On Tuesday I procrastinated worse than I had in months. I couldn't even approach my desk, and spent a large part of the day in bed. Not sick, just hiding.

I was unhappy about this, since I have deadlines like everyone else. And a part of me was thinking things...

Summer is a time for play, but what does your play tell you about the life you'd really like to be living? During the summer, many of us:

• Relax
• Get more athletic
• Get more sensual (Shakespeare didn't write A Midwinter Night's Dream,
after all!)

I was recently interviewed by Entrepreneur.com for an article on decision making. The writer's questions were excellent and thought provoking, and I wanted to share my answers with you.

Best,
Hillary

Q: For leaders you've encountered or researched, how have you noticed that decision-making tends to get...

In my workshops I teach the benefits of an anti-perfectionist viewpoint: one that is compassionate, empathetic, nonjudgmental of yourself and others, etc.

Yesterday, a 20-something participant raised the question of whether her and her generation had been too indulged (and thus weakened and infantalized) by excessive praise and...

One of my recent newsletters discussed a misguided essay (and now, regrettably, book) by a prominent philosophy professor on his notion of "constructive procrastination." I'm happy now to refer you to this essay, "I'm With Stupid," by a writer who is not, to my knowledge, a prominent professor,...

Last article in a three-part series. Read part one here and part two here.

How to Build Your Compassionate Objectivity

You can overcome your perfectionism and build your own compassionate objectivity using these techniques:

1) Work consciously to replace perfectionist thinking and speaking with compassionate objectivity....

Second article in a three-part series. Read part one here.

Procrastination, or the inability to do one's work or other important tasks (e.g., eat vegan) is largely a response to perfectionism. (There are other causes, including resource deficiencies and ambivalence, but perfectionism is usually the...

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article extolling the benefits of what the author calls "structured procrastination." In "How to Be a Better Procrastinator" John Perry, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Stanford University, says:

But are procrastinators truly unproductive? In most cases, the exact opposite is...

The wonderful and much-missed writer and writing teacher John Gardner wrote in On Becoming a Novelist:

"If children can build sand castles without getting sand-castle block, and if ministers can pray over the sick without getting holiness block, the writer who enjoys his work and takes measured pride...

First in a three-part series.

After my book The Lifelong Activist was published by Lantern Books in 2006, I gave a lot of talks to vegan groups and also spoke with many individual vegans and vegan activists. Whenever I'd mention what I'd considered the self-evident fact that some...

My friend and free software activist Ciaran McHale and his wife, Bianca, recently had a baby -- the gorgeous Toby. And they did something completely cool, which was to ask friends concerned with social justice to write letters to Toby, which they would publish in a book.

The book...

Here's what the process of overcoming perfectionism and procrastination looks like:

1. You start from a place where you hate doing your work and avoid doing it at all costs.

2. Then you move to a place where you dislike it, but start showing up and doing it sometimes.

3....

Procrastination isn't laziness, lack of discipline, lack of willpower, etc.: it's disempowerment. Disempowerment means you aren't missing anything, but lacking access to that which you have. Remove or heal from the disempowering forces in your work and life and you'll "automagically" recover all the energy, discipline, willpower, etc., you thought...

A friend and activist recently wrote to me about the difficulty she has with building "rewards" (fun, pleasure, validation, gratification, treats, etc.) into her life. She mentioned that a day trip that was supposed to be a big reward for her last month fizzled, and that left her very demoralized.

In my previous article I discussed why all businesses should indie publish -- including non-writing businesses.

Here are some guidelines for doing it right:

Clarify your goals

If you want to indie publish for a hobby, or to create a memento for loved ones, then you can just...

Indie publishing is for many businesses, not just writers! A yoga teacher earning $70 teaching a one-hour class who sells three students a $12 indie-published book, has boosted her profits more than 50%. And an independent software vendor who sells manuals for his system isn't just sweetening his bottom line...

Perfectionists, being drawn to reductiveness, dichotomization and rigidity, love labels. But the labels they use are almost always harmful in that they either denigrate the writer or increase the pressure she feels around her work. An example of good labeling would be to call writing "my job," and the particular...

Dear Indie Booksellers,

December wasn't easy, was it? As if steadily-declining sales and the threat posed by a new phalanx of holiday-purchased ereaders weren't enough, Slate's Farhad Manjoo published a widely-discussed article entitled Don't Support Your Local Bookseller: Buying Books on Amazon is Better for Authors, Better for...

Today's topic, appropriately enough, is ambivilance. We tend to think of it as a small thing -- "Should I have a donut or danish? I can't decide!" -- but in the realm of life choices, it's huge. The cliché that you can't move in two directions at once is absolutely...

Perfectionists, being drawn to reductiveness, dichotomization and rigidity, love labels. But the labels they use are almost always harmful in that they either denigrate the writer or increase the pressure she feels around her work. An example of good labeling would be to call writing "my job," and the particular...