June 19th, 2008

dailylog

resolve

have a good number of bad habits. I smoke. I'm lazy. I can be avoidant. I procrastinate. I make progress where I can and accept my faults; we all have them. A subset of my chronic procrastination is beginning to bother me, though. I have this tendancy to not do something because time or motivation won't permit me to do it all in one shot. When it comes to a large task, I will delay doing it until I can allot the time or I'm forced by a deadline, rather than do it progessively in bite-sized pieces.

The area this is beginning to particularly bug me is with respect to writing. It's a task which requires a great deal of concentration for me, and yet something I think is important and from which I derive a great deal of satisfaction when the finished product is before me. In my case, it involves what some would consider an inordinate amount of time. This short entry took me 45 minutes to write, and it ain't anything special. Nothing forces me to write, so it often goes undone.

So, beginning today, I'm placing an arbitrary mandate on myself: a mid-year's resolution to write for at least one hour every day. No excuses, no bargaining with myself. I always have something to write, this is really an issue of discipline and laziness. I will no longer write when time permits, but every day, if only for an hour.