Mental Escapism

Lately I’ve been struggling with writing for my blog.

I find many distractions are causing me to slip into a mental escapism – not the good kind. While writing, I’ll suddenly remember that album I was going to download or that amazingly awesome site my friend told me about. Unaware of the passing time, it’s suddenly midnight and my energy has been frizzled to next to nothing. This type of mental escapism is what is distracting me from the task at hand, the task I know I should be working on instead.

Sometimes the task right in front of you is what keeping you from being productive. My mind somehow tricks me into thinking that completing these tasks are worse than it really is. The challenges we face as designers when trying to be productive sometimes becomes insurmountable to the point of being unable to complete any work at all. We become overloaded with ideas, or the latter, which causes our mind to become numb, snowballing into further procrastination.

The ironic element of writing is that when you get into a writing groove, it almost becomes an escapism mechanism in itself, resulting in satisfying outcomes. It becomes a lot easier with practise, almost enjoyable.

Why Writing is Important

I think Zeldman pretty much summed it up with this tweet. Meagan Fisher also published a blog post about the importance of writing and publishing where she says, “In writing this I hope to encourage all of you to follow suit: share your thoughts, start conversations, and don’t be scared.” Like Zeldman said, if you don’t write, you don’t know what you think.

Write Down Your Ideas

I’m a very visual person. Something usually won’t resonate with me unless I can see it visually in writing or I can hold it physically in my hands. I try to combat this by writing all my ideas down. Regardless of whether it is crappy idea or not, crappy writing is better than no writing at all. I find this is good way to brush off writer’s block. I save all my ideas as separate drafts and come back to them later in hopes of accumulating more inspiration to write a better post.

Focusing on the task at hand is crucial. Although it can be daunting when a task is so blatantly apparent that it’s almost staring at you, daring you to write it, it is important to know that the next task will be just as intimidating. Saving drafts of your ideas is great, but if you never publish them, what good are they? Ideas don’t grow in isolation. Learning to publish your ideas by escaping mental lapses will help you grow as a designer and, ultimately, help you communicate those pesky thoughts and ideas easier.