Procrastination Isn't So Bad After All (It Can Be a Creativity Booster)
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It’s been more than half a century now, and yet, his four words that painted a vision of a better future are still imprinted into our memories today:
“I have a dream.”
Martin Luther King Jr’s 1963 I Have a Dream Speech changed the world.
It moved people.
It marked a defining moment in the civil rights movement and became one of the most iconic speeches in history.
And you would expect that such powerful words were written a few weeks prior to the day of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, but that was not the case. It turns out that at 10:00 pm the night before, King sat on his desk in his hotel room not to review his speech, but to begin writing it.
Talk about procrastination.
King wasn’t the only one who procrastinated. Scholars estimate that Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa on and off for a few years. He began in 1503, but he left it unfinished and didn’t complete the painting until 1519. That’s a 16-year window of procrastination.
So perhaps when it comes to creative work, procrastination isn’t so bad after all?
That would explain why in his 1550 book that chronicles the brilliance of Leonardo da Vinci, Giorgio Vasari wrote:
“Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands.”
Procrastination might’ve been a common habit to creatives and great thinkers. And it could be something you should engage in when it comes to creative work. In other words, there is such a thing as active procrastination.
Procrastination as a Resource for Creativity
Researchers have identified that there are two types of procrastination: active and passive.
As explained in this study:
“Passive procrastinators are procrastinators in the traditional sense. They are paralyzed by their indecision to act and fail to complete tasks on time. In contrast, active procrastinators are a "positive" type of procrastinator. They prefer to work under pressure, and they make deliberate decisions to procrastinate.”
The study proposes that active procrastination can in fact lead to positive outcomes.
While the passive form implies delaying tasks for a later time, the active form involves starting a task but waiting to complete it. When you set a project or task in motion and actively procrastinate on it, you allow your thoughts to circulate between the conscious and subconscious mind. You open the door for novel ideas and creative possibilities to flow and bloom into your field of vision.
And in The Originals, best-selling author Adam Grant demonstrates how this phenomenon is be attributed to in psychology is referred to the Zeigarnik effect: “Once a task is finished, we stop thinking about it. But when it is interrupted and left undone, it stays active in our minds.”
So don’t be a passive procrastinator. Don’t procrastinate on sending that e-mail or finalizing that presentation—the client is waiting. Don’t procrastinate on that workout, your body needs it. Don’t procrastinate on sitting down to write and plan out your life—it will do you no good.
Instead, be an active procrastinator—and only when it comes to creative pursuits like writing a book, or preparing a keynote speech, or painting your next big canvas.
Plan, but be flexible. Prepare, but leave room for spontaneous improvisation.
“Great originals are great procrastinations, but they don’t skip planning altogether. They procrastinate strategically, making gradual progress by testing and refining different possibilities.”—Adam Grant, The Originals
About two years ago, I was asked to give a keynote talk at an entrepreneurial university conference to about 500 graduating students. I had prepared what I wanted to say, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to begin my speech. I knew I wanted a powerful introduction, but I couldn’t land on the write words. So I procrastinated. And it wasn’t until the morning of the talk, that the idea dawned on me. And I was in the shower when it did.
“Every student in this room is about to become a painter.
For the first time in your life, you’ll be handed a white canvas and you’ll be asked to paint it. That canvas represents your life and you have complete ownership of how you decide to stroke the brush.
For the most part of the past, leading up to this very moment, you have followed a curriculum preset in motion: kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, college. But now, the world is yours to create. So let me ask you this: Will you paint it with dull, conventional, tested colors? Or will you be bold and try to experiment with new mixtures and colors?
The choice is ultimately yours. But I’ll tell you what, before you pick a brush and choose your color palette, here are 5 things you should know about life.”
At the end of the talk, I was awarded a standing ovation.
There might just be some magic in active procrastination.
What Matters to You
Martin Luther King Jr. never wrote the words “I have a dream” in the script of his speech.
They simply unraveled themselves to him as he spoke.
Procrastination (why we do it and how to stop it) is one of the most common topic requests I receive from readers. And while we all struggle with it, we’ve been raised to believe that it’s evil. But as we’ve seen above, procrastination isn't so bad after all. It can be used as a force for—and boost—your creativity.
As Adam Grant explains in The Originals:
“Along with providing time to generate novel ideas, procrastination has another benefit: it keep us open to improvisation. When we plan well in advance, we often stick to the structure we’ve created, closing the door to creative possibilities that might spring into our fields of vision.”
So stop beating yourself up when you procrastinate—especially when it comes to creative thinking.
Set a plan in place, but be flexible. Let things sit for a while. Let the ideas in your mind wander into the gardens of your subconscious streams.
Procrastination might just be the missing piece to your next masterpiece.