Lately I feel like I am in a slump in terms of being a person who does interesting things outside of work. I don’t want to be the type of person who lies on their deathbed and thinks, “Jee I was excellent at my job. Goodbye earth!” I would rather think, “Jee, I spent the time I was not working creating cool things, things that helped someone somewhere feel less alone. P.S. I went ziplining once. Wild and wacky life complete!”

But sometimes I get in slumps, as does everyone except for Chris from Parks and Rec, whose heartbeat is the same as that of a resting turtle. As an antidote to this, and hopefully as something helpful to other people like me, I’m going to list my favorite excuses to not do stuff and then refute them.

1. I can’t finish long-term projects because if I stop working on them for a day I become drowned in my own over-analysis of the project and lose my will to finish it.

Treat this with badpsiration. Read a book that really sucks that made a ton of money and think, “If this idiot could do it, so can I.”

2. I have too many ideas and I can’t decide which one is best so I am paralyzed into doing nothing.

Stop thinking like a marketer and worrying about “branding yourself,” “changing the category” or “inspiring debate.” Choose the idea that you feel lets you express what you really need to express. If you have nothing you really need to express, try to make your life less monotonous and gain some perspective by doing something interesting (just don’t do drugs so you’ll have something to write about. It’s been done and also half done in terms of people getting addicted to drugs and still never writing).

3. But procrastinating is kinda “my thing.”

Procrastination accomplishes nothing but making you wallow in anxiety over how incompetent you are until you do something poorly at the last minute when instead you can do something early and then spend all that time after you are done actually liking yourself.

4. I have over-exhausted myself on one medium and literally have nothing else to contribute to it (this is easy to do with blogging, wherein I ran out of things to blog about in earnest after about a year).

Don’t waste time pumping out shit you know is half-baked, and instead try something related but different, like podcasting or even making typewriter poems (just don’t tell anyone you’re doing that).

5. Collaborating with other people is really hard because a) I am a control freak b) motivating another group of people when you don’t have money is an incredibly disorganized process c) ego battles.

Think of  The Beatles or really any band. Do you think they felt like great bandmates, business partners and best friends all the time? No. That’s not real life. You have to work harder when you work with other people, but it will be more rewarding.

I found this helpful. Did you? Share your own excuses and pep talks with me and let’s all do more stuff.

–Becky  Lang