I first met my friend Stephanie Tombari at a business meeting about 4 years ago. Because of the connection between the two non-profit organizations we work for, we end up at the same meetings about twice a year. It didn’t take long, though, to realize that, beyond being just colleagues, we were soul-sisters. Soon the business meetings spread into the occasional dinner out, snatched moments of connection in the hallways, and one memorable afternoon when we skipped out of a conference to try to find a body piercing joint. Stephanie is a writer who specializes in social justice issues. She recently completed her Masters in Communication. She has some great advice about finding our way past the things that block us.

I am a procrastinator. I am also deadline driven. Drop the green flag and I’ll sit idling at the starting line. But wave that white flag of the final lap, and I kick in to high gear.

My most common modus operandi has been to determine precisely how much time it will take me to finish a project, and then wait until the outer limit of that timeline before starting. So if a feature article is due on Friday, but I decide on Monday it will only take me two days to write, I start it Wednesday night. That may usually work for smaller writing assignments, but waiting for a deadline to approach isn’t very effective on bigger projects like a thesis or novel. There’s no way I’d have finished a 6,000 word master’s research paper with that approach: some projects are more complicated than putting words on paper.

So I tried something that’s big with time management pros these days: the mini deadline. The mini deadline is all about breaking up the big project into digestible bites. Since deadlines and a sense of completion jump start my engine, the mini deadline – or “micromovements” as inspirational writer SARK calls them – have been great for keeping me enthusiastic and not giving up. While I still work best on tight deadlines, breaking a project up into smaller pieces moves me toward completing the finished project in a reasonable amount of time. And it’s paid off: after two years of working and going to school full time, I graduate from my master’s program this fall.

There’s another checkered flag that can stop me from crossing the finish line: a shortage of self confidence. I write and publish a fair bit, but that little bit of success has more to do with quitting than confidence: I simply get fed up thinking and talking about a project, and planning a project, and not actually working on a project.  So while I still might not believe I will succeed, I have the will to just get the bloody thing done.

When I was in China last fall, I learned something about the power of will, through a Chinese faith in ‘good fortune’. There is a vibration created by 1.3 billion people believing in the value of good luck, a vibration I am convinced creates a condition of manifest destiny – where mass belief in luck creates the conditions for luck to exist. In China you sense the alpha waves of this collective mindset, as they radiate and bounce off the greenhouse gases and then are absorbed back into Chinese society. The predominant North American culture doesn’t believe in good luck the same way – and we don’t experience good luck the same way either. But most of us know there’s a lot to be said for believing in something greater than yourself. Whether it’s God, good luck, or the power of saying goodbye to a finished piece of work – it helps get the job done. And ultimately if I’m not getting the job done then what the hell is the point?

Here’s a really good reason I’ve found to keep writing: “Communication is health; communication is truth; communication is happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant, say so; if we love our friends to let them know it.” – Virginia Woolf

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