Can procrastination be progress?
Forget four letter words, for a working screenwriter, these five syllables make up the worst word in the English language. But must "procrastination" always be so bad?
The word “procrastination” has been an active part of my vocabulary since a very young age. That’s because my way of working since childhood has always been: leave it to the very last second, use the adrenaline of possibly not getting it done to get it done, hand it in under the wire. Truthfully, I get a wild rush from actually pulling it off. Some people get off on hard drugs. I get off on hard deadlines.
While I very much enjoy the thrill of sending out work at 11:59pm, the long part leading up to that is actually quite fraught. I’m constantly feeling guilty for not doing something I know I should be. I can’t fully enjoy anything else during this time because of that very guilt.
Sometimes it manifests as: “I won’t allow myself to watch a show or movie tonight because I should be writing”. What happens instead is I end up scrolling mindlessly, neither doing the important research of watching films or TV nor actually getting any writing done. The guilt at the end of the night is heavy and there are lots of grand promises to myself about how tomorrow will be different.
It’s taken decades of work (and a paycheque at the other end) to get me to slowly and painfully change my working habits. Now, for the most part, I work on my scripts well in advance so I avoid the mad scramble the night before the deadline. Not only is this good for my sanity, it also ensures I’m handing in my highest quality work.
Procrastination, which often has connotations of laziness and apathy, is always considered bad. From my personal struggles as a writer, it was always something to be avoided and ashamed of and wrestled with. The opposite of progress.
Lately, I’ve been grappling more than usual to get the third draft of the outline I’m working on finished. And that is despite my proven method of outlining. This is my fourth commissioned TV movie and it’s one I’m super excited about. Usually, my interest in a project is the key to keeping the procrastination off my back. So what is happening with this outline? I’m interested in the story. I’m invested in its success. Why am I doom-scrolling and stripping paint off the window frames?
This conundrum has caused me to really lean into the feelings behind the procrastination this time around to figure out why this is suddenly happening to me when I’ve had a pretty good handle on this pathology for years. What is it about this particular outline that feels different than the others that gave me no trouble at all?
It turns out I’ve discovered a new kind of procrastination, at least for myself and my process. While procrastination is the active putting off of something that needs to be done, this new type is a putting off because I’m stuck. My brain hasn’t fully decoded what this script will look like. For lack of a better term, I will call it: “I can’t write because the story is still running in the background”.
I recently posted a note on Substack where I said my brain sometimes feels like a 1950s computer. One of those ones that took up a whole room and needed days to calculate a solution to a simple equation. Eventually, it would spit out a piece of ticker tape with the correct answer. When I’m stuck on a story, procrastination is actually just a form of processing.
Thinking of my brain in this way has helped me realize that, after so many years of workarounds and rewiring, the procrastination I’m experiencing now is just my brain telling me that the “story” tab is not finished loading. It needs more processing time before I can get back to writing. Giving myself that grace and understanding has taken away at least some of the guilt I usually feel when I’m having a hard time getting it done.
And no, the irony of writing a Substack post about procrastination when I’m on a deadline is not lost on me. But tonight I’m not going to feel guilty about it because I can accept that it’s sometimes just part of my process.
If you’re reading this while you’re supposed to be writing, too, I hope you can allow yourself a lil break from the gnawing guilt of procrastination. We’re all just running stories in the background. Soon enough, that little piece of ticker tape will pop out of our ears and we’ll get back to writing.