What if your superpower is performing under pressure?
How to Survive the Writing Life When You’re Pressure Prompted
If you find yourself procrastinating a lot, you might be a pressure-prompted writer
If you find it hard to get anything done until you’re experiencing deadline pressure, you might be pressure prompted — which is one of the characteristics of the “Perceiving” personality type in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test.
What it feels like to be pressure prompted
Being pressure prompted can be difficult to manage, and it can wreak havoc on your health and your family life. You feel like you’re constantly behind, but you can’t seem to get moving until you’re experiencing pressure as the deadline approaches.
And of course, if you misjudge the amount of time your project or assignment will take, you’ll blow the deadline and flip over into unproductive panic — which is even more destructive.
This can lead to a lot of guilt and negative emotions.
You compare yourself with others, who seem to be effortlessly motivated when they need to be, and can keep normal hours while balancing their social, family and work lives perfectly. You beat yourself up for procrastinating and wasting time. You’ve tried sticking to a routine before, but it just doesn’t seem to work.
This spiral of negativity is counterproductive.
But I promise you, things will change as soon as you realize this key lesson:
Being pressure prompted isn’t good or bad, it’s just one of many different working styles.
In fact, being pressure prompted might just be your superpower.
To harness this power, what you need are some structures in place that allow you to get the best from your working style.
Here are some ways to own your pressure-prompted superpower.
Write in sprints
Psychologist Donna Dunning recommends a “work attack” approach for people who are pressure prompted.
