Sorry however no, procrastinating won’t enhance your creativity

Excuse the impertinent query, however why are you studying this column? Is it since you’ve made a thought of resolution to spend time with the Monetary Occasions right this moment, or are you in search of a manner to not must do the factor — you realize, that factor — that you simply’re meant to be doing?

If it’s the latter then it’s attainable that you simply, like me — and about 20 per cent of the inhabitants, based on the American Psychological Affiliation — are a procrastinator.

Due to the truth that everybody procrastinates no less than to some extent, you’ll find many individuals who declare this label: inglorious although it might be, it seems to have some sort of humble-braggy social capital. However it’s only a choose group of us for whom the situation is continual, who’re tormented sufficiently by the illness to have actually earned the badge.

So are we incorrigible or can we do one thing about it? Ought to we? Or is it an vital “a part of the artistic course of”, as a pal put it to me lately as he tried to reassure me that it was acceptable — admirable, even, I fancied — that I had spent the complete day avoiding what I used to be meant to be doing?

Many individuals make this argument. The organisational psychologist Adam Grant, for example, wrote a 2016 New York Occasions op-ed beneath the headline “Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate”. Grant describes how, moderately than sitting down and typing, he as a substitute simply waited. And inspiration did certainly strike: “Whereas procrastinating (ie, considering) . . . it dawned on me.”

“Procrastination (ie, considering)” strikes me as a non sequitur; what Grant describes isn’t procrastinating. Delaying a job since you suppose doing so may very well profit you, or make you extra artistic, shouldn’t be conflated with procrastination. Tim Pychyl, a psychologist and writer of Fixing the Procrastination Puzzle, offers me a helpful definition of the latter: “the voluntary delay of an meant motion, regardless of anticipating to be worse off for the delay”. Grant was doing the other.

And the procrastination zone isn’t the completely satisfied, productive place that Grant appears to have been inhabiting throughout his experiment. It’s as a substitute what Tim City, in a well-known publish on his Wait However Why weblog, describes because the “darkish playground”.

“The enjoyable you will have within the Darkish Playground isn’t really enjoyable as a result of it’s utterly unearned and the air is stuffed with guilt, anxiousness, self-hatred, and dread,” City writes. His examples of the “enjoyable” actions you may partake in embody the “refreshing cellphone electronic mail time and again rollercoaster thrill experience” and “ all 1,200 Fb photographs of highschool particular person you had been by no means pals with journey volcano”.

I do know this playground so nicely. There are few moments of inspiration available right here, simply rising anxiousness and doubtless, sooner or later, sheer panic.

Whereas procrastination is commonly considered about poor time administration, it’s extra a query of poor emotion administration. It permits us, quickly, to keep away from uncomfortable emotions — stress, worry of failure, boredom — nevertheless it additionally results in low vanity.

“There’s this collateral injury on our nicely being,” Fuschia Sirois, professor of social and well being psychology at Durham College, tells me. “After we know we’re not following by means of with issues, and we’re breaking guarantees to ourselves and others, we don’t really feel good.” On condition that procrastination stems from eager to keep away from unfavorable emotions within the first place, we then discover ourselves caught in search of increasingly more methods to flee our feelings, which in flip preserve worsening.

This self-sabotaging cycle is grimly acquainted. However might there be a “treatment”? Some sensible issues assist, comparable to breaking down massive duties into smaller ones, making issues simpler for your self by making ready, and eliminating distractions.

The extra vital work, although, is on the emotional degree. Step one is to acknowledge that this behaviour is completely regular and completely OK, and you aren’t a nasty particular person. The second step is to attempt to cease.

I’ve been gratingly conscious, in scripting this column, of each time I stray off monitor. However funnily sufficient, being extra conscious of it than traditional — extra “within the current”, as mindfulness gurus would possibly say — and realising that self-compassion moderately than self-flagellation is the kinder, extra productive possibility appears to have made me procrastinate lower than traditional.

I hope studying it has not felt like a miserable experience at the hours of darkness playground. However I additionally hope that, when you’ve got one thing else you’d prefer to be getting on with, you’ll take a deep breath, forgive your self, and crack on.

jemima.kelly@ft.com