Even though I was constantly working, after finishing projects or tasks, another application was waiting, another text left unwritten, another social media post I knew I should publish, many artworks I should finish or wanted to start creating. I often prioritized work for other people over my own, even though I knew, at least at some level, that my own work mattered more to me.
If discipline was the problem, then discipline could also be the solution. Work harder. Plan better. Try again tomorrow.
That explanation was comforting.
I eventually realised I was not avoiding the work. I was avoiding the person the work required me to become.
None of this looked like procrastination. It looked like responsibility.
One idea, in particular, caught my attention: procrastination follows different patterns.
Psychologist Dr. Linda Sapadin, together with Jack Maguire, identified and popularised six classic procrastination archetypes in their 1997 book It’s About Time! The Six Styles of Procrastination and How to Overcome Them. Their work frames procrastination not as a simple time-management problem, but as an emotional defence mechanism rooted in different personality patterns.
Perfectionists get stuck refining because nothing ever feels good enough, so they need to learn to ship work that is “good enough”. Dreamers stay in ideas and avoid execution, so they benefit from structured steps and clear daily action. Worriers become paralysed by worst-case thinking, so they need to replace “What if?” with “I can handle this” and start small. Defiers resist external pressure, so they need to reframe tasks as self-chosen. Crisis-makers rely on last-minute adrenaline, so they benefit from artificial deadlines and accountability. Overdoers overcommit, lose sight of their own priorities and need firm boundaries with protected time for focused or creative work.
This highlights something simple but important: procrastination does not look the same for everyone, and several of these archetypes live within all of us.
The German translation for freelancing is “Selbstständig”, a word that can literally be read as “self and constantly”. It carries the idea that work as a freelancer has no natural stopping point.
For me, this perspective creates a quiet sense that I am never doing enough for my career, even when most projects are finished and there is little left outstanding.
No matter how much I worked, I often felt that the results arrived too late, not least because I was juggling several projects at once.
Eventually, I realised I was not avoiding the work.
I was avoiding the right work, the work that required me to change and made uncomfortable change inevitable.
Psychologist Tim Pychyl, one of the leading researchers on procrastination, argues that procrastination is fundamentally an issue of emotional regulation. We postpone tasks not because we are lazy, but because beginning forces us to experience emotions we would rather avoid.
His research described something I had experienced for years but had never been able to name.
Creative work redefines you
Creative work asks something different of us than most professions.
Every artwork, essay, composition or photograph is more than something we produce.
It becomes evidence.
Not only evidence of skill, but also of identity.
It reveals what kind of person is willing to do the work.
You gradually become the person your ideas require.
What surprised me most was not how quickly The Creative Core took shape, but how slowly I accepted what it meant. I could publish the essays before I could call myself a writer.
I had been thinking about something like this for a long time. Notes and fragments of essays existed on my notes app in my phone, but I had no name for it and no platform through which to share it.
Then, over the past months, I noticed a pattern. In conversations with friends and fellow creatives, we kept returning to the same thoughts, questions and struggles. Somehow, these conversations came together and made me realise that I wanted to explore these subjects more deeply and share my reflections with others for motivation, inspiration, clarity or hope.
The most authentic way felt like creating a living text, one that develops as life itself does, and bringing it to readers in the form you are now experiencing. Today, technology makes this possible.
About three weeks ago, I felt a strong urge to finally start something which became The Creative Core.
So instead of spending a long time planning, I moved directly into research and execution. Curiosity carried me forward more than planning ever could. It still does.
I still would not call myself an author. To me, writing is a tool, a way to communicate ideas, observations and knowledge. Yet this publication is evidence that I became someone willing to write before I fully felt like a writer. Others may already see me as the author of The Creative Core, while I am still catching up with this new identity. Writing can be experienced as a calling, an identity, a craft, or a way of expressing and communicating ideas. Each relationship with writing is valid and meaningful.
Why creative careers feel different
You are not only executing ideas created by others. You are bringing your own ideas, perspectives and beliefs into the world through your work and your portfolio. You are gradually letting go of one version of yourself while constructing another.
No wonder resistance appears. No wonder we hesitate.
The greatest resistance rarely appears when the work becomes technically difficult. It appears when the work begins to inevitably redefine us.
I did not get that insight all at once.
