How do You Deal With Procrastination as a Freelance Writer?

It’s deadline day. Your writing project is due in 5 hours and you’ve not done much.

You feel guilty you’ve squandered a lot of time before.

You look at the ticking clock and ask yourself one sobering question, “how come I’m always procrastinating parts of my work?” It’s not the first time nor is it the fifth time.

Or perhaps you’ve been planning to revamp your blog to include an affiliate marketing opportunity you’ve zeroed in on. You keep putting aside the thought of writing the copy for the blog because you don’t feel like it.

Does any of that sound familiar?

Statistics suggest that 40% of people have suffered financial losses due to procrastination.

Procrastination greatly slows down progress in freelance writing or any other business.

Statistics suggest that 40% of people have suffered financial losses due to procrastination.

This silent killer is killing your business.

Why Do You Procrastinate?

It’s easy to come up with excuses that make you put aside important tasks. Some things you say go like “It’s not that urgent, It’s not an emergency, it can be done later, no one is dying.” You can add to the list.

But what are the real reasons why you procrastinate? Identifying the reasons is key to dealing with persistent postponement of that key task you always keep aside.

1. Boring Tasks

You don’t do some tasks that are necessary for your business or are part of your daily work.

You’ve done some of them over and over again till you don’t really feel like doing them now.

They are key to your writing business but you take ages to lift a finger and start any of them. Why? They are boring.

2. Failure to Follow a Daily Routine

You have a daily routine. Right? Do you follow it daily?

One important thing you can do with your business is identifying productive daily routine and stick to it.

Following your routine daily helps you become better and better at your work.

3. Difficult Parts of Work

As a writer you may feel like some parts of your work are not easy for you. A task like polishing your writer website may not be easy for you.

You may feel like coming up with content for giving your site a new face needs to wait for an “appropriate time in future.” An unspecified time.

4. Disruptions

You have certain things that will steal your attention when they appear. They come in many forms.

In my case when I look through emails and find an email on digital marketing I will be tempted to read it a bit. While that sounds alright, it would cost me minutes worth of writing or whatever I should be doing.

Endlessly scrolling through your emails without answering them, filing them or deleting them wastes time. Doing so in the middle of other work is disruptive.

Let’s look at the tips that will help you deal with procrastination.

How to Deal With Procrastination

It begins with your will to take on this challenge head-on.

Acknowledge that the bunch of pending tasks you have should have been done a while back.

You also need to accept that this is costing you time and money.

Deliberate action will give immediate results!

1. Have the Overall Picture – In Mind And Written Down

One important source of motivation you want to have in your freelance writing is the long term goal that you have.

Elna Cain in her post on setting goals suggests having a stretch goal. Something like making a living out of writing.

Maybe your goal is to consistently make enough money to replace your 9 to 6 job.

Or perhaps your target is to go for a holiday in 9 months off your income from the freelance writing business.

Once you set your goal, write it down or have it visible on your computer screen.

The urge to put aside tasks quickly disappears when you look at the long term goal. This is your key motivating factor in writing.

2. Focus

The best way to deal with disruptions is focusing on the task at hand. When you stay focused on the task at hand, you will not be easily disrupted by other things.

You can consider ways of maintaining a surrounding that is conducive to your work. Some low music and a special work station where you do nothing else apart from freelance writing work is helpful.

3. Take a Break

Research suggests that the optimal human time for focusing on a given task is 90 minutes. So when you spend more than one and a half hours on a single task, your productivity is likely to go down.

When you are tired you are tempted to procrastinate important parts of your work.

You can consider a short break or switching tasks after 90 minutes to keep energized.

4. Set Earlier Personal Deadlines

Deadlines give us additional energy to complete our work. When a customer project submission time draws near, you tend to have additional steam you get it done.

To activate this energy in good time, set personal deadlines outside of your submission deadlines.

Be sure to complete the task at the set time and switch to something else.

5. Be Accountable

I like what Vanessa Loder in her post on beating procrastination suggests “promise an accountability buddy cash, coffee, lunch or some sort of a bet that will only be triggered by a call from the person you promise”.

When you know it will cost you cash to delay your work, you have double-edged motivation. You will work hard to complete your work and also to save cash.

6. Reward Yourself

Don’t we all love gifts? Set a reward for knocking off that task from the list. An extra mug of coffee, a walk to a favorite spot or whatever motivates you to work hard on your goals. The point is something you like after accomplishing a certain task.

Finally

Procrastination is one thing you want to eliminate for you to succeed in freelance writing business. As you get your tasks out of the way fast, you are on your way to accomplishing your ultimate goal. You will be happy you’ve completed the customer’s work in good time. This gives them one more reason to give you more work.