Creative People Need to Procrastinate
If you were sitting in a room where every person has been given a project to work on, you can tell who the creative person is by how they stall, deferring any immediate action to start the new project. Others in the room who have been given the same time frame to work on the project, most have already sprung into active work mode. Annoying as it is to see that person sitting and reading a book, or listening to music on her headphones, while everyone else is grinding through planned tasks, the creative person intentionally does nothing. Their subconscious incubates, this productivity delay is a crucial part of the creative process. The dream state when ideas are under consideration, floating around a neural waiting room to be called upon, the lightbulb moment for some.
How very easy it is to call this person lazy, a word that frankly doesn’t hurt us. Procrastinating can stimulate creative thinking. Lying on the couch when suddenly thoughts about blue and brown connect the dots to something you’re working on and it starts to feel right. Depending on your methods, you can let new ideas stew for a bit longer since a lot of it is meditative. Creatives think constantly, non-stop, there is no mindful clocking out. An art director always has a variety of images, songs or film scenes stuck in the limbo of their mind, but mentally put away for ‘in case of inspiration break glass’ breakthrough.