It began in early 2023 when I sat down to create my first vision board. It was an exercise I had never done before. The first thing I realised was that it had been a long time since I had truly asked myself what I wanted for my own life.
What did I want to do? Who did I want to be? Who did I want to become?
To answer these questions, I first had to understand where I had been.
I found myself feeling sad and disappointed. For years, I had worked for other people. I had helped for-profit and non-profit organisations grow and succeed. I had fulfilled expectations, solved problems and created value. Yet, somewhere along the way, it felt as if I had quietly postponed my own artistic career.
While I enjoyed working for others, my artistic work became something I allowed myself to do only after everything else was finished and everyone else was satisfied.
Looking back, I realised I had not simply postponed projects. I had postponed becoming the person I wanted to be.
I do not see it as a mistake to have worked for others. Those experiences shaped me and gave me a lot of valuable knowledge. But I had given them more time than was ultimately good for my artistic career.
That discovery made me curious rather than ashamed.
If I had managed to help other people build meaningful careers, why was I not building my own artistic career? I realized I had to change course.
Change is inevitable as you create
I started researching. Psychology. Philosophy. Neuroscience. Entrepreneurship. Marketing.
Not only because I wanted another productivity system, but also because I wanted to understand myself better.
The research pointed in an unexpected, deeper direction.
Neuroscience suggests that our brains naturally discount future effort, making tomorrow’s work appear easier than today’s. Delaying can feel rational in the moment, even when we quietly know that something is being avoided.
I believe that, especially as creatives, we often protect our current identity because it represents comfort, certainty and safety.
Psychologist Glynis M. Breakwell introduced the idea that people rely on several principles to construct and protect their identity: continuity (stability over time), distinctiveness (being unique), self-esteem and self-efficacy (feeling capable and in control). When our physical, social or emotional environment challenges these principles, our identity can feel threatened. As a result, we often defend the familiar version of ourselves.
Creative work challenges this natural tendency.
Creating changes how we see ourselves and how others see us.
Once you show up every day, you can no longer say you are someone who could create. You become someone who does.
Once you publish, you become an author. Once you exhibit, you become an artist. Once you send the proposal or application, you become someone willing to risk rejection.
The work changes the person doing it and changes how that person is perceived.
That is why procrastination feels so personal.
It is resistance to transformation.
The real work is not forcing yourself to become more productive. It is closing the gap between the person you believe yourself to be and the person your actions are quietly proving you can become.
Now, when I notice myself procrastinating, I no longer see it as lack of discipline. I see it as information. A signal that some part of me is still negotiating the identity hidden inside the task.
Drops in the ocean
So, the next time you catch yourself procrastinating, do not ask:
“How can I become more disciplined?”
Ask instead:
“Do I stay the same if I do not begin?”
I have realised that I often produce my highest quality work when I stop overthinking outcomes and the opinions of others. When I simply begin, create evidence and focus on what I want to contribute and see in the world.
To thrive as an artist, or any other creative for that matter, it helps to develop self-awareness by asking yourself questions that close the gap between how your mind works, how creativity behaves psychologically and how your practice is structured.
Beyond recognising patterns in your own behaviour, it also helps to understand how the brain responds to creative work and how the wider system around it actually functions.
Becoming always begins long before you feel ready.
~ Fides Linien
Further Reading
Linda Sapadin and Jack Maguire, It’s About Time! The Six Styles of Procrastination and How to Overcome Them (1997)
Glynis M. Breakwell, Coping with Threatened Identities (1986)
Timothy A. Pychyl, Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change (2013)
Thank you for this. I let my own artistic business fall by the wayside a few years ago in service of a family business for the ‘greater good’. I now find myself unemployed as that business has been sold. I grieve the time I could have spent on my craft, how much further along I could have been, the person I could be right now had I chosen myself. I find myself resisting the work now, feeling like tomorrow I will feel better, that I will be more ready. This article helps. Thankyou.
I used to spend a lot of time executing the creative vision of others as a screenwriter in Hollywood, doing work-for-hire rewrites on existing scripts. Focusing more intensely on my own work is indeed a different kind of practice. I try to differentiate between incubation and avoidance. Avoidance just comes down to fear, but that fear is mostly the work of an overprotective ego. Once I get to the actual work, it feels less like "I" am doing anything and more like allowing something to express itself through me.