Let Yourself Think You’re Procrastinating to Generate Great Content

Fool yourself into thinking you’re procrastinating when you’re really working and create content that readers will flock to.

If you procrastinate when you should be writing, you’re not alone. Almost every writer has problems with this at some point or another. I’ve found myself getting worse at this with each published article. I figured once I had a bunch of articles under my belt, I’d feel accomplished and competent as a writer, which would lead to greater productivity and the ability to focus on my writing better.

But that hasn’t been the case. As this past year has gone on I’ve discovered that I can binge watch Netflix for hours straight, or play silly games on my phone 100 times in a row without taking a break. Even as I’m doing these activities, though I feel guilty. I know I should be writing and every morning when I get up, I intend to spend the whole day working.

“I’ll write more than one article today,” I tell myself. “Heck, I’ll write a bunch. If I get one out of the way early to take the pressure off, who knows how many I’ll be able to finish.” And every day if I manage to get one out, I’m doing good.

When I feel particularly guilty about what I’m doing, to the point it gets in the way of being able to enjoy it, I turn to Google. I check the news, new articles about writing, search for psychology and writing articles, and look for new research finding that might work as a post.

More often than not, I find myself reading about something that isn’t going to get me anywhere in terms of my own work, like Megxit or what else Trump has managed to do in the last 24 hours, or looking up something trivial I just haven’t heard of before. So long as I’m on Google though, I somehow can convince myself I’m still working. I mean, I might come up with a topic, right?

One of the reasons I start searching on topic but quickly get off, is that frequently I don’t manage to identify a topic that would lend itself to a really good article, so that even on days I end up with something, I feel like I’m forcing it and the resulting article isn’t one I’m thrilled with. I also know that on those rare occasions, that I came up with something I thought was really good, expecting it to be popular even if it didn’t go viral, only once in a blue moon was I right.

Knowing these things, the time it takes for me to get frustrated with the endeavor has gotten increasingly shorter over time. It’s not entirely unusual that I’ll get up in the morning, take a look at the headlines that are trending, and without even bothering to go to the second page, I’m already off procrastinating.

Feeling a bit desperate to get things back on track, I’ve searched for ways that would help me stay focused and motivated, even if not feeling inspired. As it turned out, all it took was a bit of chicanery and a tool or two, and I was off to the races.

Fool Your Conscious Mind Into Thinking You’re Procrastinating

As the saying goes, writers write. But I think there’s a more complete version of this saying which is more accurate. Writers write. . . except when they’re procrastinating.

Procrastination is the bane of a writer’s existence. Because procrastination leads to guilt and a sense of time pressure (because what writer ever thinks they’ve written enough?), it’s a main source of writer’s block.

What is one of the most common ways for writers to procrastinate? Since we tend to feel guilty when we should be writing but aren’t, we do things that could be considered writing related, despite the fact they aren’t getting us anywhere. How? Why Google of course.

We tell ourselves we’re looking for new topics to write about, that our hours spent googling are actually part of our writing work. It doesn’t matter that we might start out googling a possible writing topic, but end up seeing something that leads to something else, that leads to something else, that leads to something else until we find ourselves looking for hot deals on Amazon. We still convince ourselves it’s all writing related, despite not having anything new that we’ve composed by the end of the day, our only accomplishment being buying a new fangled dog bowl or seasonal dish towels.

You can leverage this type of procrastination with a bit of bait and switch. Writing is fun, at least until we start thinking about it as a job. Work is not supposed to be just thoughtless fun like Netflix, watching cute panda videos on Youtube or Googling hidden Easter Eggs. If we can convince ourselves that the search activities we’re carrying out are still procrastination dressed up like work, we can actually get some work done and not have it feel like work.

Figure Out What to Write About Without Getting Lost Googling

The fact that we get lost googling instead of writing is also because our searches often aren’t fruitful in terms of coming up with great topics to write about. We typically look for something that ideally will go viral, but most of us don’t find one of those topics or even if we do we aren’t likely to find a second one.

Here’s one of the easiest ways I’ve found to figure out what to write about with a quick search. Find an area that is of interest to a lot of people. That’s not so hard, right? You can look at your own articles to see what you’ve written that was the most popular with readers. I look at the overall number of reads, and the read ratios and to a lesser extent, the fans and claps.

TIP: You can easily order your statistics by clicking on the column heading at the top. Click once and they’ll be put in decreasing order. Click again and they’ll be reversed.

Once you decide on a topic, use a tool like Buzz Sumo to come up with a list of ideas by entering the topic area into the search bar. Now, here’s the simple trick, ready?

See what’s the first thing to get your attention and click on it. Now you have a long list of topics. Read through and again see what you just can’t resist clicking on. You now have a topic to write about. If it is that interesting to you, chances are good it’s interesting to others as well.

Whenever I have used this method, I’ve come up with an idea in less than 10 minutes which I was enthusiastic about writing up. They might not have all gone viral, but they were consistently among my most popular articles and the ones that received the greatest amount of reader engagement.

And instead of fooling myself into believing I’m working when I’m really procrastinating, fooling myself into thinking I’m procrastinating when I’m actually working keeps things entertaining and I avoid all the frustration. Best of all, it gets my entire psyche on board.

My id, who typically yells, “But I don’t wanna work, I want to watch Peaky Blinders and play Candy Crush! I want to do searches on scary roller coasters and over the water bungalows in the Maldives!” is happy.

My superego, who generally responds to this with, “Shut up and stop acting like a lazy brat! You have to be responsible and work!” is happy.

And my ego, who is of course, in on the whole thing, telling my id it can procrastinate by searching Google *wink, wink* , and my superego that the searches are actually work related, *wink, wink*, is happiest of all.

Fool me once. . . good for me. Fool me more. . . even better. As long as I keep getting good writing out of it, you can fool me all day long!

Natalie Frank has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and often writes about how to create a more satisfying and successful writing life. Her collection of poetry, Disguised I Breathe, In Love I Hold, can be found on Amazon under her pen name, Taye Carrol.

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