Could Procrastination be a Sign of Growth?

Productivity, parenting, and leaving academia during a pandemic

Photo by Luke Carliff on Unsplash

In productivity literature, procrastination’s got a very bad rep. And that’s putting it mildly. Procrastination is deemed the apotheosis of unproductivity itself: you’re able to do something, but you’re not doing it. What’s worse than not having the capability is having it, and wasting it.

Procrastination flies in the face of positivity culture where moments of “negativity” or inaction like rest, or aimless action like play, are valued but not in themselves. They are valued as investments for efficient productivity. You’re encouraged to take your rest and have fun, just so you can perform better later on. As though you’re taking a loan of time to spend as you wish on guilty unmonetized pursuits, only to repay later with more buck for the hour.

Procrastination’s got a very bad rep despite the fact that geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Claude Shannon were known to be chronic, even extreme, procrastinators. They were very productive, too (even if unevenly, as we might guess).

Many claim to have nailed the “real reasons” we procrastinate. But there are — to my mind, at least — as many reasons as there are procrastinators themselves. It’s a highly individual matter that…