procrastination | TJ Withers

‘Procrastination cat will do it tomorrow’ from Lolcat Research

Today we talk about the power of procrastination! But wait – how could procrastination possibly be a good thing? I’m so glad you asked!

All you ever hear is that procrastination means putting off important (but difficult) things and doing unimportant (but more fun) things instead. Ecclesiastes says procrastination is for the idle: “If you wait until the wind and weather are just right, you will never plant anything, and never harvest anything.”

And that’s definitely true. But procrastination – if applied in a useful way – is not all bad. In fact, Dave Windass (of the TED talk “The Power of Procrastination” http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxHull-Dave-Windass-The-Power) argues that procrastination is actually the key to being MORE productive, if used *in the right dosage*.

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Bill Watterson, “Calvin and Hobbes”

Last year I did a subject that asked us as creators to answer two questions: “Why do we create?” and “How do we create?” You have to love Creative Industries assessments.

Mocking aside, however, these two questions are vital to understand if you intend to be creative successfully, or be creative for a living… or both.

The reflective waffle which was our first assessment piece answered the first question, and I’ll post that shortly. Literally. The short answer after much research and navel-gazing amounts, almost universally, to: “We create because it’s fun.” Bronowski says that humans do not choose to create unless they enjoy the process (1985, p 245).

However, the second question led into hours of delightful research, culminating in a research essay. My task was to argue that, although there are differences between the disciplines of art, design, and media, these differences do not affect the fundamental process of creativity, and that this creates links between these disciplines.

What follows is my summary of the parts of my research related to one part of the traditional creative process: the incubation stage. The full text of the research essay is available on my Full text research essays page.

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