Why Daydreaming Over Coffee Is A Key Life Skill
Especially when you want progress.
Avoid, stop, block it out.
Procrastination is evil. Daydreaming kills your time. Take your head out of the clouds and back to earth.
As a student, that’s literally all I ever heard. At the office, I used to hide my daydreaming behind my monitor, pretending interest in spreadsheets. Like everyone else who worked there I suppose, at some point.
And yes, when a deadline lurks around the corner and you need to deliver your absolute best work, procrastination feels like a dealbreaker for sure. It’s certainly an enemy of productivity.
But most people forget the other side of it. The one with benefits. The kind of procrastination that helped people like Margaret Atwood, Douglas Adams, or Nick Jenkins create their huge success.
But wait, how could the most hostile enemy of your workflow efficiency possibly be helpful?
It can fuel your inner genius.
Brilliant Ideas Need Incubation Time
Take your favorite writer, artist, or entrepreneur. Place them in their studio or office, and imagine them at work. How much time do you think they spend staring out the window, pacing back and forth, or browsing through books?
That’s right — a lot.
Da Vinci was a well-known procrastinator (you might have heard about Mona Lisa’s long years in the making).
Slightly less extreme is Margaret Atwood, who doesn’t start work until 3pm, even though she is in her writing room usually by mid-morning. Douglas Adams famously said he just watches deadlines as they fly by his head like tennis balls, and Nick Jenkins thinks it’s totally possible to build a billion dollar business without a single trace of burnout.
But… This isn’t about browsing Facebook. No mindless distraction.
Instead, it’s strategic. You can use it to your brain’s advantage when you’re creating. It’s your time away to think. Einstein called it attentional space.
Here’s the deal:
When you’re building a project from scratch, your creative brain is the first significant fuel of your progress. Because to do your best, you need brilliant ideas. And brilliant ideas need time to re-shape, grow, warm up, and bounce. They need incubation time.
And that’s exactly what creative procrastination does. It is a mindful time away which lets ideas evolve. It’s an intentional delay.
You gain extra space to chew on your thoughts. It’s your chance to contemplate, divert, and leap unexpectedly. You catch more lightbulb moments. As a result, your idea inevitably grows from a spark to a blaze.
‘I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do — the day after.’
— Oscar Wilde
What To Do When You Start Losing It
But of course. You want progress. You need to keep on moving on. You can’t afford to just sit around and breathe. It’s like watching the kettle boil.
And so you reach for the first and obvious. Which might as well be great, but it’s why we often don’t fully develop our creative ideas. We want progress, and we want it fast. But overly focusing on productivity alone can make us forget the value of creative analysis, and we miss out on depth as a result.
Suddenly there’s substance behind the advice on the other side of the spectrum, too:
Wait till the next morning before you hit publish. Don’t make major decisions when you’re tired. Always measure 3X before you cut.
So when you find you’re grinding your teeth with impatience just for the sake of speed, you need something to save you from killing your idea young. Like a mind map.
Mind mapping gives your complex thinking a face. It’s like a Pinterest board for your headspace. Jot down all thoughts and visions connected to your central idea, and later watch back how the concept has evolved. You will be surprised. And your project will gain a twist.
Hold Off Till Last Minute To Go Viral
Procrastination is your mind’s reactionary time.
When you deliberately delay wrapping up your work until the last minute, you give yourself the most time possible to make it as complete as it can be.
You expose your mind to the widest range of potential ideas. The window of opportunity remains open for longer. You have more freedom to consider things, to improvise.
And the best bit? You invite the kind of last-minute perk ups that can make your ideas go viral.
After all, I Have a Dream was also a last-minute addition. In fact, Martin Luther King improvised the entire second half of his speech. Leaving himself open to the vibe of the moment must have been totally nerve-wracking. But it worked.
Careful preparation made Martin Luther King’s speech on point, and already powerful. But it was the last-minute change of lines that made it the most famous speech in human history.
Be An Improver
In Adam Grant’s Ted Talk about the surprising habits of original thinkers, the psychologist shares a rule of thumb:
Original thinkers are swift to start, but slow to finish. They wait and contemplate. They doubt the default. This forces them to experiment with improvement.
They give the status-quo just enough time to grow on them, before they disrupt it.
You don’t need to be a disruptor. But you already are an original thinker. All you need is some space. So next time your visionary fuel drops dangerously low, stop the clock and allow yourself to take five.
Cherie Gaskin nailed this in her article I Skipped Work for the Day. Months of hard work without a break were leaving her burnt out, when a spontaneous strategic delay to the start of her next project completely changed the direction of her working week.
So don’t feel guilty — your subconscious creative will do the legwork. You just daydream over coffee. Or wait till the next morning.
Then jump at the upgrade.
Thanks Yana Bostongirl for inspiring me to continue writing on Medium this year.
Apparently, I’m also on Twitter
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