Day 806: Procrastinating instead of editing

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I had a bad IBS day today, and didn’t start work until later in the afternoon when the medication kicked in. I wasn’t feeling great, so I did my “frogs” instead of my work. However, I feel a bit guilty because I ended up spending a long time doing marketing work. It had to be done, but I admit that I was probably procrastinating doing the editing. AGAIN.

A lot of today was spent trying to wait through the pain until the medication worked. So it wasn’t as if I could do my editing while I was so uncomfortable. And once the medication did start working, I still had bouts of nausea and cramping, which was why I decided to do my frogs rather than trying to jump into the editing, which takes quite a lot more energy and brainpower than the frogs.

But once the cramping had decreased enough, I should have moved straight into the editing. However, I was in the middle of a marketing task and decided to finish it first before I forgot to do it.

I only got a little bit of editing done today, as well as the bare minimum of writing on book 5.

I know I vowed to knuckle down and do editing today, and I could blame the IBS, but only partially. I probably could have done at least an hour more editing if I hadn’t been procrastinating.

I know why I procrastinate. I don’t like editing. But a part of me that is lying to myself says that it counts as work if I do marketing, but I know that I’m just procrastinating.

It doesn’t help for me to beat myself up over it now. I just need to focus tomorrow and get the editing done. At least the more urgent and time sensitive marketing tasks are done now, so I don’t have an excuse that there’s marketing stuff I have to do.

Actually, I think this has to fall under “frogs.” It’s something I don’t enjoy doing, even more so than my other frogs, which I don’t actually mind doing.

But because the editing is so difficult, I think that if I don’t get the editing done first thing in the day, it simply won’t get done because I’ll procrastinate, no matter what kinds of good intentions I have.

So I think I’ll do my editing first tomorrow, before I do my other frogs. I usually prefer to do writing in the afternoon, but I think editing is a different beast. So I’ll try doing it first.

Doing these kinds of things first (“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day”) will help me to at least get some work done on my editing. And the sooner I finish the editing, the sooner I can get back to writing book 5.

Writing streak: 285 days

My takeaway for today: Do editing first as one of your “frogs” to make sure it gets done.

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