Speaker: Adam Grant (Interviewed by Steve Bartlett)
Summary#
The Creative Benefits of Procrastination: Research Reveals Surprising Connection Between Delaying Tasks and Generating Innovative Ideas.
[00:01] Procrastinating can boost creativity:
- - Initial disbelief challenged by PhD student's perspective.
- - Realization through encounter with creative procrastinator.
[00:18] Procrastinators can have more creativity:
- - Psychologist term 'precrastinator' refers to immediate action upon having an idea.
- - Speaker received creative ideas while procrastinating, contrary to their usual behavior.
[00:33] Procrastinators are more creative:
- - Research study involved testing people in various jobs.
- - Experiments showed correlation between procrastination and creativity.
:[00:48] Procrastinators show higher creativity:
- - Study found procrastinators scored higher creativity on tasks.
- - Procrastinating a little boosts creativity compared to not procrastinating at all.
[01:06] Procrastination and creativity are inversely related:
- - People who always procrastinated were found to be less creative.
- - Both extremes of procrastination, either never or always procrastinating, were associated with negative outcomes.
[01:22] Procrastination can lead to increased creativity:
- - Procrastination allows for idea incubation and connecting patterns.
- - It provides distance from the problem, leading to new perspectives.
[01:38] Procrastination boosts creativity when intrinsically motivated:
- - Reframing the task helps to see it from a broader perspective.
- - Procrastination only boosts creativity if intrinsically motivated.
[01:54] Procrastinators may have more creativity:
- - Procrastination can be a result of being stuck or patient.
- - Putting off a decision may lead to a creative boost.
Transcript#
Procrastinating can make you more creative.
I was like no, this can’t be true. I didn’t believe her. And I challenged her to test it.
One day, a PhD student, Jihae Shin, who came to my office. And said: “I actually think that procrastinating can make you more creative.”
And Jihae is incredibly creative. And I didn’t believe her.
I was like, “no, this can’t be true.” And she said,“really, I have my most creative ideas when I’m procrastinating.”
And I didn’t believe it. Because I guess I’ve always been what psychologists call “a pre-crastinator, which is somebody who the moment you have an idea, you want to immediately put it into practice.”
I was always excited to get things done early. And I was proud of being a good finisher.
And I challenged her to test it, and so she went out and studied people in various jobs, and had them actually fill out a survey on how often they procrastinate, and then their supervisors rated their creativity.
Then, we ran some experiments together where we tempted people to procrastinate by putting different numbers of funny YouTube videos available while they were supposed to be doing creative tasks. And we got their creativity scored by experts.
And lo and behold, it turned out that people who procrastinate a little bit are more creative than people who pre-crastinate like me.
Why? Well we we had a few hunches at first that we tested. The first thing I wanted to know is what happened to the people who always procrastinate? And Jihae was like, “I don’t know.They never filled out my survey.”
No, they did eventually fill out the survey. And they were also less creative. So both extremes were bad.
If you never procrastinate, if you always procrastinate, you are less creative than if you sometimes do, or if you do a little.
And what we found is, there are a couple of mechanisms at play, one is that procrastination can lead you to incubate ideas in the back your mind.
You have time to connect the dots, see patterns you didn’t see before. You end up getting some distance from the problem, and that allows you to reframe it, and look at it from a broader perspective.
And so what was interesting in the data, though, was that procrastination only boosted creativity if you were intrinsically motivated by the problem. So if you were putting it off because you were bored or you didn’t care, then it didn’t stay active in the back of your mind.
But if you were putting it off, because you were stuck and you hadn’t figured it out yet, or you were being patient, you wanted to have 10 or 12 more ideas before you decided which one to pursue, then you actually got a creative boost.