From Medium:
Procrastination has a bad reputation. It’s very familiar to all of us. More often than not, it leads to nothing but anxiety, disappointment, and shame.
Almost everyone thinks it’s entirely negative, but there are times when procrastination can work in your favour. You don’t have to be anxious, disappointed and stressed all the time when you put things off, especially when you are a creative professional or need time to think through your work and generate better ideas.
When you have urgent things to take care of, you are more likely to push other tasks down the list of things to do in the day or week. Procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things. You are not necessarily being lazy or careless if you want to complete your work sometime later.
. . . .
Active procrastinators who postpone work for later are mostly in control of their time, are better managers of their time and use it purposefully without worrying too much about missing deadlines. They deliberately delay tasks and feel challenged by approaching deadlines. They comfortable with fear. And a little bit of panic or threat is not an issue.
Active procrastinators will always deliver. They are better at planning but not so good at getting stuff done early when they have lots of time. They work better under pressure though. You could argue that, it’s their way of justifying putting things off.
This doesn’t apply to to passive procrastinators who easily get anxious and can’t master the courage to concentrate and get stuff done because they are constantly thinking of running out of time.
Link to the rest at Medium
A reminder that PG doesn’t necessarily agree with everything he posts to TPV.
He was going to wait to comment until later, but decided not to do so.
Hmmmm… Interesting article. I’ll have to put it on my Read RSN List. 🙂
BTW, another INTJ here.
On the contrary. I find that working steadily, day after day, faithfully turning out a minimum amount of words is what keeps the creativity flowing. All that procrastination does is diminish the amount of work you do. I find that when I put off work I lose inspiration, I don’t increase it. That said, sometimes specific projects need to be put off until they are ready. That’s why you need backup projects to keep you going.
I am INTJ. What looks like procrastination to others is my subconscious working it out.
Ditto, and ditto.
Another INTJ here. I procrastinate when I can’t discern the right answer or the right course of action. Often some heavy contemplation followed by a good night of sleep means I know how to proceed in the morning. And once I know, I take action. 😉
ISTJ here, but close enough. To others it may look like procrastination and doodling but to me it’s thinking and planning. I never miss deadlines (I would actually be horrified to do so), but I do crawl right up on top of them sometimes. When I worked in an office I would keep antacid in my desk drawer for the worrywarts around me, even though I never let them down.
INTJ here, too.
I must be the most creative person on the planet, then, cuz I rock Gibraltar in the procrastination department.
At my tech-writing job, we called it pre-writing and considered it part of the process.
It’s only a problem when true procrastination screws over others’ deadlines.
Others call it procrastination. I call it perfecting the plot. What works for some, may not work for others.