How do I stop procrastinating acting work?
You know that feeling at the end of the day when you realize you didn’t get to any of the most (truly) important stuff ? The stuff that means something to you that will actually help you move the needle?
It’s the worst.
Especially when that feeling pops up around your acting. Life is busy and there are so many things that need to get done every day – and it can be easy for acting to fall to the bottom of the priority list.
Guess what? You deserve to prioritize your acting.
What would your life look like if you decided to stop procrastinating acting and truly made consistency and getting your craft work in every day one of the most important things on your calendar? Actually, scratch that. Let’s start smaller. What would today look like? What about tomorrow? Next week?
I’d like to offer you a challenge:
Go to your calendar right now. Find three slots of time, however small they need to be,in the next seven days and put ACTING WORK on the calendar. Now, set reminders. For reals, dudes.
And now for the hardest part: stick to it. It can be tempting to let that time slide, but experiment with treating it like an appointment you can’t cancel without rescheduling, like an appointment with your doctor.
After this first 3, schedule the next. And then the next. If you fall off, get back on. This consistency and commitment to yourself is the single best thing you can do for yourself as an actor. This is how you stop procrastinating acting.
You can do it!
Check out this conversation in class to get deeper–
CLASS CLIP TRANSCRIPTION
Sarah: The biggest win you could have in this next period of time would be for you to set an intention and a plan that you want to commit to that feels reasonable to you. It doesn’t have to be crazy. It just has to be intentional. Let me look at my week. Do I have more time, less time? When would be a good time for me to do that? And then you’re not in charge of the outcome of what happens at that rehearsal, but showing up and rehearsing and spending time in it is within your control. So let’s see what you can get intentional about.
That to me is the worst feeling. When I’m just letting life happen to me rather than deciding how I want things to go and then executing my plan. And then adapting if I need to! If all these things come up, then that’s okay. But it’s just when I’m kind of like, I’ll get to it, and then I don’t. Find your own way. Find your own way.
But I do believe that it exists when it’s on the calendar. If I learned one thing that I love from Larry Moss over the years, and I don’t even think I really understood it until I was older, was just self-discipline. He would say it all the time. Self-discipline is self-love. And I really think that’s true. It’s not about being…we can get really fulfilled (“fulfilled” is not the right word) by checking things off a to-do list. It feels like, oh, I was so productive! I cleared all these emails out of my inbox! And that feels like you did something. And then you can be like, well I don’t really have to…I did all that other stuff. I got that package in the mail and I, you know, got the clutter pile sorted and some of the bills paid, and oh, I was so productive.
And that’s the stuff we go to first. Because we can sort of get away with prioritizing it as the most important thing. When in fact, what would happen if we prioritized acting in that way? Because then it bleeds into everything you do. That confidence that comes from you showing up for yourself.
