Three Ways to Keep Momentum During Creative Projects
I’ve found that working on creative projects - especially when they are self-directed - makes me incredibly prone to procrastination. I think most creatives have this problem, although some are great at ignoring procrastination and not letting it take hold.
For me, procrastination usually starts because I am not sure what to do next. I may have ideas and things I want to accomplish, but I am not sure how to get there. This is a problem because instead of doing anything that might move the project along, I end up doing busy-work or not working at all. I’ve wrestled with this problem enough to know that procrastination is a poison that you can’t allow in your environment. Let it take an inch, and you’ll lose a mile.
Fighting procrastination is hard - especially over the course of a creative project. The nature of a creative project - making something where there was nothing - is full of mystery and uncertainty. This is part of the fun, but it’s also the main driver of procrastination. Here’s three methods I use to fight the poison off and keep working until the project is done.
Keep the vision in mind.
When you are in the middle of your day, dealing with problems and distractions, it’s really easy to forget what you are working toward. We tend to focus on the things that are the loudest, brightest, and most problematic. During a long term/large project this can become a serious issue. Focusing on the problems of each day and the fires we have to put out to keep going can derail you from actually going.
To combat this, it helps to take short breaks to recenter your focus on the project and the original vision. These “vision breaks” don’t need to be very long - 5 minutes is perfect, but you can even get it done in a minute if you need to crunch.
My vision breaks are simple: I close my eyes, try to ignore everything around me, and then actively imagine what I wanted this project to be when I began. It is important to stop and actively think about what you wanted the project to be when you began. The early phases of a project are filled with enthusiasm and curiousity. These feelings propel us into starting the project, and they keep us going through uncertainty in the early days.
Somewhere along the way, it becomes easy to lose this energy and give in to the forces that cause us to lose focus. It’s easy to fizzle out at the middle stages of a project and stop making progress - the moment when your focus shifts to the daily problems that might be important, but keep you from finishing your big project.
I’ve found that with enough imagining you can recapture some of this original energy and drive that got you started. You may not be able to get it all back, and it won’t last as long as it did before it left. But if you stop everything and actively imagine the end of the project - try to put yourself inside the end of the project, by feeling what it would be like to finish it, by imagining what it will look like when it's done - you can regain some of this energy. You can use this energy to set aside the things that have taken your focus and continue progressing toward your goal.
Track everything.
Have you ever noticed how addictive a game or app can be when it tracks your progress toward a goal? Like when you use a shopping app that gives you a free reward after a certain number of orders, or a game that gives you an in-game item after you’ve accomplished an in-game feat. Somewhere along the way, software developers realized that humans like to see and track progress. It’s soothing to watch things grow and get better over time - and we feel good when we are a part of that growth and improvement. We get addicted to this feeling of progress and improvement - even if it is “artificial” progress, like in a video game.
You can use this addiction to growth and progress tracking by building it into your work. You can do it digitally in a Google doc, or just on a piece of paper. I’ve found that keeping it simple and tactile is good for me. I have a small notebook on my desk where I lay out my daily/weekly priorities and then I track my progress toward them.
I’ve found that basic tracking is great - you can keep yourself accountable and it feels good to fill in a bubble or make a checkmark when you make progress. But if you want to take it to the next level - like you are building yourself an app that tracks your work - you should track everything you can. You should find fun ways to keep track of what you do and represent it numerically and visually if possible.
This can be as simple as “Work one hour on project x”, written on a piece of paper. If project x is going to take a few days, you can repeat “work one hour on project x” for however many days you need. Then, fill in a bubble next to this every time you work on the project. It’s even better if you lay out a few days to work on a project and then track how many of those days you fill. At the end of the week, you can see your days worked vs. your days planned to work, and you can see where you’ve excelled or fallen short. While you are doing this, your brain will be trying to scheme ways to fill all of the empty bubbles next time.
I think of this tracking method as a way to “hack” procrastination. Procrastination happens because we have lost momentum for some reason. Maybe we don’t know where to go next, or we’re overwhelmed, or we are out of energy. This makes it hard to jump back in and continue the progress toward the end of the project. Tracking everything about the project gives you something to work on - even if that something is just for you - that is about the project. Even if this isn’t actual progress, it keeps you thinking about what you want to accomplish. When you take the time to calculate percentages and represent progress in a way that is fun/interesting to you, you start to gain your energy back. And you will want to see your percentages of work completed go to 100% - which means you will soon return to your project in earnest.
Work around other people.
If all else fails, resort to working in proximity to others. Sometimes you can break out of a slump by physically moving from your comfort zone. And when you can’t seem to make any progress on a project it’s really helpful to be somewhere where any type of progress is being made.
For this reason, I love going to busy streets, airports, hospitals. (This is obviously tough during a pandemic. Use your common sense and don’t risk the health of other people.) Places that are full of people - especially people that are trying to get their work done - are full of energy that you can feed off of to get yourself going again. An open window that faces a busy street can work, too.
To gain energy from the world around you, you should take your work with you but try to split your focus.
It sounds counterintuitive, but try to work while also trying to watch the world as it goes by. Put your project in your hands - in your phone, notebook, laptop, etc. - but keep it on the back-burner of your mind. As you work, look at the busy street or hospital lobby around you. You will start to notice that everyone around you is going somewhere with a purpose. Everyone has a job to do, it seems. (And even if they aren’t traveling to get something done, you can just imagine they are. You can make up your own story for everyone you see. It doesn’t matter.)
On a busy street, you’ll probably see a delivery driver walking with so much purpose that it looks like he could walk right through a wall. He has a job to do.
In a hospital, you’ll see doctors and nurses moving quickly to the next patient. They have lives to save - and they have no time for procrastination in their work.
In an airport, you’ll see people traveling for business, pilots going to their planes, and support staff keeping the airport running. All of these people have a goal in mind and they can’t let anyone or anything stop them from accomplishing it - they have a job to do.
Sit in these places long enough, and you’ll start to feel the energy from the world around you. Take the time to admire the delivery driver’s sense of purpose, and you’ll start to regain yours. You’ll remember that the rest of the world isn’t letting procrastination stop them from accomplishing the day’s goals.
The delivery driver’s goal: an empty truck at the end of the day. The doctor’s goal: safe, healthy patients at the end of the day. The airport janitor’s goal: a clean, well-ordered space for travelers.
None of these people can procrastinate. Watch them long enough, and you will remember that you don’t have this ability either. You started your project because it matters to you and you envisioned making something worthwhile.
Soak in some of the energy from the world around you, and get back after it.
