Why Am I Procrastinating?

Why Am I Procrastinating? I want to start today’s podcast with a personal story, something that happened to me early in my writing career. I had just sold my first screenplay, which meant I got to do the thing that everybody dreams of doing, the thing that I had always dreamed of doing. I got to leave my job and I got to devote every hour of every day to the thing that really mattered to me. I got to spend every moment being a writer.  And I was primed for success. I was ready to create, and create, and create and write screenplay after screenplay. I was filled with passion and excitement and I felt like the dream was finally coming true. And what came instead of the dream that I had planned was months of the most intense writer’s block and procrastination that I have ever experienced.  What followed was three months in which I accomplished pretty much nothing. And what followed was emotionally probably the hardest three months in my career. I was very lucky.  My dear friend and writing partner, John Wierick, drove down to Venice Beach, took me for a walk on the beach and he said, “Jake, I’m worried about my friend.”  And I said, “You know, I am really struggling. Every idea that I write is not as good as the one I just sold. I start something and then I abandon it. And lately, I am not even starting at all... And I am not having fun procrastinating, I am not flying to Tahiti or going for a walk or working out or painting or playing my guitar or doing anything that gives me joy.  I’m sitting in front of my computer just staring and not writing or I’m reading the Hollywood Reporter or the Daily Variety cover to cover or I’m playing that stupid MineHunter game” (if you remember 20 years ago that crappy little game you’d play on your computer where you clicked on little boxes on a grid and tried not to get blown up by mines) “this is what I’m doing with my days and I’m miserable. But somehow, I can’t seem to find any time to write, even though I have all the time in the world.” And it was John Wierick who pulled me out of that tailspin with some very powerful advice.  He said, “Jake, it doesn’t matter which idea you choose. It doesn’t matter if the idea is good or bad. And it doesn’t matter if it is the right one or if the script is any good at all.”  He said, “You have to choose an idea today and you have to start writing it today and you have to finish it and you can worry about making it good later.” And that was some of the best advice I ever got as a writer and it was the first step of pulling me out of a very, very dark time and really saving my career.  And so, I want to do for you today what John Wierick did for me early in my career. Because, for many writers in our community, we’ve, in a different way, just experienced what I experienced all those years ago. Our lives suddenly and irrevocably changed. And we found ourselves suddenly with this strange thing that we’ve never had before called time. And I’m hearing from so many writers their frustration with themselves, feeling like “I have all this time but I’m not doing anything with it. I have all this time but I’m still stuck. I have all this time but I’m watching Tiger King and checking Facebook instead of doing something that matters. I have all this time but I feel lazy and scared and I can’t seem to get myself focused on anything. I have all this time but all my ideas seem so unimportant in light of what’s actually happening out in the world.” “I have all this time, but somehow, I don’t seem to have any time.” And so, I want to tell you how I was able to pull myself out of my writer’s block.  With the benefit of some good 2020 hindsight, I want to talk to you about what actually causes writer’s block and procrastination.  I want to talk about why you're doing it, and some very concrete steps you can take today to pull yourself out of it. Because, months from now, our world will go back to normal. But our lives will never be exactly the same. Our lives will be changed by this period. And there will come a time where we are back at our jobs, and our economy is an economy again, and people can move and communicate.  And we will look back at this time and some of us will say, “This was the time that actually refocused my whole life, that actually pointed me back towards the things that really matter to me.”  And others of us will look back at this time with sadness and regret saying, “I had all this time, but I was distracted. I had all this time, but I was scared. I had all this time and somehow I ended up right back where I started.” And I know that feeling well, because, for years I beat myself up over those three missing months. For years I beat myself up over that missed opportunity right at the hottest of my career. Procrastination doesn’t come from laziness. Writer’s block doesn’t come from laziness. And if you're one of those people who believe there is no such thing as writer’s block (because I always get some emails about that after I do a writer’s block podcast), I want to share that I used to believe there was no such thing as writer’s block either! I was never blocked as a writer.  