Productive Procrastination: Not All Procrastination is Bad!

They are arguably two of the most famous speeches in American history and they both had one thing in common. The speeches may not have turned out as epically as they did, had their creators not used an amazing creativity tool called…procrastination. More specifically they both used a tool called productive procrastination!

“Wait, what?” you say.

Yep, it’s true! In creating their speeches, both Abraham Lincoln in writing his “Gettysburg address”, and Martin Luther King in his “I Have a Dream” speech procrastinated right up until the end.

In Lincoln’s case, even though he received the invitation to speak two weeks in advance, he only had half of the speech completed when he left for Gettysburg the day before. He took his time to think and arrange his thoughts until he was happy with them. He ended up finishing the closing paragraph the night before and finalized it the morning of the speech; that is he procrastinated before acting.

As for King, he started thinking about the speech the summer before and sought advice from several of his closest advisors regarding appropriate content and tone. He didn’t start working on the address until 4 days before the march. Amazingly, the night before he summoned a group of advisors to help him go back to the drawing board as he wanted to make sure to get key ideas from important players in the movement.

As you have seen in the examples above, not all procrastination is bad!

There are 2 types of Procrastination

When many of us hear the word procrastination, we automatically think negatively. As in, the avoidance of tasks we know we need to complete. While that is true and known as destructive procrastination, there is another type of procrastination that is positive and can help us be more creative.

Destructive procrastination

When we deliberately avoid the stuff that we know we need to get done, we are engaging in destructive procrastination. This is the type of procrastination that we are all familiar with. Even though we know it will eventually result in our experiencing negative consequences, we still put it off.  We discussed this type of procrastination and how to overcome it in a previous blog post, so we won’t discuss it any further here.

Productive procrastination

The second type of procrastination and the one we will focus on in this blog post is called productive procrastination.  As we said it is positive and good and can help make us be more creative.  Not only that, if we are working on a creative or innovative project, it can be an important part of the process.  We will get into it in a bit more detail in a bit, but basically, the idea is to set your project aside for a few days or weeks to let your mind wander and come up with more ideas.

What is Productive Procrastination is Not (In My Opinion)

I have also seen the concept of productive procrastination also referred to as “positive procrastination” and “structured procrastination”.

In fact, a researcher out of Stanford named John Perry wrote an essay called “Structured Procrastination” where he believes you should embrace your destructive procrastination trait and make it work for you.

His advice goes like this:

“Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.” ¹

In his book, The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing, he goes on to add, “The procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely, and important tasks, however, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.” ²

To summarize Perry’s method: keep yourself busy by doing stuff that needs to be done eventually while avoiding the most important things that need to be done.

The Problem Is That…

…this type of advice is just kicking the can down the road and justifying the fact that people procrastinate on things they know they need to do.

In the book, Perry says he gets dozens of positive letters from readers of his essay, he goes on to share one of them who says,

“Dear John,

Your essay on structured procrastination just changed my life. Already I feel better about myself. I have accomplished thousands of tasks over the past few months, all the while feeling terrible about the fact that they weren’t the really important ones that sat above them on the priority list. But now I begin to find the cumulonimbus clouds of guilt and shame above me are lifting…

Thank you.” ²

While it is nice that it does make them feel better, it is just giving them an excuse for procrastinating. And ultimately, it still fails to address the root cause of their procrastination.

A Better Way to Leverage Productive Procrastination

In his book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World and his TED talk, Adam Grant studied those who he calls ‘originals’.

According to Grant:

“Originals are nonconformists, people who not only have new ideas but take action to champion them. They are people who stand out and speak up. Originals drive creativity and change in the world. They’re the people you want to bet on. And they look nothing like I expected…“ ³

One of the traits that he found with “originals” is that they procrastinate…but with a catch.

They don’t just put things off. Instead, they start quickly but take a while to finish. In other words, they take time to think things through, let their minds wander and let their creativity work for them. So, while procrastination can be a problem for those who are trying to be productive, it can be a resource for those who are trying to be creative.

How to Procrastinate Strategically

As Grant says,

“Great originals are great procrastinators, but they don’t skip planning altogether. They procrastinate strategically, making gradual progress by testing and refining different possibilities.” ³

Here are some tips on how to use productive procrastination on something that requires creativity that has no fixed or immediate deadline:

(1)  Start whatever it is you are working on

You need to get the ball rolling by getting going on your creative project or innovative idea.

(2)  When you feel like you are hitting a wall or not getting the results you want

Simply stop and set the project or idea aside for a few days, or weeks, go on to something else and let your mind wander.

(3)  Leverage the Zeigarnik Effect

Which is named after Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik who showed that people had a better memory for incomplete tasks rather than completed ones. In other words, once we finish something, we forget about it. By leaving a task incomplete it will ruminate in our subconscious until we finish it.

(4)  Come Back to It

After leaving it for a while, come back to it with fresh eyes and continue to iterate and test with new ideas and possibilities.

I Have a Dream…

According to Grant,

“As King walked to the podium to deliver his speech, even as he approached the microphone, he was still revising it. “Just before King spoke,” politician Drew Hansen writes in The Dream, he was “crossing out lines and scribbling new ones as he awaited his turn,” and “it looked like King was still editing the speech until he walked to the podium to deliver it.” ³

Here is the interesting thing about the speech, the “I have a dream’ part of King’s speech was not planned and was not in his notes. Interestingly, he ad-libbed it in after Mahalia Jackson, a famous gospel singer who was seated behind him and had heard him speak before, encouraged him to ‘tell them about the dream Martin, tell them about the dream!’

Speaking of Dreams

As I said in #3 above, by leaving a task incomplete it will ruminate in our subconscious until we finish it. A perfect example is the invention of the sewing machine which came to its inventor Elias Howe in a dream.

The story goes that he was having a tough time designing the needle part of the sewing machine. It was clearly ruminating in his subconscious mind when he was sleeping and had a nightmare. In his nightmare, he was threatened by cannibals who said they would kill him if he didn’t figure out a design. Sadly, at least in his dream, he failed to come up with a design and was stabbed with spears that had holes in their tip. He then incorporated the hole in the design of the sewing machine! ⁴

Until next time, keep using productive procrastination, keep dreaming and as always…PYMFP!
–Rick

Use It or Lose It

Some tips to incorporate procrastination in your life for tasks that require creativity and have no fixed deadline, try these tips:

(1) Start whatever it is you are working on.
(2) When you feel like you are hitting a wall or not getting the results you want.
(3) Leverage the Zeigarnik Effect.
(4) Come back to it.

When to Use It:

When you are working on a creative or innovative project with no fixed deadline or a deadline that gives you time to put things aside for a bit.

What Do You Think?

Have you ever used productive procrastination? How did it work for you? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

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References

¹ http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

² The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging, and Postponing by John Perry

³ Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant

The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins