The other day, one of my coach­ing stu­dents emailed me about his dilemma — some­thing that’s all too com­mon in our business.

“Too many times,” he said, “I’ve known what I needed to do, and I always end up wait­ing weeks on end to do it.” He asked, “How do you cope with procrastination?”

Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is indu­bitably the copywriter’s most sti­fling prob­lem. Since our job is fraught with dead­lines, pro­cras­ti­na­tion can be one of the costli­est prob­lems in the copy­writ­ing busi­ness. It can mur­der your reputation…

… And your career!

So, how do you cope with pro­cras­ti­na­tion? Even bet­ter, how do you over­come it? Here are six tips I use, which helps me to get more done faster.

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After 12 long years of work­ing seven days a week, I’ve made a deci­sion. I’m tak­ing tomor­row off.

Sounds strange? Well, I’ve had vaca­tions. Many of them. And I’ve taken half-​​days off, here and there. Some­times, I’ve even taken whole days off. But I would still check my email in the morn­ing, or return to my com­puter at night.

Aside from my vaca­tions, I’ve not taken an entire day off in over a decade. I mean, a full 24 hours with­out doing any work, includ­ing using the com­puter even if it’s to surf the web.

My wife and I are finally heed­ing to some very pow­er­ful advice about tak­ing an extra day off to earn more money from Terry Dean, a per­son I admire and fol­low closely.

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OK, after my lat­est blog post about writ­ing in jour­nals, I thought about doing this. You see, I wrote a book many years ago. (Back in ’96.) That arti­cle was actu­ally based on that book.

This is not your aver­age mar­ket­ing book.

Admit­tedly, it may be a lit­tle “out there” for some peo­ple. Per­haps a lit­tle meta­phys­i­cal. A lit­tle spir­i­tual. A lit­tle moti­va­tional. A lit­tle “higher con­scious­ness” related. And I respect that.

While this might not be appeal­ing to some, for oth­ers this book about how to stop set­ting “goals” and start set­ting “guides” instead (i.e., your pri­or­i­ties) might be the most pow­er­ful, life-​​changing book you have ever read.

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