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How to stop procrastinating on academic writing (it may be simpler than you think)

I spent the weekend meditating at a silent retreat and had a big insight during a work meditation session (where you attempt to do household chores with awareness) that I wanted to share with you because I think it’s relevant to many of us struggling with procrastination and the fear of not being up for certain tasks in academia. My insght was that maybe it’s a much simpler problem than I initially thought…

The silent retreat

First of all, in case you’re interested, the retreat went really well. It was my first time doing something like this (although I had meditated for shorter periods of time before) and the decision to join was quite spontaneous (there were leftover spaces, so I made a snap-descision to go). It was a vipassana retreat in the theravada tradition. I only went for a short period because initially, I think Iwouldn’t have been able to stomach a whole week. I also didn’t want to take a week off work on very short notice. Overall it’s pretty intense.

Silence in this case means no speaking, no communicating with the outside world, no phone, no reading and no consuming content, so you are very focused on yourself and inwardly. I thought that would be the biggest issue for me because I talk a lot and process my emotions that way. It turns out, the six times per day meditation of 45 minutes was actually the hard part. But it was hard in a way that it was not easy, but I could do it. It wasn’t terrible either. I was lucky not to have any emotional moments. I even had one kind of spiritual moment and I’m not usually a spiritual person. I attribute this to the teacher being really good. His instructions clarified many misconceptions I had about meditation and mindfulness from pop culture, which is often shallow and not really what it is actually suppoed to be about. But anyway, that’s probably not why you’re reading this blog post…

An insight during work meditation

So, I had this insight during work meditation that often when you get stressed about tasks, it’s because you don’t exactly know what you have to do. For example, there are some household tasks that I have come to enjoy, such as doing the laundry and dishes. These tasks I find relaxing. I don’t always love doing them, especially when I’m tired after work, but sometimes I actually want to do them as a relaxing activity. You can multitask and listen to something (in the future I hope to just spend the time mindfully). But this hasn’t always been the case. I didn’t use to love household work. There was a time when I didn’t like any chores and they made me angry and frustrated.

This frustration stems from you not knowing exactly what to do. Once you’ve gotten in the habit of something and don’t need to exert as much energy and executive function, it becomes easier. The automation aspect once something has become a habit certainly plays a role as well. But I wonder if it’s also easier because you just know exactly how to do the task. You don’t need to think about it. With tasks that are very easy for me, where I know exactly what to do, I don’t stress about them nearly as much. This effect is very obvious for me when it comes to household tasks.

Attention spans

Another thing this meditation practice thought me was about attention spans. Tasks that take 20 to 30 minutes are relatively easy (no matter if it’s something meditation or anything else really) but anything beyond time space that and my attention span starts to decline. For certain household tasks where it’s easy to stop and pick up again, I do them very easily and sometimes on the side.

However, the more complicated a task (think “writing an academic article”), the more setup costs there are. You have to set things up, figure out what you have to do, do the task and maybe even do some type of tidying up afterwards (like tying up loose ends and documenting what you did so you’ll know where to begin next time). I have much more resistance to these tasks than (simpler) tasks where I know exactly how it’s done. Certain tasks just require less energy because I already have the habit (not matter how simple or complex the task is), but knowing exactly what to do is also a significant aspect that I hadn’t previously paid lots of attention to.

During the meditation retreat, I found I was good at persevering through challenging things (that’s basically your job as an academic). It was doable. I liked the clear grid of timing. It was always clear what was done when and I didn’t need a watch because someone would ring a bell when you were supposed to move on to the next task. This was really relaxing; I could let go of all this future focus and thinking about missing appointments or being late. Before this retreat, I had never realized how much I’m actually stressed out worrying not about the distant future (although I certaily do that, too) but the near future. That damages my attention span in the moment and leaves me feeling unnecessarily rushed.

So, I would like to take more time for things in the future, plan better (like plan more often but also realistically) and schedule less things so I don’t constantly feel rushed and thus unnecessraily rob myself of engery. I’ll keep you updated on how that’s going.

But now let’s move on to a practical solution to the issue I discovered during my heureka moment.

Maybe you procrastinate only because you don’t know how to do a task

I was wondering if this idea that you procrastinate largely due to lack of clarity on how to complete the task holds true for tasks in academia that we dread and procrastinate on, specifically academic writing. I suspect academic writing is so hard because we’re never told exactly what the steps are. And there are so many steps and things to think about!

Then, when you think about the whole thing and know there are many steps but don’t know exactly what to do, you panic. That’s definitly my experience, in the very least. The tasks themselves might not be easy, but once I know what to do, I can do them when I’m in the flow. They’re not easy but doable. Actually no reason to get all hung up about them. Sometimes it takes a bit to get into the flow and set up your environment, but when I know what I’m doing, I don’t have a problem with the task itself.

However, when I procrastinate, I interpret this generalized feeling of anxiety with respect to the task as me not being up for the task and that’s why I’m stressed but really, I just don’t know where to start. But how to fix this?

