How to deal with procrastination as a creator (and when to embrace it)

A deep dive into the science of procrastination, habit strategies, and what is "strategic" procrastination

I've always been a procrastinator. There was the time (I'm not proud of this) I sent in the first chapter of my thesis the hour before my grandmother's funeral. Or (more recently and less dramatically) the time I agonized over writing this newsletter before releasing it at exactly 11:59pm on the day it was promised.

In fact, most researchers who study procrastination believe that everyone procrastinates. And if they're anything like me, the general structure of this procrastination looks something like this:

• Start the activity;

• Get distracted or overwhelmed or encounter a myriad of other emotions;

• Spend hours doing and not doing said activity (aka agonizing over it);

• Finally sit back down to complete it in the hours before it's due.

So why do we put ourselves through the wringer this way? This week I want to talk about the science behind procrastination, why it matters for creators, and when procrastination might actually be a helpful approach as a creator.

What Is Procrastination and What Isn’t It?

1. Procrastination isn’t the same thing as delaying something.

   Delaying a task because other priorities are more pressing or more important isn’t procrastination, it’s simply prioritization. In other words, not all delays are procrastination.

2. Procrastination has more to do with feelings and negative emotions than time management

   According to the psychologists Pychyl and Sirois, procrastination is a form of mood regulation, it’s a way of coping with the negative emotions associated with a task. These emotions might include anxiety, insecurity, frustration, boredom, self-doubt, and more. In other words, we procrastinate to “[manage] negative moods” in the short term while ignoring our long-term intentions. It has very little to do with our capacity for time management or planning.

3. Procrastination can also breed negative emotions

   While it’s a coping mechanism for negative emotions, procrastination can also lead to increased stress, guilt, self-blame and all matter of other ruminative thoughts we might have in the wake of procrastinating. Procrastination can therefore compound our negative feelings. And chronic procrastination actually has destructive effects on our mental and physical health.

Strategies for Dealing with Procrastination

Suffice it to say, there’s good reason to want to proactively strategize against procrastination. While we make many excuses to procrastinate, more often than not, procrastination leads to diminished productivity and poorer outcomes because people run out of time. So here are a few ways to notice and disrupt your patterns of procrastination:

1. Recognize and make a plan for typical excuses

   Most excuses we make about procrastinating are based on cognitive biases. Things like “I’ll feel better tomorrow” relates to our optimistic forecasting bias or “I work better under pressure” relates to our tendency to underestimate how much time something takes.

   Start by writing down your typical excuses. Now set up an implementation plan for each. Implementation plans say “if this cue, then I will take this action.” For example: “If I tell myself I will feel better starting on this task tomorrow, I will remember that this is a cognitive bias towards optimistic forecasting, and will sit down to do a small portion of the task instead.”

2. Start with small steps

   In addition to breaking a task up into smaller parts, sometimes it’s helpful to just focus on accomplishing and rewarding yourself for the first step. Maybe this means you just open the document on your computer, or maybe all you ask yourself to do is write down the title, but just focusing on the one next step is a way of "calming your nerves” according to psychologist Timothy Pychyl.

3. Manage your external & internal environment

   Proactively managing your environment is a big part of mitigating your likelihood to procrastinate. If you sit at a messy desk with dozens of alerts turned on, you’re creating an environment that is testing your resolve and making it easy to get distracted and procrastinate. Clean your desk, delete your apps and alerts and suddenly you’re making that same distraction more challenging.

   Similarly, if you sit down to write a long newsletter having not slept, your internal environment is testing your resolve and making it easy to get tired and procrastinate.

   Sometimes, taking a moment to manage your external and internal environment so you’re set up to keep going is an important part of preventing procrastination.

4. Practice Self Compassion

   Finally, practicing self-compassion actually helps you break the cycle of negative emotions. According to psychologist Dr. Sirois, procrastinators tend to have high stress and low self-compassion.

   Self-compassion actually decreases the negative feelings that trigger procrastination in the first place, and in turn boosts motivation. Reframing a task and remembering a time you successfully did something similar or thinking about the positive outcome you’ll achieve when completing the task might help counteract your negative emotions.

When Procrastination is an Engine for Creativity

So while I’ve been spending most of this time talking about how to avoid procrastination, I want to mention one special “strategic” kind of procrastination: the kind where you start the task and then take a step away.

"Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity, but it can be a resource for creativity" Adam Grant, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

In his book Originals, Adam Grant talks about Martin Luther King's procrastination when writing his famous "I have a dream” speech. King started writing it days before the event after ruminating on it all summer. He knew it would be an important speech, so the night before, he invited other leaders to solicit ideas and feedback; he rewrote parts. The day of, on the sidelines of the stage, he was still crossing things off and changing phrases. Until finally, on stage, feeling the energy of the crowd, he improvised. In his improvisation, he almost doubled the length of his speech, adding the now iconic phrase “I have a dream.”

MLK’s story illustrates two main advantages when it comes to procrastination.

So how does procrastination help us generate novel ideas? One clue comes from the work of the Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik's, whom Grant cites. She found that people have a better memory for incomplete rather than complete tasks. Once a task is finished, we stop thinking about it. But if it's interrupted and left undone, it stays active in our minds. And that active, dare I say, nagging idea keeps developing into something more novel and helps you be more flexible as new inputs appear.

As a creator, it’s worth wondering, what are the things worth procrastinating on? Of course, procrastination in this context means “strategic” procrastination. It means you start something, sink your teeth in, but don’t necessarily complete it right away. But it’s worth thinking about the ambitious projects that sometimes warrant a delay.

In summary

Procrastination is an emotional rollercoaster that is challenging, but possible to disrupt. But when it matters, when you’re thinking about an ambitious product or an extended piece of content, strategic procrastination may not be such a bad thing.

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Want to share a story of your worst procrastination moment? Feel free to email back directly or post here. Also, I’m working on a series about creator roadblocks. What is the biggest challenge you face in becoming a consistent content creator?

Thanks for reading these procrastinated thoughts!

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A Few Resources & Footnotes

• The Real Reason You Procrastinate, Work/Life with Adam Grant - Interviews the writer Margaret Atwood about her productive form of procrastination (and her unique solution of creating an imaginary alias)

• NYTimes, Why You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing to Do With Self-Control) - A great overview of some of the research behind procrastination

• Adam Grant, Originals - Goes into the unconventional ways that people succeed, including looking at procrastination.

• Timothy Pychyl, Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change - A quick guide to Pychyl’s research on procrastination and strategies to break the procrastination habit