How how how do you defeat this apathy? There are so many things I want to do – and I thought I was motivated to do them! – but they lie uncomplete, and I feel lazy and apathetic almost all the time. I don’t draw, despite the 100 list I want to complete. I don’t play the piano or the violin or the guitar, though I know that I won’t improve without practice, and I WANT to improve! I want to knit, but the little white stumps of gloves I began weeks ago lie untouched on their needles. I want to sew. Have I done that? No.

Enough whining. Seriously though, how do you defeat apathy? Or procrastination, I suppose it can be called. And what causes it? A predisposition to laziness? I hope not. Perhaps it’s just a kind of perfectionism. I know that’s the case with the drawing; I can’t make anything yet that meets my standards, I suppose, so I don’t try? But that’s ridiculous. Nothing can be perfect at first. No-one is fantastic at drawing unless they’ve practised. Everyone’s always saying how failures teach you more than successes, how success is 1% inspiration- 99% perspiration, how it took Edison 1000 failed attempts to make a lightbulb, yadda yadda. On some level I KNOW all that. Well, so if it isn’t enough to know the motivational quotes, what is? What will help?

… Thinking about it, I’m inclined to think that I just need a little more structure in my life. Since November I’ve been on a break from school, work, everything: I thought I’d get so much done in that free time, which I haven’t, but beside the point; the structure’s gone. No timetable, no necessary wake-up, no real commitments except those I made with other people. Maybe, it doesn’t work to be productive like that? Or, perhaps it doesn’t work for me. Schedules and timetables are stereotypically boring (you don’t need me to tell you that-) but maybe they don’t need to follow the stereotype? Perhaps they can be genuinely useful, and the strictness can do the opposite of what you’d expect, instead bringing more fun and creativity into my life? Because laziness is not fun. It doesn’t feel good. I’m not talking about little periods of doing nothing as a break from hard work; a day once in a while with no plans, no nothing but to relax, eat, watch movies: those can be heavenly. But prolonged periods of nothing, without the hard work between to deserve them … they’re boring. Much more boring than the implementation of a schedule or two, right?

I listened to an iProcrastinate podcast a few days ago (highly recommended by the way), and it discussed the concept of an ‘unschedule’. (I remember listening to this vividly; I went on a barefoot walk just before sundown, found a path I’d never walked before and almost got lost as the darkness descended an hour later. Anyway!) The Unschedule, as I understood it, seems to be a plan of your day where you put what you HAVE to do that day: not just the to-do things you’d normally say you have to do, but EVERYTHING. Eat breakfast, do chores, stuff like that. In that way you can be more realistic about what you might accomplish and when. It’s not enough to think, “I’ll do it tomorrow”. When, tomorrow? What previous action will trigger it, will remind you to do it? And, for instance, if you say ‘I will draw something after breakfast’, well – is it truly after breakfast that you’ll have time for that? As it turns out, after breakfast you actually have to empty the dishwasher and feed the chickens (or whatever other chores are expected of you) before you can sit down to draw. Then it is no longer ‘after breakfast’, you’ve missed your “implementation intention” (as Tim, the podcast guy, calls them). The mind is a fickle thing. A tiny thing like that may have spelled doom for the whole drawing activity for the day.

I think I’ll try putting some more structure into my days… I’ll tell you how it works out!

This post was deigned to fit best into the category "Aspiring" and went live on the 13th January, 2010 at 2:11 pm