One of my coaching clients reached out to me this week regarding a task that she and I had discussed at length during a session a couple months ago, and she confessed to me that she hadn’t done it yet. What’s more, she wasn’t really sure why she hadn’t done it. There wasn’t anything stopping her or getting in her way. She told me, “I’m just not doing it, and I know I have to.”

Have you been there? Have you felt paralyzed in the face of something you know you need to do in your creative business, but just can’t get it done for some reason? Have you found yourself procrastinating on tasks that need to get done, and not really knowing why you’re procrastinating, or how to stop that procrastinating? I know I have. I know this coaching client is definitely not alone, and neither are you! Today, let’s figure out together how to say goodbye to procrastination.

--

Hello, thriving artists, and welcome to Episode 53 of the Starving Artist No More podcast! I’m so excited that you’re here with me today to talk about how to address the tasks in your artistic business that you just can’t seem to make yourself do.

Before we dive too deep into that conversation, I do want to let you know about a coaching program I offer, the Thriving Artists Academy, that might actually be able to help you with any procrastination tendencies you have. I know that sometimes, for me, part of the reason I procrastinate on tasks in my business is because I don’t have the accountability of a boss or manager looking over my shoulder and making sure I get the thing done. And so I’ve found great value in making sure that I am accountable to others in the areas within my business where I tend to leave things undone, but where getting the things done is really important.

That’s where the Thriving Artists Academy might be able to help you. This online community is all about accountability and learning together. Every week in the academy, we all share what I call our MITs, or Most Important Things. We each identify what three tasks are our biggest, most important tasks for the coming week, and we share our strategies for getting those tasks accomplished in the next seven days. We offer each other support, advice, and encouragement as we put those strategies into action. This accountability aspect of the Thriving Artists Academy has been a huge help to me, even though I’m the (quote-unquote) leader of the community! I sometimes struggle with getting things done, just like you, and I created the Academy to provide accountability because I knew that I need it just as much as you do.

Of course, the Thriving Artists Academy has a lot more to offer than just weekly accountability check-ins. We also have classes on topics like developing a marketing plan and system for your creative business, how to handle your business finances, determining when to say yes to a project and when to pass, how to negotiate your project contracts. We read books about art and business together in a book club. We have real-time group coaching sessions. We share our struggles and problem-solve together. It’s a wonderfully supportive community, and it’s a coaching program that I am proud to offer.

If you’d like more information about the Thriving Artists Academy and how you can join, you can get all the details on my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com. And if you have any questions about the Academy and what’s included in your membership, just reach out and let me know. You can do that via my website as well. Again, that web address is www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com.

Now let’s turn to the main topic of today’s episode: kicking procrastination to the curb. Getting accountability for the tasks that you tend to procrastinate, like I just talked about in relation to the Thriving Artists Academy, is a huge help. But there’s more to it than that.

Procrastination doesn’t come out of nowhere. If you’re delaying on something that you both want to do and that you know you need to do for the good of your art and the health of your business, then there’s more going on than just simple procrastination. Something deeper is getting in the way. In short, there’s something in your mindset that’s keeping you from acting in this area in the way that you want to. Your mindset is getting in the way.

When our mindset is holding us back, when it’s more than just being busy and getting distracted by other things, just telling ourselves to “do the thing” isn’t going to help. Self-recrimination isn’t going to help. We have to figure out why we’re delaying, what’s keeping us from doing the thing and crossing the task off our to-do list. We have to address the mindset block.

Sometimes, when I find myself putting a task off, and putting it off, and putting it off, and coming up with excuses to not get it done, what I end up realizing when I do this mindset work is that this task isn’t actually that important to me at all. If it's just that other things keep coming up as "more important and urgent," then maybe this is not actually something you need to do. Maybe letting go of the task is what actually needs to happen.

That descriptor that I just used, of a task as “important and urgent,” comes from US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was actually quoting the president of Northwestern University Dr. J. Roscoe Miller, when he said, “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”

Productivity coaches have used this statement to develop something called the Eisenhower Matrix, which I’ve talked about before on this podcast. It’s a four-box matrix where you can rank your tasks based on how important they are (or not), and how urgent they are (or not).

