I Procrastinate for 3 Hours Before Starting Work. Here’s How I Solved the Problem.

There is hope for us procrastinators. You don’t need to keep giving your time away to the procrastination gods. This technique applies to any form of work.

One Saturday I found the answer. The clock hit 8 AM. I told myself I was going to type out the outline of a draft story I would most likely not write. I wrote the title. I wrote the sub-headings.

Pretty quickly, I wrote the whole story. Right after I completed writing that story I was in a raging flow state. I felt like Mozart when he wrote his most famous symphony. The trick to beating my procrastination habit? Write one crappy story.

By having zero expectations, I beat procrastination. Thinking about starting work creates resistance. What you’re really doing is preparing yourself to meet a standard, not start work. When your quality standards for your work are too high, you take longer to start work.

Low-quality work is simple to start.

High-quality work feels like preparing for a two-day marathon.

Once you’ve solved your procrastination problem, you can then accelerate your flow state and increase its power.

When my girlfriend books a social event at the end of a writing session it drives me nuts. I’m literally cursing in my head. Then I realized she’s actually doing me a flow state favor.

An event at the end of your work helps you rethink how much time you have. When time is scarce there is no time for procrastination. Book an event in your calendar to create motivation and the urgency to finish.

Dogs love treats. So do humans. Give yourself a treat for finishing your work. Know what it is beforehand. Commit to it. Then tell yourself you can’t have the reward until the work is done. Visualize the reward while you work.

When you put out energy into the world you get it back.

I try to put energy into the world through writing. I often get emails from readers that are loaded with energy. You can feel the energy as you read their words. Recently, I realized the energy I was feeling in these emails was actually the original energy I’d put out into the world, except it was larger and a different form of energy.

A flow state enables you to do your work and this work puts energy into the world. Energy moves people to take action. Energy causes life to move forward. Energy from one person, sparks energy in another.

Flow states can make a person look possessed. If you want a brilliant example of this, then watch musician Conor Maynard sing this song . 41 million people watched Conor in flow and many of the comments describe him looking as though he’s “feeling” the song.

Conor has moved into a different dimension in his head where expectations, friction, and resistance are removed.

Flow is beautiful to watch. I call it flow state tourism. When you watch a person in flow, you have the evidence needed to work on and enhance your own flow state.

Getting into a flow state is all in your head. All you have to do is pretend you’re not starting work. Tell yourself you’re just messing around. Create a piece of art you expect to throw in the trash. Enjoy how low-quality the first hour of your work is going to be. Tell yourself, low-quality to start with is okay.

Getting to work is how you produce your best work. My editor said this to me last week: “Your best writing is about 2–3 stories into your writing session."

This one sentence reinforced what I now understand. You rarely do your best work at the start. Like a runner, you have to warm-up your mind on low-quality work before the real gems start to flow out of you.

Beat procrastination by starting with terribly low-quality work.