Actionable todos are great but maybe not actually ideal for academic writing

David Allen (Getting Things Done) suggests making to-do lists actionable, that means not noting down vague stuff like “write article” but rather formulate the todo so clearly in actionable baby-steps that you take out the thinking about what you have to do when it’s time to execute.

However, in academia, many (especially writing-related) tasks are long-term, project-based and complex, which makes using classical to-do lists for them really quite clunky. In this case, I much prefer using project to-do lists, such as a piece of paper that contains a master task list for a project that don’t need to be rewritten every day or week but is specific to this project. If you want, you can still pull some tasks off of the project todo list onto your daily to-do list if you must. But I honestly find it just overcomplicates the process. Academics will make a science out of it and you better don’t give an academic any more means to procrastinate.

One list to rule them all

I just have my project master taks list (should I share and discuss the template at some point?) that even has a progress bar to visualize progress. Sometimes progress on long-term projects just feels way too slow, especially when you keep getting thrown off by teaching obligations and the like. That’s not new.

But what I came up with related to my heureka insight was that I could just spend 5-10 minutes before each deep work task figuring out the exact steps that I need to do next. I have the master task list where I can write down anything I can’t tackle during to current session. If I don’t know where to start, I can always pick a task from the project to-do list and spend a few minutes figurng out what that actually entails.

That way, I avoid wasting time copying the same todos from one list to the next each day or week but I also don’t have the extra time cost of specifying what each mini subtask means. I usually still write down some documentation as I usually have insights on next steps and what needs to be taken into account that go beyond what can fit into a simple cross-it-off todo list. This 5-10′ minute window is a way of making todos actionable, i.e. figuring out exactly what it is you need to do and how to do it, and at the same time serve as a transition period into the task.

The 5-10′ minute trick to fix procrastination

Also, really, what’s 5 to 10 minutes of not being “productive” if it leads you to actually get something done or make even the slightest bit of progress on your goals, rather than not making any progress on your goals yet again because you don’t know what to do and this anxiety is just building until you reach a deadline or abandon the project altogether? What if it’s as simple as taking time to take a deep breath, take it step-by-step like you would tell a generative AI system, figure out what to do, and get to work? This makes the old quote of “just do it” so much more doable because often it’s not simply “just do it”—it’s that you have to figure out how to do it first.

If anxiety arises during this preparation time, identify what it is you’re afraid of and if it’s not knowing the steps, spend time figuring them out. This might seem like a waste of time, but I think it’s worth it if that means you won’t push the task off to the next day. If you look at it like that, it’s really not a big cost if it allows you to actually get in some goal-directed work rather than panic-procrastinating.

I want to plan more and feel more reflected and less rushed, so maybe that’s a good step for me generally. I will try to actively work on not attributing this general fear and anxiety about a task to thinking I’m not good enough to get it done well or that it’s too hard. That was always my mind’s automatic association: “Oh my god, this task is so hard, maybe I can’t do it, so I’ll do it tomorrow.” But maybe it’s just that I don’t know where to start and I’m actually totally capable of doing it. I’ve found many times that none of the tasks I’m doing are beyond my capability. It’s just that some tasks stress me out because I don’t know exactly what I have to do.

Maybe things don’t have to be as hard as you think

Also, I learned one more things during the meditation retreat—maybe that’s something you can relate to, so I wanted to let you know. I found out that my dysfunctional belief is that things always have to be hard. From that root belief two others derive. One is, “Oh my god, if it’s so hard, what if I can’t do it? What if I won’t deliver because it’s too hard?” The second one is, “I always have to take things very seriously because it’s so hard and I have to try really hard.”

Meditation showed me that maybe it doesn’t have to be as hard as I think. What if it’s okay for things to be easy? Since I’m usually on the over-controlling side of things, freaking out a little bit less is not going to hurt. That is my big insight. Give fewer fucks (a few years ago, I read Stephen Wildish’s How to Give Zero Fucks: An Illustrated Guide, Ballantine Books 2020 and vowed to take its advice to heart but it seems that I had forgotten about it).

Anyway, it’s the same thing with meditation. You can’t force clarity of mind. If you freak out too much, you get mental noise and chatter. To let go, you need to be less controlling. But at the same time, you can’t have no focus at all because then you’ll fall asleep. You need a certain amount of focus, but not too much.

This is something I struggle with in my everyday life because I often have way too much focus and inner pressure. I have similar experiences singing in choir: I tend to over-control so much that sometimes the tones don’t fully ring. I never have the problem of not enough muscle tone. This advice seem to be pretty much universally apply to my whole life. So, all in all, I’ve learned a lot from meditation that applies to my everyday life.

Anyway, I will try this approach of spending the first minutes of a work time block figuring out in calm and piece what it is I actually need to be doing and how to do it over the next few weeks and let you know how it goes. Maybe you try it too and let me know. Maybe some of this has helped you. Let me know about your experience. Have you tried meditation before? Did these suggestions help you? Did you try anything out?

Have a great week!

S


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Sarah Lang (July 11, 2024). How to stop procrastinating on academic writing (it may be simpler than you think). Epigrammetry. Retrieved March 21, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/12095


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