When I plan my work for the week, that Eisenhower matrix is always in the back of my mind. I’m thinking of each task in terms of how important it is – what impact it will have in the long term – and in terms of how urgent it is – what is the due date? Sometimes a task that isn’t very important is actually quite urgent. And then there are those tasks that are obviously both important and urgent. They have to get done right away, or they have to be completed on a set timeline, and they have a large long term impact.

Filling out a form that is due on Friday is definitely an urgent task for the week, but depending on what the form is for, it might not have much of a long term impact, meaning it’s not actually very important. But it does need to get done, it is urgent, and  so I’ll make time for it.

On the other end of the spectrum, maybe it’s something that isn’t due for a while, or maybe doesn’t even have any due date at all other than self-imposed deadlines, but it’s something that is hugely important to you with an enormous long term impact. As an example, I’m presenting a retreat for audiobook narrators this August in Cincinnati. This podcast is coming out the last day of April, so I still have almost 4 months to get stuff done that is retreat-related. The tasks on my to-do list for the retreat aren’t really urgent yet. However, and this is a big one, this retreat is hugely important to me, and it’s an enormous task. If I leave it to the last minute, it’s not going to be the wonderful experience that I want it to be for all involved. Tasks related to the Thriving Narrators Retreat may not be urgent for me right now, in April, but they are definitely important.

And then there are the tasks that fit both categories: it is important, meaning it has a long term impact on my work, my business, and on my life; and it is urgent, meaning it has deadlines that are coming up soon and I need to get it done. The most obvious tasks that fit this category for me, and for many of the artists I work with, are the tasks directly related to the creative work that they do.

Recording audiobooks is my primary creative medium. It’s where the vast majority of my income comes from. It’s a time-consuming activity, and so it’s also what I do for most of each workday. This work is most definitely urgent – my audiobook projects all have very set due dates, and my collaborators on the audiobook are relying on me to get the work done when I say I’m going to get it done.

And it is also very important – the audiobooks that I record are the work I’m putting out into the world. Each audiobook I narrate is a finished product I can use to market my services to new-to-me authors and casting directors. The importance of this creative work for me truly cannot be overstated. And because this work is both important and urgent, it is always given the highest priority in my scheduling. “Record” is almost always at the top of my list of things to do. In fact, I joke with the artists in the Thriving Artists Academy that “record” is always going to be one of my three MITs – most important things – every week! Doing my creative work is both important and urgent.

But it’s not only my creative work that checks both boxes. Plenty of business admin tasks fit that category, too. Staying current on my business financial tasks absolutely is both important and urgent. Having well-managed finances is one of the six components of a thriving creative business, which I talked about back in Episode 16, and part of having well-managed finances is making sure that my financial recordkeeping is up to par, that my bank accounts are balanced, my bills are paid, and my invoices are sent. Those are all things that must be done on a timeline – they’re urgent – and they have a huge long term impact on the health of my business – they’re important.

Think about the task that is bogging you down, the thing that you’re putting off and just not getting done, the thing that you, as my coaching client put it, “know you need to do but just aren’t doing.”

Examine the task more carefully. Take the time to evaluate your mindset about the situation and about what’s causing you to not get the task done. What is holding you back?

One possibility is that it’s a task that doesn’t really matter all that much. If you do that thought work and realize that the thing that you’re putting off is neither important nor urgent, then let it go. It’s either something that you can pass off to someone else by delegating it, or it can just go undone altogether. There are plenty of tasks that might be nice-to-have, in a way, but that won’t really have any impact at all on anything that matters if they’re not done. Just let them go.

But personally, I find that the tasks I tend to procrastinate and put off are the ones that are important but not urgent.  In truth, for me, they’re tasks that I just haven’t made time for. This is the biggest reason that I personally procrastinate on things. Yes, they’re important, but they’re not due for a while, or they aren’t really due at any specific time other than the time I’ve set forth in my own personal goals and business strategy. They are important, but they’re not urgent.

The way I get out of the procrastination loop for those tasks myself is to make them urgent. First, I make myself accountable to someone else to get them done, as I mentioned in the opening of this episode as I was talking about the accountability aspect of the Thriving Artists Academy. I make sure that other people know that this is something that matters to me and that I’m going to get it done.

