After a brief conversation today with @duncan on twitter about the perils of focusing on complex file organization systems for our images rather than creating images, I have been thinking about all the things that I do to keep myself from working on the projects and task that actually move my art forward. I think that there are a number of things that we (by we I mean me) tend to focus on when the work gets to hard or to easy or maybe just starts to hit us on an emotional level that we don’t want to deal.

Regardless of the reason, I have found myself often times running though a pretty easy list of “important” task that need to be done in order for me to “start” my work. I am thinking about keeping this as a running list and adding in the date of recognition to this post so that I can see a history of just how creative my procrastination can be over the years.

To start out with I think I am going to pay homage to Letterman’s Top 10 and start out with my own list of ten.

  1. Update all software to the latest versions in the event some of the bugs that have been fixed, that I have never seen, might cause me issues when working on my photos.
  2. Rename all my files to a new naming structure that makes more sense to me today than the system I came up with last time I was avoiding work. For the record my labels are pretty easy, date_project/location_unique number.
  3. Surf the app stores to see if there are any new and amazing apps out for my phone, ipad, or computer that will really help me stay on top of things.
  4. Read blogs and twitter feeds going back for days in case I missed something really, really important.
  5. Plan trips and research shooting locations to places that I “might” visit someday but not anytime soon.
  6. Read and watch videos on how to use X piece of software so that I can learn to use features I didn’t know about and will never need in the future unless it is to pass a trivia contest.
  7. Start working on developing a new look and feel for my website that I won’t actually update (see need a logo, need a business plan, need a color scheme)
  8. Clean and organize my existing files on my hard drives and backup drives so that I am only keeping backups of important stuff, and that I know where all that stuff lives.
  9. Go out with some friends to “brainstorm” more ways to be motivated to be more productive as an artist
  10. Write blog post about procrastination.

Well now that this list is done, I guess I should download my images from the day and see what happened in the camera. Then again I am sure that something is on TV that I haven’t see yet.