Martin Luther King Jr. gave one of the most well-known speeches in American history during the 1963 March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom. He also prepared the speech the night before, finishing at about 3 A.M.
And it wasn’t because he was too busy to start early. Martin Luther King had spent weeks getting counseling and advice on his speech. But he decided he would not start using anything until four days before his speech. He’d rather have had access to all the best possible ideas before starting his address. Which was why he crammed it all in the night before.
The interesting aspect is the well-known phrase “I had a dream…” It was completely an improvisation. During the speech itself, Martin Luther King decided to pivot with it as the idea struck him suddenly while on stage. Had he prepared his speech a long time ago, he likely wouldn’t have risked trying this new idea on the spot, or even have thought of the phrase. But considering his speech was patched up last minute to begin with, he was willing to go of-course. And thus the most well-known phrase of the Civil Rights Movement was borne due to intentional procrastination.
Procrastination has an overwhelmingly negative connotation. It’s viewed as a sign of laziness, lack of motivation, and inefficiency to get things done. It is, after all, simply putting off things that you should be doing now.
But even for something that seems so clearly unwanted, we still cannot wholly define it as negative. In fact, some researchers view procrastination as a positive task. Adam Grant, who recounted MLK’s story in his book Originals [1] and a Wharton business professor, found a surprising habit in high-thinking and high-achieving leaders in that they always procrastinate their tasks.
Can it be that procrastination could lead us to higher levels of success? And if so, how can we use it to our advantage?
The “Empty” Gap
Carnegie Mellon professor Anita Woolley gave separate teams the task of building a residential structure out of LEGOs which were graded based on their size, sturdiness, and aesthetics. Randomly, a team could either discuss what to do at the beginning of the task, or were only allowed to do so after 25 minutes had elapsed. But all teams had to finish 50 minutes from the beginning, meaning they all finished at the same time. Surprisingly, the teams that could only discuss at the midpoint were about 80% more effective on all markers compared to the teams who started in the beginning.
Adam Grant points out this study in his book to showcase the genius of procrastination: forced idea generation time. While the immediately-meeting teams were still working with a vague concept of the task and rushed to implement an idea, the midpoint teams were forced to wait and sit on the task. Without concern to start immediately, they repeatedly replaced old ideas with new, novel ones. And once they could start building, their vision was clear enough that they could do it given only half the building time as the other team groups.
This gap where it seems like nothing is getting done actually contributes to creative thinking. And without an incentive to start implementing, one can take the time to keep finding new ideas.
A Pillow For Your Thoughts
In fact, this process could be improved even more through other means.
Neuroscientist Ullrich Wagner at the University of Luebeck, Germany conducted a research study consistings of have participants solve hundreds of number-string problems laboriously. But interestingly, there’s a hidden shortcut that could be used to solve nearly all the problems in a far shorter time.
All participants spent a few hours solving these problems. Then, after twelve hours, participants were again asked to spend a couple more hours solving these problems. The difference being one group stayed awake those twelve hours and were allowed to think about the problems, while the other group slept for eight within that gap. After the second round, participants were asked whether they had caught on to the secret trick. For the first group, 20% were able to demonstrate that they had learned it. But for the group that slept, 60% caught on. That’s a 3x improvement.
Using sleep to improve performance and thinking is not a new concept. In fact, NASA’s data indicated a 34% increase in productivity to workers who simply took afternoon naps. This is why NASA, and even companies such as Google, actively promote a napping culture. But we now understand that sleep, specifically REM sleep, is a creative incubator for the brain. It’s been shown that there’s a 15-35% increase in problem solving abilities during REM sleep compared to NREM sleep and while awake! (You can read more about how this is concluded in Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep [2])
The next time you’re faced with a daunting problem, it’s worth pushing it off to take a nap. Better yet, set it for the next morning after taking a full night’s rest. The advice of “sleeping on it” could not be more true for finding new and creative solutions.
Efficiency Is Overrated
One would think such top level performers plan to work at the highest levels of efficiency, meaning getting things done as soon as possible. We often conclude those with this ability as being high level performers themselves. But Adam Grant’s research might show that we actually need to make the inverse assumptions.
Efficiency means trying to get as much output from your input, which we often define as time. While it is an important metric, it can oftentimes be misleading. Creativity and learning is hampered by a constant gradient towards faster output. We are essentially trading the possible quality of what we are doing for the sake of efficiency.
But imagine if we flipped the script. What if instead of prioritizing efficiency and completion, we prioritized novel idea generation? We keep dead zones in place to stop us from starting something too early. And we relish empty gaps, and especially sleep, as an opportunity to gain more insight into a problem, not less.
To be clear, I am not at all proclaiming we should always output everything at the last minute. It doesn’t matter how creative you were able to think in that situation. Nor am I saying you should use this as an excuse to procrastinate on simple tasks. And most of all, this is pointless if you’re not doing this strategically. Then you’re simply delaying work for avoidance, not exploring new ideas.
It requires us to do so with intention and purpose. It means looking at a problem and sitting on it while doing absolutely nothing else to make ourselves busy. That can be more challenging than just getting it out of the way!
But if this were done right, we can start to recognize that completion is not the same as greatness. And relaxing our stringent ideal of early efficiency can provide the gaps necessary for creative thinking. This is what strategic procrastination is about.
My affiliate links for the books I reference are below if you’d like to check them out yourself.
