The irony of this post is that I’ve been putting it off. It’s all about procrastination and I am writing it under lockdown at a time when the propensity to procrastinate has never been higher. However, I may have overcome the tendency to delay, thanks to two brilliant authors. The first is Steven Pressfield. In his book “The War Of Art”, Pressfield talks a great deal about your own resistance to getting things done, and how this is humanity’s greatest affliction. As he puts it: “there is one thing that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t: the hardest part isn’t the writing itself, it’s the sitting down to write.”
This takes me back to Mark Manson and his book “The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck”. The last thing I expected from this was a lesson on how to beat procrastination, but Manson really cuts to the quick when he says: “action isn’t just the effect of motivation, but also the cause of it”. What Manson tells us is that forcing yourself to do something can give you the motivation to do what you really wanted.
Trust me, I’ve implemented this philosophy over the past few days and it has worked wonders for me. Seriously, force yourself to work and the motivation will follow.
