[Blueprint] Stop Procrastinating and Start Focusing

I taught myself to read when I was 3 years old because I wanted to write stories so badly.

When I was a freshman in high school, I opened up the school newspaper one day and there was a short story I had submitted on a lark on the front page.

When I was a senior in high school, I wrote my first novel (which wasn’t very good, trust me) and I also won a national award for one of my short stories.

So, you would think with that sort of early success, launching a career as a fiction writer would be a slam dunk.

Alas, that wasn’t the case.

Instead, over the years, I found myself focusing more on my copywriting company and putting off my fiction writing.

(In other words, I was procrastinating.)

It took me years–years–to break this habit. I tried so many different things to help me stop procrastinating and nothing really stuck.

• I thought maybe I needed to get better at organizing my time.

• I thought maybe I needed to get better at goal setting and planning.

• I thought maybe I needed to bust through all my mindset blocks.

And, while all of those things were likely helpful in my journey to stop procrastinating, they weren’t enough.

I share more of my story how I bust through my own procrastination blocks here, but a below are a couple of key observations I learned along the way:

• Everyone is different (duh!) which is both good and bad. What’s bad about it is just because everyone you know swears by one technique, there’s no guarantee that technique is going to work for you. But, what’s good about it is there are a lot of different tactics out there to try. So, don’t despair–if you still have a problem with procrastination, keep trying different things until something clicks for you.

• What I’ve noticed is procrastination is typically a sign of a bigger problem whereas a condition like Writer’s Block is actually designed to help. I bring this up because a good place to start is to make sure you’re diagnosed the problem correctly before diving in with solutions.

If you’d like more tips on how to stop procrastinating, I put together a blueprint you can get for free when you preorder my new book “Love-Based Goals.” Just send your receipt to Info@MichelePW.com

(And if you missed the free blueprint offer, no worries–I’ve included a bonus chapter on how to stop procrastinating in my “Love-Based Goals” book.)