The pros of procrastinating

I am not a procrastinator by nature. I like to get things done early. I hate the stress and anxiety of the last minute. In high school I wrote a thesis twice as long as everyone else’s and I was done well before the night before. I felt so incredibly on top of my life and everything was together. Everyone else skipped school the day of to work on theirs.

I am still like that today. If things are due the next day I feel like I am doing them late. Assignments and readings for the next week, are always on my to-do list the week and weekend before.

I have a busy life so doing things early is really important to me. My pocket of time to do an assignment might only be a week before with no time to do it in the week and days before. Thus I don’t typically procrastinate. In fact I try to avoid it all the time.

Yet this past weekend I found myself trying to purposefully procrastinate. Which is why I found myself on saturday night, crafting instead of writing my paper and I think my life and my schoolwork were better for it.

This is the TED talk that convinced me that I needed to procrastinate in the middle of  a task.

 

 

If you have time to watch this or if you have something to procrastinate from something then I highly recommend watching the actual video.

However the research that is discussed in this video shows that moderate procrastination is actually good for creativity.

In fact moderate procrastination is better than either no procrastination at all or extreme procrastination.

The way it works is that if I start a project early. Then I procrastinate in the middle doing something other than my work. The idea is still there, the ideas are still marinating even if I am not paying direct attention to it. As a result my creativity is boosted because I have given that time in between where the ideas were improving even if I did not realize it. As a result my creativity is boosted and my final product is better.

Also just because you are the first does not mean you are the best  when it comes to a new and innovative idea.  People do better when taking an idea and then improving on it than the original founders of the idea.

So proocrastinate in the middle of a project. Start early, take a break and finish strong.