There’s this quote that I see repeated, often, on Twitter and Pinterest, which is taken from Amy Poehler’s excellent book Yes Please.
“I believe great people do things before they are ready.”
And this one:
“You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing.”
I could actually happily post most of the text here. Yes Please is that sort of book that makes you want to try harder and do more. It also sort of makes you want to throw yourself at Amy Poehler’s feet and do the full Wayne’s World ‘We’re not worthy’ thing.
“Procrastination has become its own solution – a tool I can use to push myself so close to disaster that I become terrified and flee toward success.”
So says Allie Brosh, author and artist behind the brilliant Hyperbole and a Half (expect more quotes; I got the book for Christmas this year) – and she’s right. She’s talking about herself, obviously, but I can strongly identify with this approach. Even more so today, when I’m not actually in my own flat yet, and so I can’t fall back on my usual procrastination pyramid to avoid working on the Problem Story First Draft that I still need to finish. But the deadline is too far away for me to panic up a work of astounding genius (nothing less will do). Continue reading “2014 – already muddier than 2013.”→
When my To Do List looks overwhelming and I’m not getting anywhere with it, I like to restructure it as a Procrastination Pyramid. Today’s Procrastination Pyramid works like this: I should be going for a run, but instead I procrastinate by doing some WORKwork; which I delay doing by noodling about with a song, which I’m not quite in the mood for; so instead I write on the weekend’s blog post (being done early so that I can get on with the WORKwork I should be doing tomorrow); which I haven’t really planned in my head yet, so instead I do the washing up; which I hate doing so I take a break from it by hoovering.
This is a work of ART, people, and it may change your life (for the worse).
It’s a bit of a lengthy approach, but everything gets done eventually, and you reach the apex, or bottom, or whatever. I haven’t thought this metaphor through very well, but the approach does work, mostly. (Apart from when I procrastinate by playing Candy Crush and watching the mermaid show on Netflix. No, of course that’s not on in the background now, how dare you even suggest… Oh fine, it is.)
In other news…
… Shortly after the last blog entry, I received an email from Upsolut Volunteering, letting me know that I’ll be marshalling at the ITU London Triathlon Age Grouper World Championships in September. I’m really pleased to be able to help. The people volunteering at the triathlons I’ve done are the people who make the day and I’m downright chuffed to be joining them. Doubly pleased to be doing it, in fact, because Upsolut emailed volunteers a couple of months ago warning that there had been so many offers of help that they wouldn’t be able to use everyone. I’m marshalling the day after my own race – it’s going to be a brilliant weekend.
… I’m successfully assembling my dream team for The 48-Hour Film Project – London, and was happily granted a dream location to shoot in. More on that closer to the time, but can we say ‘turret’?
… I totally almost wrangled myself a record deal* with someone in A&R at Sony** last night, but then the conversation was hijacked by the presence of Superman*** who is now my bestie****.
Bookworms and Coffee Monsters 