Just Open the Document!

Finding it hard to get motivated to write or edit? Checking Facebook again or organizing your boards on Pinterest will undoubtedly be more appealing. Perhaps you're avoiding your work because you don't know how to deal with it. You might be struggling to figure out what to say next or how to "fix" what you've done thus far. My advice: just open the document.

I've had a few non-urgent writing tasks hanging over me for several weeks now. (Ok. Two months, if I'm totally honest with you.) More urgent and impactful items have been prioritized ahead of them -- and that makes perfect sense when you think about your goals. But now that there's nothing more urgent or important to focus on, I knew it would be better to just get them done instead of having them weighing on my mind. Unfinished projects are a special kind of stress -- they expand to take up more mental space than they deserve.

Even though I knew I should complete them this week to clear the docket, so to speak, each morning I found myself doing other things, like filing. Why? Because one of the unfinished projects was a report that needed to be submitted to the funder and, despite my best efforts, I still wasn't happy with the wording. I initially put it aside so that I could think about the right approach, but then I never got back to it. If I didn't take action, I'd be a very productive procrastinator this week.

This morning, sitting at my desk, looking for "things to do," I said to myself, "Just open the document!" (Ok, maybe I yelled it inside my head, tagging an emphatic "Already!" at the end.)

Just open the document. It really was that simple. I opened it up and glanced at a few comments left in the margins, and before I knew it, I was done the editing task that had been causing me so much angst. I worked at it one section at a time, one comment at a time. It wasn't nearly as painful as I'd anticipated. Why? Because it wasn't nearly as big a task as it had grown to in my head.

So next time you find yourself avoiding your work -- whether it's writing or editing -- just open the document and see what happens. You might surprise yourself.