We haven’t had the best start to 2022. Omicron has decided to bring back horrifying memories of 2020 and 2021. Vaccines have helped curb the intense effects of Omicron, however, its twice as infectious as the Delta variant. Also the other variants popping up around the world aren’t great news. We’re back in the ‘suck’.
I did mention in my earlier blog that I suffer from the global writers epidemic, writer’s block and some of the ways I’m trying to overcome it. It generates a ‘suck’ in the form of procrastination. And one of the most effective ways to deal with the problem of procrastination is to slightly lower the bar of the task at hand.
One of the main reasons why I struggle with procrastination is the perfectionism associated with it. I really want this blogpost to be good or I really want this YouTube video to be good. While yes those are goals I want to achieve with these personal projects, however, as soon as I realise that my blogposts will never be as good as Nat Eliason’s or my newsletter will never live to Matt D’Avella’s or my tech focused YouTube videos will never be as crisp as MKBHD’s, I find myself going down the rabbit hole of social media, specifically gathering pointless news on Twitter and binge watching reels on Instagram. So now that I’ve diagnosed the problem, a.k.a. perfectionism, the only way to get over it is to remove it as a requirement all together.
Lowering the bar for the tasks at hand make them easier to get done. Instead of writing in my to-do list, ‘Write blogpost’, I now write, ‘Write the first rough paragraph of blogpost’. This lowers the stakes and helps me to actually get up and write the first rough draft of the blogpost. And this gives me the necessary momentum to then get going and write subsequent paragraphs. Embracing the suck in this case helps me to do my work rather than just pushing it to the side and watch Seinfeld on Netflix. And, ironically, the more I write, the better I will get at it over time (hopefully :)).
It’s important to note that embracing the suck comes with a caveat that you’re not suffering from grave mental health issues. Because if you are, it’s best to prioritise your mental health and not embrace the suck if it’s bogging you down even further.