Sometimes we don’t do something because we’re not sure we can do it well. We feel like we’re not in the mood or at the right energy level to do the task we need to do, so we put it off, or wait for inspiration to strike.
The most common example of this phenomenon is what writers call "writer's block." A mental block seems to set in that prevents a writer from writing. Sometimes it gets so bad that writers go to psychotherapists to get help with it. Much of how writers make a living depends on curing it.
“Block” (or lack of self-motivation) occurs not because the writer can’t write, but because the writer doesn’t feel like they can write well. In other words, the writer doesn’t feel like they have the right energy or inspiration to write something, right now, that’s good enough to deliver. So the pessimistic voice inside the writer says, “You can’t think of anything to write, can you?” This happens to many of us, even with something as small as a postcard to send, or an email that’s too late to reply.
But the writer doesn’t really need psychotherapy for this. All he needs is an understanding of how the human mind works during “block.” The cure for writer’s block—and the path to self-motivation—is simple. The cure is to go ahead and write badly.
Novelist Anne Lamott has a chapter in her wonderful book Bird by Bird called “Shitty First Drafts.” The key to writing, she says, is to just start typing anything—it can be the worst thing you’ve ever written, no matter.
“Almost all good writing starts with a bad first attempt,” Lamott says. to convince you not to write. You’re writing now. And once you’re in the act, it’s easy to pick up the energy and improve the quality.
Singer-songwriter John Stewart said, “When you’re in the early stages of creation, never censor yourself.” We’re often afraid to do something until we’re sure we’ll do it well. So we don’t do it. It’s this tendency that led G.K. Chesterton to say, “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”
Going out for a run gives me an example of the same phenomenon. Because I don’t feel like I have a good, strong run in me, the voice says “not today.” But the cure for that is deciding to do it anyway—even if it’s going to be a bad run. “I don’t feel like running right now, so I’m going to go out and run slowly, in such lazy, bad form that it won’t do me any good, but at least I’ll run.”
But once I start, something always happens that changes my feelings about running. By the end of the run, I notice that it has somehow become very enjoyable.
In my self-motivation seminars, I often give people homework to write down their main goals for the coming year. I ask them to fill no more than half a page. This is not a difficult task for people who are willing to get off the top of their heads and have fun filling a page. But you’d be surprised how many people get really down about it, trying to get it “right,” as if they’re forever tied to what they wrote. Most people just can’t do it.
To get them to complete the exercises, I said, “Put anything down. Make something up. It doesn’t even have to be right. It doesn’t even have to be your goal, just do it so you can understand the exercises we’re going to do.” The point is, just do it.
In many ways, we are all novelists like Anne Lamott. Our novels are our lives. And many of us suffer from a tragic form of writer's block that causes us to write nothing. This is a tragedy, because deep down we are all incredibly creative. We could write great lives. We are just so afraid of writing badly that we never write.
Don’t let this happen to you. If you’re not motivated to do something you know you need to do, just decide to do it badly. Add a little self-deprecating humor. Be funny bad at what you do. And then enjoy what happens to you once you get into the process.