Procrastination/Projects

HappyMondays

Hello all, hope you are well.

I'm writing because, as a songwriter who lives off my art, I find I can easily feel discouraged, depressed, and unable to simply dig in and START. I have alot of work to finish songwriting-wise, lyrics, arranging, etc, and yet I feel slow as molasses to get to this work, reluctant, scared to encounter something I don't like, something I'm not happy with, or feel sub-par, not good enough.

I used to deal with writer's block in this vein, and have since made some improvements, but my life being what it is, I've needed to begin meditating. And so it has been many months now that I meditate.

I wondering if anyone has encountered procrastination, laziness, sleepiness, and an unwillingness to transcend their comfort zone at the moment in order to create? I feel like all the answers can be found in Buddhism somewhere, and at some point in meditation and study, but I gotta roll NOW!

Thank you all,

Much love.

Tim

Tanda

This must be the experience of several people. Don't know why I do not stick to yoga discipline when I fully appreciate yoga. Similar situation when starting a new course of meditation. Some times I compare it to smokers resolve. but just don't have an answer. Life is slipping by.

fivebells

@HappyMondays: Yes, I struggle with this all the time. I felt like I was making excellent progrees on it, but the I had to go back to Australia and deal with the fallout from Mum's death. I'm back now, and it'll be interesting to see how it goes.

The trick has been to make the work part of the meditation. It can't be a replacement for formal meditation. It has to be an adjunct. Commit to start working and then when the urge to stop, sleepiness, despair, etc. come up, open to the experience and rest. Don't indulge any of the usual escapist reactions like the various forms of procrastination. Then when the disturbance passes, return to the work.

This leads to some quite intense and unpleasant emotional reactions (there has to be some fairly intense unpleasantness driving such an expensive avoidance pattern) and training to rest in these experiences has taken quite a while. It's not a quick fix, I'm afraid. But the very sense of urgency you're experiencing is probably contributing to the unpleasantness you're trying to avoid, if my experience is anything to go by. And it may well prove to be spurious.

Ric

It might help to change where you work, go somewhere else thats different. Doing work at a coffeshop is good because you are around other people and you wont just given to laziness so quickly.

Also keeping the purpose of all this work in mind can be helpful. Remind yourself why you want to do this and what you expect to get out of it.

One interesting idea ive always held on to (which doesnt always help me get motivated to work) is that we always expect the feeling to arrive before we do something but the feeling always comes in the end, after we are done.