I Used to Fight Procrastination. Now I Embrace It.

The Art of Procrastinating (Without Letting It Win)

Today, I timed how long it takes me to write 500 words.

The answer? Only 23 minutes.

But in reality, it was more like an hour and 15 minutes.

Because for every 23 minutes of writing, I fuddle around for about 45 minutes beforehand.

The Struggle is Real

Lots of us with ADHD struggle with procrastination. When I was in college, I would sit at the library with my coffee and my laptop, and spend hours procrastinating. I would find myself on YouTube, wasting hours watching videos instead of writing essays. Or sometimes I’d just stare off into space.

It was incredibly painful. I felt powerless to start a project until the panic of a deadline loomed. In hindsight, undiagnosed ADHD was my biggest hurdle. How different my college years might have been if I’d known how to work with my brain instead of against it.

And honestly, there have been many times in my creative life where a similar thing has happened. But the difference is, there are no deadlines looming to eventually kick me into gear. Nobody is waiting on me to finish my book. Nobody is yelling at me if I don’t write me 250 words per day. It’s all on me.

So is procrastination just one of those demons we have to slay?

There’s a Science to it

Turns out, a study on procrastination found that when it comes to creativity, procrastination can actually be a benefit.

Here’s a summary of the study:

Jihae Shin, now a professor at the University of Wisconsin, asked participants to generate new business ideas. Some were randomly assigned to start right away. Others were given five minutes to first play Minesweeper or Solitaire. Everyone submitted their ideas, and independent evaluators rated how original they were.

The result? The procrastinators’ ideas were rated as 28 percent more creative.

Source: Perks of Procrastination

What’s interesting, however, is that Shin notes, “Employees who procrastinated moderately received higher creativity ratings from their supervisors than employees who procrastinated more or less.”

Even though procrastination can actually have benefits, it can also be taken too far. Those who procrastinate too much are in a hard spot.

So how do we keep procrastination from overwhelming us?

Step 1: Make Your Goals Easier

Part of what made it so common for me to procrastinate as a college student was that the tasks were so big that they became daunting. Write a 4-page paper? Ugh, that’s sooooo much work.

Let’s apply this to a creative practice. If you sit down and say to yourself, I need to practice my instrument for an hour, you’ll likely hit a big wave of procrastination. Or if you say, let me create this entire painting from start to finish, wham! procrastination is there, stopping you because it feels too overwhelming.

The easier the task is, the less procrastination shows up. Or perhaps a better way to put it: when procrastination does show up, it is easier to talk yourself back from it. You can gently speak to yourself, saying things like, “Hey, you just need to practice one song today. Can we do that? I bet we can.”

When I started building the habit of writing every weekday, I forced myself to have it be the smallest possible daily practice. For a while, my daily goal wasn’t even a word count goal, it was simply: show up. Check in with the novel. Now, my daily goal is 250 words - which is still ridiculously easy. That way, when I procrastinate for half an hour and feel guilty and stuck, I can nudge myself back towards my novel and say, “Hey girl, I just want you to try to write 250 words. I bet you can. Let’s try it.”

Speaking of that, the next step is to stop letting the guilt trip you up.

Step 2: Let Go of the Shame

Procrastination can kill a creative career, not just because it means you never get started, but because it is linked to feelings of shame and anxiety. And that is a terribly difficult place to create from.

So, instead of beating myself up when I find that I’ve “wasted time” instead of working on a project, I gently lead myself back. I have loads of self compassion and say things like, “Okay, that was fun, now let’s refocus.”

Shame is going to cripple you. Gentleness will free you.

So now, we’re on to step 3.

Step 3: Embrace that it Might be Part of the Process

For me, I am learning to embrace that a bit of procrastination is part of my process. Especially if it is mid project procrastination. In other words, I’ve sat down to work, I’ve looked at where I am in the novel, I’ve written a few sentences, and then I inevitably open my email or go make a cup of tea or check instagram. As long as I come back to the creative project and finish my words for the day, procrastination is part of the process. Getting distracted is part of the process. I have to keep a bit of a leash on it so that I don’t lose all my time to it, but honestly it has been so freeing to let go of the shame.

I try to make art. I get distracted. I make art. I get distracted. I keep making art.

This is my process. But see what I’m doing a lot of? MAKING ART! :)

If I let the shame in, it would be: I make art. I get distracted. I feel ashamed. I look back at my art, but I can’t make anything. I go back to being distracted. I feel stuck. I never finish projects.

No. I let go of the shame. If I find that I’m off task when I’m supposed to be creating, I roll my eyes and smile at myself, and I gently lead myself back to the page I’m supposed to be writing.

I no longer fear procrastination. I welcome it as part of the creative process.