“You call it procrastination, I call it thinking.” - Aaron Storkin (Playwright/Director)
Procrastination and I have a very close relationship when it comes to personal and even professional aspects.
We have all procrastinated in our lives, and if you think about it, we tend to procrastinate differently in regards to our personal and professional lives.
Personally? the procrastination is harder to fight because no one else will hold you accountable to accomplish a task within a timeframe. Whether that be laundry, dishes, a food shop etc. The adult things that we need to be doing, are easily put aside and forgotten about. But what if cooking could be used as a task to procrastinate? spending the time in a kitchen without being hungry or tired, and having a play with ingredients you have in your fridge? What if putting a load on could motivate you to spend that time doing a quick workout?
This type of multitasking to me is a way of being creative with your time. It allows you to be chilled for 2 hrs and then have an hr of hyperproductivity that sparks your brain to be more motivated and in turn more creative.
Now when it comes to professional lives, it is quite different. Deadlines are everywhere, your job and tasks contribute to other's productivity. It's not just a 'you' situation. This type of environment can squash the creative soul. Same goes for a hyper creative jobs, where originality is essential for success. You get depleted very fast and run out of ways to create authentic ideas. So how do you spark creativity in a non-creative role? and how do you keep the inspiration going when you feel drawn out?
Procrastination can help! Studies have shown that if you are told about a task and then procrastinate for a regulated amount of time (5min for example), the individual can perform better & complete the task at hand than the others who did not procrastinate. Reason why is due to the fact that you are still actively thinking of the task whilst procrastinating, helping you think about it in different ways.
When creativity seems to be lacking and depleted, something I find exciting is to create a framework or loose outline in advance, and let that simmer in your brain for a few days or weeks before the deadline is due, so that when you revisit it, you combine the creativity you had prior, with a refreshed point of view.
So the answer to all of our problems is to procrastinate moderately in between having started a task to give us the most positive chance to succeed!
So ready, set, go!...and have a tea? :P
Much Love,
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