The Procrastinator's Guide to Getting Nothing Done
A Step-by-Step Guide for Maximum Counterproductivity
Writer’s block is the bane of every procrastinator. But with a little planning, you can overcome it with ease. The solution is simple: if you want to write, you have to have a routine. Creative writing, and all productivity, is based on preparedness. Here I share with you how I structure my morning routine to do just that.
5:00 am: Get out of bed. Well, don’t immediately get out of bed. Productivity hack for you: if you place your phone by your nightstand you can check your messages even before you get out of bed. That way, you’re ready to go by the time your feet hit the floor. Let’s see, wait, how the hell did I get on some of these mailing lists. A clear inbox is a clear mind, time to unsubscribe from some junk mail and then I can start the day.
5:27 am: Actually get out of bed. I always start my day with the SAVERS technique from Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning. That stands for Silence, Affirmations, V... — shit, what does V stand for. Hold on, I can’t remember. Let me google that. Visualizations. That’s it. I should watch a youtube video on that now to refresh.
5:47 am: Meditate. That’s my version of S from savers. Guided mediation is a great way to clear the mind of distraction, and there are few youtube videos I can recommend for that. Wait, Gaffigan posted another video. Oh, this shit is hilarious. Wait — what was I doing?
6:12 am: Time to write. I like to start my day with freewriting. There are a lot of ways you can do this. Morning Pages is one technique where you just let yourself write freely — or do you start with a goal and then follow it freely. I always have trouble with this, but no worries. I read a good article on that once, I’m sure I can find it again. I’ll be right back.
6:36 am: That was a great, really inspirational article. I even got 4 minutes of freewriting in there at the end. But now I have a good idea, and when you have that, it’s time to focus. I know many recommend that you turn off your inner critic and let yourself flow, but let’s be real here. We want to produce quality content, and to do that, every sentence needs to be right the first time.
6:52 am: I’m off to a great start. I really know where I’m going with this piece now. No, I haven’t written any of it yet, but you can’t rush art. You have to have your premise well defined before you even begin, and I’m working on that. You might be thinking, “didn’t he define that in his freewriting?” Yes, but that was just a rough draft. I started with a funny, introspective concept about the difficulty of trying to eat out with your kids, but I realized what I really have is a statement about society and our urge to fit in.
6:53 am: Oh my god, what is my cat doing. I should record this, this is hilarious. This would be a great post mixing multimedia and commentary. Let me get my phone. Wait, no, come back here. Do that gain. No, I’m not trying to pet you now — ok, fine, sit on my lap while I write. What was I writing again?
6:55 am: This piece on American politics is going great, but it needs more research. I like to use LLMs like Gemini for that. They can really help accelerate the path to gathering data, summarizing it, and getting to the important concepts. No, Gemini, I’m not asking about a current election, stop censoring you responses. Don’t worry, I can get around this by getting the prompt right.
6:59 am: Ok, that article on prompting was great, and now I’m ready to use gemini to research my article on cancel culture and how people are afraid to even help you research anything controversial these days. Crap, what’s that sound?
7:00 am: That was my kid’s alarm clock. Time’s up. But I’ve had a really productive morning and am ready to pick this up tomorrow. What was my premise again?