiction, or any other psychological or physical condition, please seek professional help before following the advice herein. If you are making choices that affect your financial well being, please consult your accountant.

About the Author

Hillary Rettig is an author, coach, and workshop leader who specializes in helping people improve their productivity and build effective and empowering careers and businesses. She is also a vegan, kidney donor, former foster mother to four Sudanese refugees (“Lost Boys”), and lover of dogs and other animals. The text for her previous book,
The Lifelong Activist
, a self-help guide for progressives, is available in its entirety at www.lifelongactivist.com.

For more information on Hillary and her work, including abundant free downloads, visit www.hillaryrettig.com. Hillary also invites you to:

Email her at [email protected]

“Friend” her on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/hillaryrettig

And follow her on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/hillaryrettig

For more on Hillary’s coaching or to invite her to give a class, workshop, or speech, see
hillaryrettig.com
.

Chapter
1

The Mechanics of Procrastination

“I have known authors whose lives have been troublesome and painful because their tasks have never been done in time.”

—Anthony Trollope,
An Autobiography

Section
1.1 Procrastination is Disempowerment

P
eople who procrastinate or are blocked almost always think it’s because they’re lazy or lack an essential character trait such as willpower, commitment, or discipline, but that’s never the case. As the phrase “writer’s block” implies, you aren’t missing anything, but blocked from using what you already have: your skills, talents, energy, vision, commitment, etc.

A good synonym for “blocked” is “disempowered” (get it? dis-empowered), which also helpfully denotes that there are forces acting on you that are causing your underproductivity. In other words, you procrastinate not due to any intrinsic deficiency or deficit on your part, but to outside forces.

Because we can work to uncover and ameliorate (or eliminate!) the forces disempowering you—and rather easily, once we clear up some misconceptions—the idea of disempowerment should bring hope. Regardless of how many years or decades you’ve struggled with your procrastination problem, it is solvable.

In the productivity classes I run for writers, we do an exercise where I say, “It’s Monday at 10:00 a.m., and you’re supposed to be writing your novel (or, nonfiction book, thesis, grant proposal, business report, etc.), only you don’t feel like it. What might be some of the reasons?” The answers typically fall into eleven (!) categories:

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