Procrastination can take many forms, as I’m sure you know. Some are based on the role you take as you avoid (the Ditherer, the Cleaner); others vary with the beliefs you hold (“I can’t do it.” “I’ve already done that.”). My recent favorite is yet another variation, waiting for the perfect space/time. Probably our Neolithic artist ancestors did the same, creating elaborate fire rituals and tribal calendars, putting off starting a big petroglyph until they could finish it in one glorious long weekend (once they’d invented weekends, of course).

This idea of the perfect creative experience has long floated in the minds of artists. It’s archetypal and I suspect is based on the universal human experience of love and making love. We want to be “carried away” and when that romantic longing comes into our creative work, we may well reject chances to have less perfect encounters. Think about couples with children who postpone lovemaking until that get-away weekend, the one which may not arrive.

Artists have their own benchmarks for their own perfect getaway weekend. Some go on workshops, classes, and retreats to side-step, for a time, this kind of procrastination. Other artists have adapted to their realities (having to care for kids, aging parents or spouse, day jobs) by creating a rhythm of short work sessions. They know their work will be interrupted and accept this. Some  have a rhythm of long, but not so frequent work sessions (every other weekend, the last week of the month). They either have schedules that they feel leave them no other choice or have such discomfort with the work being interrupted (creatus interruptus?) that they risk long periods of not creating. It is so painful for them to not carry through with the creative energy, that they just won’t go to the studio for two-hour work sessions. (Okay, so this is back to love and sex again, but remember that I’m a recovering psychologist.)

I leave it to you. Check the boxes below to see if your procrastination has this particular style:
□ Once I start creative work, I hate to stop.
□ I have missed meals to keep on working
□ I have forgotten appointments and kept on working.
□ I have worked through the night.
□ The longer I think a piece will take, the more I procrastinate.
□ I’m waiting until all my obligations to others are over until I start creating.

Now you might say that last one is just silly. Or maybe it’s the best motivation there is to make changes so you can more fully inhabit your artist’s life.
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II. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room and the Shrink’s Couch
Amen, Daniel G. Healing ADD: The Breakthrough Program That Allows You to See and Heal the 6 Types of ADD. 2001.  
I’ve written before* about the common versions of attention deficit disorder (ADD) which include difficulty with focusing and follow-through. There’s a magazine (ADDitude) as well as books** that are chock full of hints for managing distractions; many artists find them useful without having any ADD diagnosis.

There’s another form of ADD which I call the “sticky type. Daniel Amen, who is admittedly controversial in general, proposes this type of ADD that is actually hyper-focusing and its hallmark is difficulty in ending tasks. In reading about this “overfocused” type, I realized that much of my procrastination wasn’t about getting to the next thing, it was the difficulty wrapping up the current thing (as I write this, I’m postponing breakfast!).

It is hard to discriminate this stickiness from the times you keep working because you’re carried away by all the possibilities. Here we’re into pure excitement, a cousin to various forms of bipolar (formerly manic-depressive) chemistry. Again without diagnosing yourself, books can help with ideas to manage these bursts of energy.***  What artist has not gotten a little high when the work is going well?

Both patterns – stickiness of attention to finish a piece and exciting energy to keep following new possibilities – paradoxically can feed back to your particular style of procrastination. If making art is not fun for you without one of these, then you may be avoiding your work until you have a big enough chunk of time to “get into it.”
* April 2005 Newsletter: http://www.dianereardon.com/nlarch4-05.htm
**Halllowell, Edward M. & Ratey, John J. Delivered from Distraction. 2005.
*** Jamison, Kay Redfield. Exuberance:The Passion for Life. 2005. 
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III. Friends in Print: When you feel like reading
Freeman-Zachary, Rice. The Creative Life: Ideas and Inspiration from Working Artists. 2007.
Freeman-Zachary has gathered the thoughts of 15 artists who create on a regular basis. In the “Getting Started” chapter, the ways these full-time working artists have made friends with procrastination “are as many . . .as there are artists.” For them, it’s not procrastination about working, but recognizing that different ideas have different life-spans from the initial spark to a final working out. In this sense, it’s not procrastination but percolating. Individuals range from those who need to start ideas soon, before “time tends to make them stale and flat,” (artist Scott Radke) to those that percolate more (“. . sometimes I take more than a year before I make something that’s in my sketchbook,”  artist Bean Gilsdorf). Enjoy this chapter as well as the whole of this visually delightful guide for all phases of your creative work.
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