No points for guessing what eventually happened: The deadline was around the corner before I knew it, and my plans to research, write, and file early had been foiled by my next-level procrastination skills.
Over the years, I’ve tried to beat procrastination with these tactics: I write thoughts down immediately; I abandon multi-tasking; I tell myself very sternly to get on the stick. I have tried punishing myself (no Cadbury eggs until you get this thing done!) and rewarding myself (write a paragraph, get some Cheez-Its!) Nothing seemed to work, until I discovered that the secret is the loafing itself. Yes, I get stuff done, with good results, when I put it off until the very last minute. Even better results, I think, than when I chip away like a good, responsible doobie.
(I should note here that I’m using “loafing” and “procrastination” interchangeably, for the shallowest of reasons: I picture “loafing” as William Powell in a dressing gown, a la The Thin Man, solving a murder with a drink in his hand. “Procrastination” is Beavis & Butt-Head. Whatever you call it, it’s decidedly not doing the thing you’re supposed to be working on.)
When I told other writers I was working on this article, I got a slew of excited me toos and a couple of writers who flat-out refused to call it “procrastination” or even “loafing.” It turns out, more and more writers are practicing it to great creative payoff, even if we can’t actually call it by its name. “I love that you call it loafing,” writer Daryl Tanner told me. “It takes all the negativity out of the vital time of clearing.”
“Clearing” describes best what loafing does for my creative process: I get many of my brainstorms when I’m doing something totally unrelated to the diligence of the butt-in-chair calcified advice that many new writers receive.
But the research is piling up about loafing: Organizational psychologist Adam Grant, in his latest book Originals, noted that “Procrastination may be particularly conducive to creativity when it leaves us solving problems at moments where we’re unfocused.” He goes on to detail a number of Nobel Prize-winning scientists who were passionate about the arts. (Prize winners are 22 times as likely as the average scientist to be amateur performers, and 12 times as likely to be passionate amateur writers.) The obvious implication is that cross-discipline thinking is important, even when the other discipline is task-oriented, like ironing.
The experiences of other writers bears this out. Writer Susan Mihalic said, “I believe that taking my attention off my writing and putting it elsewhere can benefit the writing. I think that’s the subconscious at work. It’s why I have epiphanies when I’m driving or riding my horse or taking a shower.”
Travel and tech writer Deborah Shadovitch said that she does tasks when she “lacks needed words.”
“I get up, wash my dishes, sweep my floor, hang up clothing…things that let my brain do its word-thing,” she says.
And she, like Tanner, terms it something different: she says she has to let the words and ideas form in her brain first, and the brainless tasks are one way of doing just that, one way of feeling as if you’ve completed something without doing any writing.
Read more here.
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