I used to play Candy Crush.
And Fallout Shelter.
Sometimes both in the same sitting.
Hours would go by.
Actual hours.
And the work would just sit there, open in another tab, waiting. I told myself I was just taking a break.
But breaks have endings, and what I was doing didn’t really have one.
Looking back, those games weren’t the problem. They were the symptom. The real question was always: what was I avoiding, and why?
Procrastination isn’t a Character Flaw
As a writer, when you keep putting off a piece of writing, the easy explanation is that you’re lazy or undisciplined.
But most writers who procrastinate are neither of those things.
Sometimes, they’re just people who care too much about the outcome and have quietly terrified themselves into not starting.
It’s not really laziness per se but a form of fear wearing a very convincing disguise trying to convince everyone, including the writer himself, that everything’s ok.
A few things tend to show up repeatedly:
Fear of failure. The piece isn’t written yet, which means it isn’t bad yet. Starting it makes the possibility of it being bad very real.
So you don’t start.
The blank page is safer than a bad draft, which is completely irrational but also very human.
Imposter syndrome. That quiet voice asking who exactly gave you permission to write about this topic.
What makes you the authority.
Why anyone should listen to you.
Filipino writers deal with this more than most, I think, because we were never really told our voice was worth hearing in the first place.
For a very long time I put off writing for this site thinking what gave me the right to write about writing when I wasn’t even that creative in the first place or educated in literary arts. And then I realized that I had one thing worth writing about: my experience and what would most practically work.
An unclear brief. Sometimes the resistance isn’t psychological at all.
The task is just genuinely fuzzy.
You’re not sure what you’re supposed to be saying or who you’re saying it to, and your brain stalls because it literally doesn’t know where to point itself.
Clarify the brief and sometimes the procrastination just… disappears.
There was this one time I was assigned an article about HVAC systems. And because I had not heard of HVAC systems before, I froze in my tracks. I didn’t know what I was supposed to write. I didn’t know what HVAC systems were.
I could’ve researched about them but no, I decided to put it off until the very last day.
Depletion. You’re burned out and your brain is reaching for dopamine wherever it can find it. Which is how you end up three hours deep into a mobile game on a Tuesday afternoon when you have two articles due.
And yeah… this has happened to me several times in the past. My brain was looking for a break from the monotony of churning out article after article mindlessly.
So what did I do?
I turned towards games as a way to soothe my brain.
At first it was only for a few minutes. Minutes turned into hours.
And then there were days where nothing would get done because I was just playing.
And playing.
And playing.
What to do
Getting rid of the time-sink apps was genuinely one of the better decisions I made.
I’m not being dramatic about that.
When the easy escape hatch isn’t there, you’re forced to sit with the discomfort a little longer, and usually that’s exactly long enough for the resistance to pass and the writing to start.
Beyond that: name what you’re actually afraid of.
Write it down if you have to.
Fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of being found out.
Naming it makes it smaller.
Then start with the ugliest, most imperfect version of the piece you can imagine.
You’re not lazy.
You’re scared.
Those require completely different solutions.
Start there.