Is Procrastination A Road To Creativity?
Ask Agatha Christie.
About PROCRASTINATION…over the last couple of days I struggled to write about the subject. It was a serious struggle, because I found myself questioning what I had written, and in the end, I procrastinated, and finished some chores I needed to do instead.
Yes I felt guilty! As far as I was concerned, I had caved into what many see as a vice. Putting off until tomorrow because…because what?
Was it because of laziness? Many people refer to procrastination as laziness. I’m not lazy, yet I do procrastinate!
Do we procrastinate because we don’t have any set ideas on the topic?
I don’t think so, certainly not in my case.
I don’t happen to believe too much in laziness, and in this instance I had lots to write about, but I found myself at odds with what I had written.
Maybe I was just not inspired.
But then I started to think about things and I realized that every one of us here on Medium, procrastinates from time to time. I suspect it often means that we’re not entirely sold on what we are writing about.
The more I thought about this, the more I realized that people who are creative are often seen to be procrastinating, and yet, they’re certainly not wasting time. Instead their creative juices are working in juxtaposition to the perceived practical.
There’s strong evidence that creative insights need time to percolate — and that the right amount of distraction may be key to innovation.
I know that for me, great ideas come when I am not under the pump. In dreams, in walking alone in the scrub, at times when I am free to allow my thoughts to wander, and sometimes when mopping the kitchen floor, things just pop into my head…a bountiful supply of ‘things’, some of which I surely can’t share!
Let me digress here!
To the designer who thought to put a notebook button on smartphones, I can never thank you enough. Dan Ho, if you are reading this article, I am talking about you!
My mind is never a vacuum, but I will admit to random creativity that maybe others would not understand, and that often happens, when I’m seemingly procrastinating. That’s when I pop notes into my notepad!
But back to the topic.
It would seem that I am among good friends when it comes to finding ideas, or solutions to a problem, when I am no longer concentrating on that problem. There is strong evidence to suggest that creativity, or the solution to a problem, or indeed a way forward, can often be found when our minds are free and ‘empty’.
It’s difficult to explain this away, but I’ll have a go. I have often struggled to find the ending to a story I am writing, and I can sit with the problem for hours on end, determined to find a solution.
That almost never happens. The solution is as elusive as a shadow!
And yet, at different times, when I am relaxed and enjoying a wine with dinner, or, in the good old old days when I was a distance runner, running my cares away, the solution pops into my head.
Was it there all the time? The answer is no, and I cannot rightly explain why it suddenly appears, but appear it does.
Some years ago I was writing the narrative for our senior school’s performance of Joseph and his Technicolor Dream Coat. I was writing in rhyming verse, and for the life of me could not creatively fit the details into one particular verse.
I was worried, because the performance was less than two weeks away, and the narrator, reliable as she was, needed to learn the narrative by heart.
Still, I tossed my efforts aside and went for a run. And to cut a long story short, I came back and finished the script.
I didn’t concentrate on the narrative when I was exercising. In fact if anything, I put it right out of my mind, and then suddenly, on my way home, I had it!
Was I a happy woman?
And just as an aside, might I add that our most difficult parent of all times paid me a huge compliment, comparing it to the professional version he’d just paid an arm and a leg to see! Miracles, just like creative ideas, do pop up from time to time!
You know that saying, Necessity is the mother of invention? Forget it. It’s a lie, according to Agatha Christie.
‘I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention — invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble. That is the big secret that has brought us down the ages hundreds of thousands of years, from chipping flints to switching on the washing-up machine.’
We can learn from history…
‘If the history of creativity teaches us anything, it is that great ideas often come when we’re least expecting them. Consider Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who described how new melodies would arrive while he was eating in a restaurant, walking after a meal or getting ready for sleep at night. “Those that please me, I retain, and even hum; at least, so others have told me,” he wrote. “It seems to me impossible to say whence they come to me and how they arrive; what is certain is that I cannot make them come when I wish.’
What is certain is that I cannot make them come when I wish.’
Wolfgang, I absolutely concur with your belief. Had we been of the same era, you never quite know how far our dreamings might have taken us. To all you dreamers reading this, the ones who have been short-changed by criticism, there is hope.
Many psychologists would put forward a belief that, “creative insights are much more likely to occur after a period of “incubation” — in which you focus on something entirely different from the job at hand, while your brain works away behind the scenes. This could include taking a walk, doing household chores or having a shower. Even our procrastination at work — such as watching funny YouTube videos — may be helpful for our problem solving, provided it is done in moderation.’
The things is this. If we can put some distance between what we want to get done, and the angst caused by the lack of a solution, if we can afford ourselves some freedom just to be, our brains will change accordingly and different perspectives will free us to reach solutions hitherto unimaginable.
So now you creatives, there is no need to hide your light under a bushel. Be proud that you have a creative mind. Go forth and multiply, and procrastinate when the need arises, because we need many more minds like yours and mine!
PHEW! I never ever thought I’d get this finished!