When is procrastination a good thing?

January 6, 2014 by
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I’ve got until the first of next month to complete my CLE credits. I’ve been watching videos over the last couple of weeks and making good progress. I know some people would say that doing three years worth of CLE in a few weeks is unwise. They would point out that I could have done an hour a month and been done months ago.

Their math is correct but their advice is misplaced. They assume that procrastination is a sign of weakness or poor organizational skills and leads to unnecessary anxiety and poor results. But is that always true? Is there a time when procrastination is a good thing?

I think so.

Procrastination helps you prioritize. It allows you to filter your list of tasks so you can focus on what’s important and not merely what’s urgent.

CLE isn’t important to me since I no longer practice. Now, it is urgent that I get those credit done, but waiting as I did allowed me to concentrate on important projects.

Procrastinating served me another way. It allowed me to express (to myself) my resentment at being required to take courses I don’t need and don’t want. It allows me to give the middle finger to the system.

Hey, I’m human.

In school, procrastinating served me another way. Waiting until the last day to write a paper or study for exams gave me a built in excuse in case I got a poor grade. “Hey, I didn’t spend any time studying.”

I almost always got good grades, however. But what if I hadn’t?

What if procrastinating is harmful? What if it keeps you from doing what’s important? What if it results in poor performance or results?

Then you have a problem.

There are lots of techniques for dealing with “bad” procrastination. I think the simplest solution is to get the task out of your head and onto paper–your calendar or other “trusted system”. Give yourself enough time to get the task done and then forget about it. If you’ve schedule a start date and given yourself enough time to do what you need to do, you can then devote your mental energy to other things until it’s time to start.

That’s what I did with my CLE. I knew what I needed to do and when I needed to do it. And I’m getting it done.

Calendaring tasks for the future also gives you a buffer of time which may allow you to adjust your priorities. When the scheduled start date arrives you may find that the scheduled task can be safely postponed, or that you don’t need to do it at all. Since I am not actively practicing, I keep thinking about changing my status to inactive. If I do that I won’t have to do CLE.

When is procrastination a good thing? When it serves you in some way. It’s okay to do things at the last minute, as long as you are getting important things done. And as long as you’re still getting good grades.

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Filed Under: Continuing Legal Education, Dealing with stress, Personal development, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , ,

How to write something when you don’t know where to start

November 1, 2012 by
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It’s November and you know what that means? NaNoWriMo!

What’s that? You don’t know about National Novel Writing Month? I wrote about it last November when I shared some thoughts about “Writers’ Block”.

You may not aspire to be the next John Grisham, but if you’ve ever struggled to write something you’ve never written before, and you don’t know where to start, I have a possible solution.

When I was in high school, my parents had a friend who created several TV shows, wrote screenplays, non-fiction, and music. He also did some acting. Anyway, he didn’t have a musical background, but he wrote some very clever songs. One day, my father asked him how he did it.

He said he took an existing song he liked and used it’s structure as a template. He changed it, note by note, until he had an original piece that was nothing like the one he started with, except maybe in length, key, and tempo. (Since he couldn’t read music, he recorded himself humming his new tune and had someone transcribe it.)

For the lyrics, he took the original words and changed those word by word, or he found another song he liked and changed those words to create a new song to go with his new music. He used the same technique for creating screenplays.

Instead of writing from scratch, he re-wrote something that was already written. He didn’t plagiarize or steal ideas. He took the original, pared it down to it’s skeleton, and added new flesh and sinew to give life to a completely new creation.

Now don’t get me wrong, the guy had talent. Lots of it. He simply used his note/word-changing technique as a starting point. If I ever write a novel, that’s exactly how I will start.

After all, isn’t “getting started” the hardest part of doing something new? Once you have a first draft, you can make it better. But so many aspiring writers never get started so they never have a first draft they can improve.

If you wanted to use this technique to write the first draft of a novel, find one you like (in the appropriate genre and voice, i.e., “first person detective”) and create a “step outline”–a sequential list of the plot points. Note the number of major characters, when they are introduced, and their role (i.e., friend who encourages, villain, love interest, and so on). How many chapters are there? How long are they? When does the crime take place? When do we meet the hero?