In fact, I considered it a gift when I got to write, because most of the time I was stealing time to write. I was stealing time between work. I was stealing an extra hour here, an extra 10 minutes here, an extra moment here. My writing time was precious and valued, and I got it done even though I didn’t have any time.  And then oddly, when I had all the time in the world, it suddenly seemed like I had no time.  It suddenly seemed like I became a different person—a lazy person, an undisciplined person, a sad person, a person who didn’t have anything to say. So, writer’s block does exist, but it doesn’t exist for the reasons that you think. And the things that trigger it are probably different than the things you're imagining.  Most writers who have writer’s block beat themselves up in a couple of different ways. They beat themselves up by saying, “Well, I guess I don’t really want it. If I really wanted it, I wouldn’t be sitting here looking  at Facebook., I would be actually writing... I guess I don’t want it.” Or they beat themselves up by saying, “Well, I guess I’m just not good enough. If I were good enough, I would be like all those other writers, writing,” or “I guess I just can’t get into the flow,” or “I guess I don’t have anything to say,” or, “I guess I’m undisciplined. I just can’t stick to it.”  And these things we say to punish ourselves are never the truth.  Being a successful writer has absolutely nothing to do with discipline.  I’m not a disciplined person, and, in fact, when someone tries to discipline me or when I try to discipline myself, I find that I rebel against that discipline.  And most artists are rebels. Most of us will rebel against discipline. There is a huge difference between discipline, which is some internal voice or external voice saying, “You have to do this,” and passion, which is some internal voice saying, “I want to do this. I choose to do this.” The challenge is, our passions are passionate. They are not controlled. They are not “safe” emotions that drive our passion. They are powerful emotions. And if we don’t have some kind of infrastructure to pour all of that passion into, the passion itself can actually undo us.  The passion itself, the desire to be great, can actually undo our ability just to sit down and write. I want to paint a metaphor for you. If you imagine a desert, a barren desert, this is how a lot of us feel about our writing lives.  We feel like our writing lives, our creative lives, are a desert. It just never rains. We wish it would rain one day. We imagine a day where it could just rain and rain and rain and just fill us with all that creative nourishment. But our actual lives feel like a desert. We dream, “I’m going to rent a cabin for a week and just disappear into the wilderness.” We dream, “I’m going to write my whole script this weekend.”  We dream of the time that giant rainstorm of passionate creativity that’s going to turn our desert into a wonderful rainforest.  But if you actually go to the desert in the rain, you’ll notice that when that kind of torrential downpour comes, it can be actually very destructive. When we get so much rain and there is nowhere for it to flow to, we get violent flash floods.  But, oddly, on the other side of those flashfloods, the rain doesn’t get diverted into a reservoir or suddenly lead to trees and flowers blooming. The rain disappears back into the sand and we’re back in a desert again. This is the experience of a lot of writers who wait for that inspiration to come:  Whoosh! There is all the inspiration… and then it is gone. Oh! The screenwriting gods spoke to me! the Muse took me! But now I have to rewrite it... and then it is gone. I’m halfway through... and then it is gone. I’m back in a desert again. Waiting for that flash flood is part of the problem that causes writer’s block. Waiting for the time when the time is right, is part of the problem that causes procrastination.  Waiting for the time where you have enough time, or more time, or just the right amount of time, or when the kids grow up, or when the kids are born, or before I have kids, or when I graduate from this, or when I finish that, or when I get through this project, or when I’m less scared, or when I have more money, or when money is not important anymore…  All of these are just reasons we create to put off our passion.  In our dreams of hitting the lottery and getting that big rainstorm of money, or selling a script and quitting our jobs, we’re longing for that big rainstorm that changes our lives. And what we have to actually accept is that that big rainstorm is not what changes our lives.  What that big rainstorm will do is come and shake up your li