The Screenwriting Tool I Used to Stop Procrastinating
Something is better than nothing - even if it starts as trash
I spent three months thinking about writing this post.
In those three months I accomplished … nothing.
Then I spent ninety minutes yesterday actually writing it.
How? I repurposed a screenwriting concept called a “trash draft.” It’s a simple concept but shockingly effective and now I want to apply it to everything.
What is a “trash draft?”
I learned about the concept of a “trash draft” in a screenwriting class.
The idea is simple: write your entire story from start to finish without looking back to edit until you are done. Don’t even go back to read the pages - just keep writing.
How does “trash” turn into “treasure?”
Did I need to have a “trash into treasure” reference in this header? Nope! I probably should have edited it out - but that’s the beauty of the trash draft.
Every round of editing will improve what you have written and I probably should have done another pass of editing - but that’s a next week’s newsletter problem.
For this week I followed a simple process:
Set aside one hour for uninterrupted writing.
Set a phone timer for an hour.
Opened Substack.
Wrote.
Once the timer went off I felt relief followed by dread. Did I have anything to show for my time that could have been better spent binge-watching Only Murders in the Building Season 4?
Shockingly - yes! I had a draft of a newsletter email that roughly made sense.
Was it great? No.
Was it repetitive and slightly disjointed? Yep.
Was it fixable through editing? That’s up to you to tell me =)
I spent 30 minutes editing following a similar process to above.
How can I apply this to my job?
Everyone likes to say “just get started” or “perfection is the enemy of done.” But this isn’t ever followed with HOW to get started and WAYS to combat perfectionism.
As someone who has frequently struggled with thoughts that my work is trash - a trash draft is exactly what I needed to break my procrastination / perfectionism cycle.
It gave me a way to start and freedom to edit once I actually had something done.
How could I apply this to work?
Communication Plans: Write a free-form digest and edit to create structure
Project Planning: Fill in every task I can think of before trying to clean it up
Meeting Agendas: Make a brain dump of ideas and then reorganize in the edit
Lessons Learned
I could have made my life easier by:
Starting with an outline
Having a snack next to me
Thanks so much for spending part of your day with me - let me know in the comments anything you want to learn about Project Management, Change Management, and Process Improvement. I’m here to help one trash draft at a time.