And then I make it urgent. I set aside time for it on my calendar, time that I can use for that task only, and for nothing other than that task. I treat that appointment with the task as if it were an appointment with another person, as a calendar appointment that can’t be moved or ignored. I make it urgent for myself by setting aside the set time to get it done, and not letting anything else get in the way.

That’s what I’m doing with the tasks related to the Thriving Narrators Retreat. Like I said, these are tasks that are vitally important to making the retreat the wonderful experience that I want it to be. My vision for the retreat can’t happen if I don’t do the planning work now. But the tasks are also not very urgent. The retreat is at the end of August, the 22^nd through the 25^th. This podcast episode is releasing on the last day of April. I’ve got nearly four months before the retreat gets here! I have time! These tasks are the epitome of important but not urgent.

So I have made the tasks urgent as well. Actually, after I finish recording this podcast episode, I have two hours set aside, blocked off on my calendar, to work on the various retreat-related tasks. And I’m not going to allow myself to break that appointment. That appointment is sacred and not to be missed, just as if it were a coaching meeting with a client, or an appointment scheduled with my own coach, or a call scheduled with an artistic collaborator to make plans for an upcoming project. And because I am making these important tasks urgent for myself, I know they’ll get done. I’ve sidestepped my own tendency to delay things that are important but not urgent by making them urgent.

But I know that’s not the only reason artists procrastinate on tasks. Frankly, it’s not the only reason I procrastinate on tasks. Sometimes something truly is urgent and important, and it still doesn’t get done. What do you do in those situations?

This is where you really need to do some deep mindset thinking. If you’re continually making excuses and doing other things instead of doing the thing you know you need to do, there’s an untrue story that you’re telling yourself. Before you tackle this task, you need to first adjust the story you’re telling yourself that’s keeping you from being able to do thing.

One of my favorite TED talks is given by therapist Lori Gottlieb, and I’ll link her talk in the show notes. I highly encourage you to take the time to watch it, because she relates it better than I ever could. But as a brief synopsis, in her TED talk, Gottlieb talks about a letter she received from a wife, asking for advice relating to a situation with her husband. And the wife has come up with a whole story about why this situation happened, about what’s really going on. This is a story that could entirely be true but that also is specific to the wife’s perspective and her lived experiences and her interpretation of what has happened. In short, the wife thinks her husband is having an affair. Gottlieb then describes a totally different story about what’s happening, this time from the husband’s point of view, and this description of the situation is an equally plausible and equally understandable explanation for what happened, and in that description, he’s not having an affair but rather is searching for a way to connect with his wife. Both stories are based on the same set of facts, but they’re different ways of looking at the situation.

If you’re feeling stuck and unable to do the thing you know you need to do, perhaps you need to edit the story you’re telling yourself. Examine your internal monologue, and adjust the story. Look at the situation from a new point of view.

Perhaps you’re scared of failing at the thing that you need to do. I talked about this particular mindset-block-slash-procrastination-cause all the way back in Episode 15. This episode is all about the power of asking yourself the “what if” question: what if I did that thing? What if that task was marked completed? What if I do the thing and it’s a huge success? What then?

If any little bit of fear enters your mind as you think about doing the task that is currently haunting you, first, I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode, but then I encourage you ask yourself: “what if?”

Sometimes I find that it’s not the task itself that we’re avoiding; it’s what comes after. We’re maybe afraid that if we do the thing, we’ll be a horrible failure, and everyone will laugh at us. Or we’re afraid that we’ll succeed and get what we wanted, but then we won’t be able to handle the workload or that everyone will find out we’re a fraud (hello, Imposter Syndrome, nice to see you again). Or we’re just simply afraid of the unknown, because we know that doing the thing will change things, but we can’t see around the bend to understand what that change will look like.

If you do the thing that you’re currently procrastinating on, what would be different? What difference would it make? If you could give it a try, would it change anything? If that strategy did work, what then? What would follow from the success of that strategy? Answer those long term questions for yourself, and you’ll find your path forward to complete the task in the short term. Edit the story you’re telling yourself, and frame the situation as one that is solvable for you.

