For the last 2 months I was acting like I’m productive without actually being productive. I only realized it this week, when I finally made a detailed schedule for launching my book. Until now my deadline was “next year, somewhere around Q3.” But once I planned out the whole launch, I landed on a much more realistic release date: April 25, 2028. 570 days away.
And that’s assuming I work on the book every single day (which I wasn’t!) and post one diagram a day on all my platforms to grow the waitlist to the 1,000 people I set as my target.
I kid you not, this outraged me. I realized how much time I wasted wallowing around, pretending to be busy, making time for the book in my schedule, writing about how I’m motivating myself to work on the book, setting up the environment to make it easier to work on the book, reading books about productivity…
Why I didn’t want a deadline
I was avoiding it for a reason. I wasn’t ready to have my lofty dreams shattered by reality. I was enjoying the title of “book writer” and “anatomy teacher” without actually sacrificing anything significant.
The actual reason there isn’t a comprehensive resource on anthropomorphic anatomy out there yet is that it takes an enormous amount of work. I knew that intellectually, but it didn’t set in until now.
Back in January I wrote about how I kept myself from fully committing, because if I don’t try my hardest then I can’t technically fail. I also said you can’t create fake urgency, because you won’t believe your own lies. The fix to this is finding real urgency, which my book launch plan revealed.
Face the mountain
I’d been hanging out at the base camp of a giant mountain for months, and only now did it occur to me to look up at the summit, plot a route and estimate when I’d get there. Not knowing was comfortable. I could always say “well, if I really put my effort into it, I could definitely do it”. Now that I see the actual amount of work in front of me, I’m not so sure anymore.
And that’s exactly what motivates me now. Before, the book was a nice dream that I was sure I could reach someday, so there was nothing to fight for on any particular day. Now it’s a real challenge, and I can see what I get out of it if I take it on properly.
Go all in or forget about it
It’s comfortable to step on the gas just a little, so you can technically say you’re moving forward without actually pushing hard. The result is what I’m feeling right now, a mix of anger and regret about wasting so much time for nothing.
Once you’ve set a concrete goal, there’s no reason not to try as hard as you can. And now I’m facing a choice I can’t avoid anymore. I either cut the book down to make it more doable, or I accept the real cost and start moving as fast as I can right now. For me the choice is obvious, because I don’t want to reduce the scope.
If you have a big project that’s been “in progress” for a while without much happening, here are some steps to help get it moving:
- Write down exactly what the finished project includes. Be really concrete about it, this will be your scope.
- Estimate how long each part takes, be honest about how much work you can actually do per day.
- Add it all up and put a real date on it.
Doing this is scary because you won’t like every possible outcome. You might find the cost so high that you want to quit. You might have to cut the project down to something smaller than you dreamed of. Or you might find a challenge worth going all in on, like I did.
But it’s the only real next step. Without it you’re just hanging out at base camp, feeling like a climber without ever climbing.
This emotional fuel probably won’t last long, so I’ll have to figure out how to keep going when it runs out. But at least now I’m closer to reality, and I don’t need to motivate myself anymore. The urgency does it for me.
