This past Sunday I found myself lost throughout the day. I set my alarm for 5:30 AM to work on some writing.

I sit down at my desk, open up my laptop and start the writing process. It takes time to get in the groove of writing. After a few minutes, I start to find a rhythm. 5 minutes later, I find myself in a writers block. Not sure what to write next.

Then I got that feeling. That urge. The urge to do something other than what I’m doing right now.

My mind started throwing ideas out there and hoping that something sticks. Trying to get away from what I was currently doing because it doesn’t want to work hard and stress itself. It’s trying to find something more enjoyable and pleasuring.

I started to give in.

I say I’ll just open up Instagram quickly then will get back to writing. After being in a trance for 10 minutes watching reels, I catch myself. Say it’s time to get back to work.

I quickly close instagram and start to try and work again.

Start to work and that mental block is still there.

Then my mind throws out ideas around sports. Lets check what happened yesterday in basketball. I go down the rabbit hole and spend another 10 minutes reading sports articles.

I catch myself again and start to get back to work.

5 minutes later, my son wakes up and my free time is gone. I wasted the free time reading and watching mindless videos.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. This is almost a weekly occurrence where something other than work takes over free time.

Even later in the day I had pockets of time where I could work, but I found myself procrastinating with mindless things.

What went wrong?

1. No clear plan

When I woke up in the morning, I didn’t know what I was gong to work on. I set my alarm early and figured I could find flow.

I have a few things I’m working on building and was planning to work on each of them throughout the day. I didn’t set an intention on any of them and had no timelines on what I wanted to complete by which day.

I’m allowing myself to procrastinate by not setting goals and deadlines on the projects.

2. Too much time for work

I didn’t say, “I have an hour this morning, I’ll only work on writing during that time.”

I gave myself all morning to do my tasks and I was procrastinating getting them done.

Parkinsons Law says we’ll fill the available time with whatever work we have. I was letting the task take as long as I had, and didn’t care about trying to get the task done. This leads to not hitting goals if something unexpected comes up.

My son woke up earlier than usual and it threw off my timing. I was being unproductive for the first half of my work session and was going to be more productive in the second half. My time got cut short with my son waking up earlier.

If I had given myself less time to work, I would have finished what I needed to and would have been done with my work even if my son woke up early.

3. I gave in to the urges

The urges to do something else will always be there. The mind will keep trying to get away from focus because it’s mentally taxing.

If I didn’t give attention to it then it would go by. Instead, I let it take over. This threw off my focus and didn’t let me get into a flow state. Once I gave in, it became harder to focus back again. That block in my brain wouldn’t go away and I couldn’t get back on track

I told myself ok 5 minutes then I’ll get back to work. These kinds of bargains with ourselves never work.

We justify our actions before we even do it. We’re giving ourselves the ok to procrastinate, but we know we’re going to regret it later. We can’t help ourselves.

Going Forward

1. Plan night before

The night before I work, I’ll spend 5 minutes planning what I want to work on the next day. I’ll write down some quick notes and make sure I am in a position to succeed the following day.

2. Give myself shorter periods of time to work

I have my alarm set for 5:30. I’ll make a plan to work for 90 minutes on a given task to complete whatever is needed. If my son is still sleeping by the time I’m done, I’ll plan to workout until he wakes up.

Working out is easier to be interrupted when he wakes up and I can plan to workout during his morning bottle.

3. Be In Control

I won’t let the urges take over. I’ve been against blocking the internet during focused time since there are times where it’s helpful to have the internet to look something up while writing.

This leaves me open to potential distractions and in the future I’ll probably plan to test out if it’s better to block websites.

Even as I type this, I question why I never blocked the websites before because it sounds helpful.

New plan: Blocking internet while writing