If what’s really holding you back and causing you to procrastinate is fear of the “what comes after,” then worrying about the task is actually worrying about the wrong thing. It’s not until you address your feelings about the “after” that you’ll be able to make plans to do the task that must come first.

For other artists that I’ve worked with, sometimes the delays and procrastination come from another source: they’re waiting until they “feel like” doing the task. And this is a seductive trap, because it is actually an important thing to consider in many cases. When we have the right amount of mental and physical energy that a specific task requires, then that task will absolutely go more smoothly! This is why I record in the mornings and early afternoons as part of how I’ve set up my daily habits. I am most able to focus and get into the recording flow during those hours of the day, and I know this about myself, and so I reserve that time for getting my butt in the booth and doing my creative audiobook work. I know that on Friday afternoons, I’m not going to feel like recording, so instead, I set that time aside for my admin tasks that take less emotional energy.

But if this is an important and urgent task that you are just not getting done, waiting until you feel like doing the thing is a recipe for further procrastination. The fact that you haven’t already done it is a sign that you likely won’t ever have the perfect moment where you both feel like doing the thing and have the time to do it right then. Instead, recognize that if you set aside the time and then do the thing, the feeling that you’re looking for will follow.

The clearest example of this that I’ve experienced was actually with an actor I was coaching. This actor used a bullet journal to manage her tasks, which is actually what I myself use. I love my bullet journal and find that method incredibly helpful! But for this artist, doing her bullet journal work, keeping the tasks up to date, and managing her notes and records in her journal, was something she just kept putting off. And the longer she put it off, the more catch-up work she felt like she would have to do, so it felt that much more overwhelming to think about tackling the task, and she just didn’t do it. When we talked about it, she shared with me that she wanted to do the bullet journal task management work at a time when she felt calm and comfortable, because that would be the time that she would feel able to tackle the problem. She was waiting to feel like doing the task.

But she and I talked through it together, and she realized that, every time she had worked on her bullet journal in the past, she finished that work with a feeling of calm and comfort. She didn’t start with that feeling; the act of doing the work caused that feeling. She was waiting until she “felt like” doing the thing she knew she needed to do, when in reality, doing that thing would give her the very feeling she was waiting for.

Don’t wait until you “feel like” doing the thing. Trust that if you schedule it, and if you create accountability around the task, and if you edit any untrue stories that are holding you back, the feeling will come.

You can do the thing you’re procrastinating right now, and it will feel glorious when you do.

--

Thank you for being with me today for this episode of the Starving Artist No More podcast. I know how valuable time is to artist business owners, and I will never take it for granted that you choose to spend time with me, listening to this podcast. Thank you. If you enjoyed today’s episode, then you should subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode! And, I would so appreciate if you could leave me a rating or review in your podcast player. Especially ratings and reviews left in Apple Podcasts and Spotify are incredibly helpful to me, as they help new listeners find this little corner of the podcast world. And, of course, if you have an artist friend or colleague who you think might benefit from this episode, or any episode, of this podcast, please share it with them! Sharing is caring! If you have any questions for me, if you’re interested in learning about what it looks like to work with me, if you have questions about the Thriving Artists Academy or about the Thriving Narrators Retreat that’s happening in August 2024, if you have topic suggestions for future podcast episodes – any of that! – I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me via my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com. And finally, a huge shout of gratitude goes to Arturo Araya for doing the audio engineering work on this podcast so that you can listen to me each week.

Whatever task is haunting you right now, whatever to-do item is just languishing on your to-do list week after week and that feels like it’s taunting you as it remains undone, whatever that task is and however big and immoveable it feels to you right now, you can say goodbye to procrastination on that task. You can get it done. Evaluate your mindset. Figure out why you feel paralyzed to do the thing that you know you need to do. And develop a strategy for getting it done. Perhaps you just need to make it urgent by scheduling it for yourself. Maybe you need to do a bit more deep mindset work, editing the stories you’re telling yourself around that task. Or maybe you need to trust that, even if you don’t feel like doing it, the feeling you’re looking for will come as a result of doing the thing. And through it all, get accountability. Tell others that you’re going to do the thing so that you can enjoy their support and encouragement along the way. Procrastination doesn’t have to hold you back. You can find a way through. You can do this. I can’t wait to see what you create.