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31. Which type of procrastinator are you?
Discover your procrastination style and why it makes your creative work all the better
Rory Sutherland wrote one of my very favorite marketing books, Alchemy. It’s a favorite because it eschews typical marketing tactics and channels in favor of the art and science of connecting your company to your audience. Sutherland knows a thing or two about this as he is a vice chairman at the famous Ogilvy advertising agency, the agency that inspired Mad Men.
Given my affinity for Sutherland content, I was delighted to see him cross my TikTok feed the other day. But then I was immediately scandalized by the first few words he said in the video:
“Creative people are annoying to other people. They are procrastinators.”
I don’t want anyone to ever besmirch creative people! And calling them (us) annoying procrastinators seems like maximum besmirchment.
But then I watched the whole video.
And had a snack.
And felt a lot better.
Procrastination, as it turns out, is an essential part of many a creative person’s process. As we’ve talked about in past newsletters, to build a creative practice for yourself requires a handful of ingredients: constraints, commitment, and time. Procrastination buys us more time.
The annoying part occurs because while we creative folks are procrastinating, everyone else is grinding. When given a task or project, many people will lean forward and start the work. Many creative people will lean back and hunt for inspiration. If we agree that creativity is the act of bringing two or more ideas together in a new way, then we have to admit that sometimes this idea wrangling takes time.
There are countless examples of creative people taking an “annoying” approach to their work.
In Rory Sutherland’s example, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright had months to work up proposals for the famous home Falling Water, whose brief asked for a home next to a waterfall. He didn’t start designing the plans until his clients were on their way to meet him. And he put the house over the waterfall, not beside it.
Author Gertrude Stein needed to look at a cow before writing. Yes, a cow. And sometimes not just any cow would do, as her companion-turned-cow fetcher found out. From a 1934 New Yorker article: “If the cow doesn’t seem to fit in with Miss Stein’s mood, the ladies get into the car and drive on to another cow.”
Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, would take a break from work to put on a pair of gravity boots and hang upside down from an exercise frame until ideas spilled from his brain (and loose change from his pockets, I imagine).
I spent several minutes – okay, half an hour – googling famous authors and playing The New York Times word games before starting to write this newsletter. Procrastination was just the medicine I needed.
Why procrastination helps
When we argue for more creativity in our work and in our lives, we are advocating for a change to the mundane homogeneity that is bred by a focus on efficiency and playbooks. Creativity is an explicit stand against sameness. So with this idea in mind, procrastination – which we’re taught at an early age is a big no-no – actually serves very important roles in our creative output.
1 - Procrastination gives us the space to consider more options, to be inspired more times
It may appear as if procrastination actually reduces our time spent on a creative project because we’re rushing to finish it right at the end when it could have been done so much sooner. But in reality, creative people are often working on their tasks from the moment they receive them; the work may just not look like work: thinking, waiting, meditating, subconsciously turning ideas over in our heads.
John Cleese talked about this well-known anecdote of architects and productivity: The least talented architects will start drawing up plans on Day One. The most talented architects will commit nothing to paper except doodles on Day One.
2 - Procrastination gives us the time to sweat the details
Emotional resonance, visceral meaning, and surprise and delight are often found in the details. Sometimes, the more obscure and trivial the detail, the better!
By having more time to sit with our projects, we become more attuned to the details and how slight tweaks here and there can make for an entirely new experience. As an example, Rory Sutherland gives the following variations of a request to close a door:
“Can you close the door”
“Can you close the door please”
“There’s a draft”
Each way of asking feels unique and distinct, even though the requested action is the same. There is no “right” way to ask the question; but by spending time with it, you may find that one way suits your needs more perfectly than another.
Words matter, tone matters, details matter. And if we don’t procrastinate and don’t spend time sitting in the details, we may rush past them toward an efficient, streamlined finish that robs us of a creative, fulfilling final outcome.
What kind of procrastinator are you?
Researchers have studied procrastination (sounds like research my school friends would have commissioned), and they’ve identified six different types:
The Perfectionist: Those who are overly concerned with failing to meet high expectations. They work so hard that they never finish – or get so stressed out that they never start.
The Dreamer: Those who are great at planning but do not enjoy the practical reality of having to do the hard work of execution and tactics.
The Worrier: Those who get stuck on the “what if” and the “fear of missing out.” The unfamiliar causes them to tarry, to avoid making decisions, and to resist change.
The Crisis-Maker: Those who enjoy the adrenaline rush of doing something at the very last minute. They tell themselves they work best under pressure.
The Defier: Those who push back against the system, rebelling against deadlines and responsibilities and external expectations.
The Overdoer: Those who fill their plates too full because they can’t set boundaries or can’t say no. They procrastinate because there isn’t enough time to get it all done.
Do any of these resonate with you? (There’s a quiz you can take if you want to get your “official” results.)
At face value, some of these procrastination types seem to fit the archetype of creatives more so than others. A Defier might push back against the system if the system doesn’t allow enough time and space for exploration. A Dreamer might procrastinate by spending time in the clouds of a project before finally jumping into the dirt at the last minute.
But I think it’s more likely that all the different procrastination types lend themselves to creative output at one time or another. I’ve been an Overdoer in my past, and I’ve been surprised at how creative my last-minute projects turn out – because I’d been subconsciously turning them over in my head while I scrambled (for the record, I do not recommend being an Overdoer for too long). As a former journalist, I also recognize my Crisis-Maker past as a creative person who thrived under deadline pressure.
There is no wrong way to procrastinate
No matter how or how often you find yourself procrastinating, it’s a meaningful mindset shift to recognize this behavior as yet another way you can be more of your creative self. What might look like procrastination and avoidance to others is actually part of our successful creative process.
Reclaim procrastination for the secret superpower that it is.
(And maybe someday people won’t find us so annoying.)
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