Now you have a story skeleton, but of course it’s for someone else’s story. Your job is to change things, point by point, element by element, to write your own.

Your setting will be different. San Antonio instead of San Clemente. Your characters will be different. If the victim in the original was an insurance investigator who is murdered to cover up a fraudulent claim, your victim might be an accountant who knew too much about his crooked client’s business activities.

You write your own novel, using the structure of the original, but nothing else.

Now I didn’t say yours would be a good novel. That’s easier said than done. But your novel will at least be the right length, number of characters, and have the requisite elements in it. You’ll have a workable first draft.

You can use the same technique to write something much less ambitious, like an article or report. Decide on a topic you want to write about and find a model. How many paragraphs? How many main points? How many bullet points? Use this as a template.

Doing something new is much easier when you have a place to start. Fortunately, you don’t have to invent the place the start. You can follow someone who already finished.

Would you like a template for marketing your legal services? Use this

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Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Newsletters, Productivity, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

The best way to deal with things you don’t want to do

September 13, 2011 by
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In “6 Ways to Tackle Boring or Irritating Tasks,” the author presents common sense tips for handling unpleasant tasks. I use several of these tips myself. For example, when I have to make a call I don’t want to make, instead of thinking about it or putting it off (and thinking about it) I simply grab the phone and dial the number. By doing it as soon as possible I avoid unnecessary anxiety and I get the job done.

It’s like jumping into a cold swimming pool; the more you think about it, the more anxious you become. Dipping your toes in, trying to acclimate yourself to the change in temperature, often makes things worse (and makes you look like a sissy). Jump in and your anxiety and discomfort will soon be behind you (and you’ll look like a stud).

But while these tips are effective, I’ve found that often, the best way to deal with things you don’t want to do is to not do them at all.

You may disagree. You may believe that life is a series of unpleasant tasks and ignoring them means shirking responsibility, self-sabotage, or squandering opportunity. I’ll admit that this is sometimes true, but most of the time, it isn’t. Here’s why:

  • Not everything must be done. I find that not doing things rarely leads to permanent and serious harm or the loss of significant opportunity. The 80/20 principle tells us that “most things don’t matter” (the “trivial many”) and by not doing them, we free ourselves to focus on the “precious few” that do.Ask yourself, “what’s the worst that could happen if this doesn’t get done?” Most of the time the answer will be “not that much” and you can safely cross it off your list.
  • Not everything that must be done must be done by you. Just because something needs to be done doesn’t mean you are the one who must do it. Have an employee do it. Or an outside contractor. Or your partner. Whenever possible, do what you are best at and want to do and delegate everything else.
  • If it must be done and it must be done by you, it doesn’t always have to be done immediately. How many times have you put something on your task list only to find that out later that it no longer needs to be done? The problem worked itself out, someone else took care of it, or it really wasn’t as important as you previously thought. I find that happening to me all the time. Therefore, by not doing some things immediately, by intentionally procrastinating on things I don’t want to do, I safely eliminate many unpleasant tasks.
  • Not everything that must be done, by you, and immediately, must be done completely. The 80/20 principle also tells us that 80 percent of the value of a project, for example, comes from 20% of the tasks that comprise it. Therefore, when you have to do something you don’t want to do, look for ways to curtail it. Do only what is essential and of high value and avoid the rest.

There will always be unpleasant tasks in our lives we must do. A eulogy for a loved one, confronting a child who is going down the wrong path, or creating a household budget to drastically reduce expenses come to mind. But most tasks don’t fall into that category and can be avoided, delegated, deferred or reduced in scope.

The negative feeling you get when facing an unpleasant task are there for a reason. Your aversion to doing something is your subconscious mind (higher self, God, instincts, etc.) trying to protect you.

If you’re staring down a lion and facing death, don’t ignore your fear, run. Do it immediately and as completely as you can. But if you have a call to make, perhaps to a client who is behind in payment, and you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to “feel the fear and do it anyway”. Feel the fear and have your secretary do it.

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Filed Under: Dealing with stress, Personal development, Productivity Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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