Procrastination is generally defined as "the act of delaying or postponing something." In a world where being productive has for many years at least, been valued as an essential ingredient to leading a successful and fulfilling life, engaging in procrastination is widely considered as something to be avoided, and definitely not a trait anyone would like to be associated with. And yet.... What if I told you that's only part of the story, and that procrastinating 'the right way' has unexpected benefits?
A big part of my motivation to start a blog is, to a large extent, to compel myself to choose action in the face of an ever lurking complacency. In fact, I have a confession to make that I’d prefer to remain just between the two of us: I am a lifelong, perhaps by now even honorary member of an exclusive group of human beings commonly referred to as procrastinators.
Procrastination is defined as “the action of delaying or postponing something”. In a society that seems to value productivity over nearly anything else, suffering from a severe bout of this condition is widely considered as something to be ashamed of, and definitely not a trait you’d want anyone to associate you with. And I must admit, that’s how I used to feel about it as well, judging myself harshly after I yet again failed to meet a self-imposed deadline on a project.
That is, before I watched a YouTube interview with Marissa Peer, an acclaimed psychologist, who explained that the quality of our life very much depends on how we speak to one another and above all ourselves, and that we have a choice in how we interpret our actions in either a positive or negative way.
This got me thinking: what if there’s a silver lining to procrastination? What if, thinking about something a lot before springing into action enables us to look at it in surprisingly new ways? Eager to see if there was something to this, I started a little investigation. Here are some of the insights I found.
Procrastination: a boon to creativity?
One of the first articles I came across in my research only strengthened my sense that there might be some truth to the “procrastination can be a positive” school of thought. It revolved around a student of Adam Grant, a professor at the Wharton School of Business, who set out to prove her claim to him that most of her original ideas came to her after she procrastinated.
To do so, she carried out a series of experiments. She asked people to come up with new business ideas. Some were instructed to start right away, while others were first given five minutes to play games like Solitaire. Afterwards, the participants all submitted their ideas to independent evaluators who were tasked with assessing their originality.
In the end, the procrastinators’ ideas were judged to be 28% more creative. One of the most striking things about the experiment was that there was no increase in creativity when people were told about the task after they had played games. It was only after they first learned about the task and then put it off to do something else, that more creative ideas emerged. As it turned out, procrastination encouraged new ways of thinking. Slowly but surely, I was starting to feel better about myself…
Professor Adam Grant, who has done groundbreaking research on procrastination.
So how could we use procrastination to stimulate our creativity? The answer very much depends on whether you’re a pre-crastinator or a procrastinator…
For pre-crastinators
If you’re the kind of person who always handed in her book reports on time and usually had finished them well before their due date, chances are you’re a pre-crastinator. On the face of it, the act of procrastination is anathema to everything you stand for, so engaging in it even if it’s to your advantage would be, to say the least, very challenging for you. For that reason, the only way this could possibly work is for you to force yourself to take a step back and wait.
This will give your mind the space to consider new ways to approach the task you’ve been working on, and even make unexpected leaps as a result. If you’re busy writing for example, a good approach is to jot a few notes in the margins, than leave your work as is while you go for a walk or grab a bite to eat.
Personally, the most important insights I’ve had in the last few years, be it on a personal or professional level, came to me after I put myself even briefly in a different space/room than the one I was in when focusing on whatever was on my mind. I can’t even begin to count how many “Eureka moments” I’ve had while in the bathroom or taking a little time relaxing on my bed.
It’s really helpful I believe, for each of us to find an activity or place that distracts us even briefly from what is occupying our thoughts. This helps us gain perspective or even see what we are busy with in a different light, especially when our mind keeps running in circles. Whatever you end up doing, the important thing is to force yourself to go against your impulse to finish immediately.
For extreme procrastinators
If you’re an extreme procrastinator like me, a good thing to do when you’ve been assigned a task is to look at it and review it the first day it’s been assigned to you. Spend like an hour with it and write down a few initial notes. The idea behind this is that even if you’re not actively working on your task, it is still marinating somewhere in the background of your brain, ready to provide you with new insights once you return to it.
Other benefits to procrastination
Although boosting our creativity is one of procrastination’s unexpected benefits, there are others that deserve a mention as well:
Contrary to what you might think, procrastination may help relieve stress. The idea behind this actually make sense once you’ve considered that if you’ve put off an important task until the last minute, you’ve most likely not been worrying about it as much as someone who has been working on it from the moment it’s been assigned to them.
Procrastination can provide you with an energy boost. Think of it as using the stress that comes with a looming deadline as a motivator: what actually happens is that fear releases adrenaline, which is a natural painkiller, which makes it easier to perform difficult or less desirable tasks.
Waiting until the last minute, forces you to work faster and spend less time working on the task than you otherwise would’ve done. As such, procrastinating can make you more productive and therefore give you more time to work on the things you actually enjoy.
Usually, we procrastinate because we want to put off doing something we don’t really want to spend time on for as long as possible. As a result, it makes everything else easier and fun to do.
The task itself might have changed in the meantime: sometimes you’ll spend hours working on something only to discover that the instructions have changed or that the work is no longer needed. If you procrastinate long enough, you’ll be shielded from having to go through that experience since any change to the assignment will probably already have been made.
Tools to deal with procrastination
For all the benefits procrastination may have, the truth is that without action it becomes hard if not impossible for anyone to achieve anything, and this gets even more true the bigger and more ambitious your goal or dream is.
What I found to be really helpful to deal with my tendency to procrastinate is to establish a routine that I commit myself to as much as possible. For example, when it comes to writing my blogs, I decided to set aside a fixed time block every day that is exclusively devoted to my research and writing.
An interesting way to get yourself to act on your goals is what I like to call the “deathbed strategy.” Imagine the following: you’re at the end of your life, and reflecting on everything you’ve experienced and done, which inevitably leads to you having one of two reactions: either you’re left with a sense of satisfaction and joy of having led a full and exciting life. You feel as though you’ve made the most out of your circumstances and possibilities, and lived life to the fullest.
Conversely, you could also be left after asking yourself the same question with a sense of regret, a feeling that you didn’t take life by the horns and enjoyed all the experiences you could have had. That is not a feeling I think anyone would like to experience. Therefore, merely thinking about the possibility can help us spring back into action.
In the end, as with nearly everything in life, I believe it all comes down to balance: sometimes in order for us to make progress at a later stage, it’s very important to find the time for yourself to relax and procrastinate from time to time, as long as you make sure you establish a system for you to maintain your commitment to your overall objectives. Who knows it might provide you with a moment of creative genius along the way.
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