Procrastination is common amongst all of us who create. But then that’s no great shock to you, is it?

How often does procrastination effect your creativity?

Be honest, in a typical day of creating, how much of that day would be taken up using procrastination techniques to avoiding creating?

There are many ways to overcome procrastination. Ultimately, they all involve thinking less and creating more.

Here’s why that is:

What happens when you think before you create:

You spend ages trying to find the perfect place to begin creating.

The longer you spend thinking, the more you feel your motivation to create draining (or gushing!) away.

The more you think, the more you open up the possible options. Hold on, isn’t creativity about new ways of thinking and doing things? Yes, but spending time considering EVERY possible option isn’t so good.

It means you get confused and overwhelmed with too much choice.

For example, if you went to buy a new car and they had blue cars, red cars and green cars, making a choice would be much easier and quicker then if the car dealer said: “Here’s our colour palette for this model, we have 27 different solid colours and 14 metallics, 7 of those being pearlescent. And for a small extra fee we can have our paint technicians mix the exact colour you’d like. The choice is yours…”

Decision overload!

You then start to also question whether this is the right medium for the idea you have, and the choices that were already overwhelming have now been opened 100-fold to encompass every other possible form of creative expression that exists.

Overall, your confidence, your faith in making a good decision, and your desire and ability to create gradually slips away with every moment you spend THINKING about creating rather than just creating.

So what’s the alternative? Is there a better approach?

What happens when you create first, think later:

You start with a high level of enthusiasm and get creating right away. This creative energy carries forward and quickly builds momentum. Creating comes far more easily as a result.

You learn as you go what works and what doesn’t. Rather than pondering and speculating over what might work and what might not, you simple find out by getting stuck in and experimenting. The best way to learn is in the doing.

Also, when you get creating, you teach yourself to be more creative and to trust your creative instinct more.

In time, this makes it even easier to create, you need less time to think and ponder which might be the best step to take, you just trust yourself, listen to what your creative instinct is telling you and create!

Your confidence builds as you create more, as well as your enjoyment and desire to create more and more. Plus, you know that you’re learning and developing all the time.

As you can see, the advantages of “create first, think later” are multiple.

How can you start to take on this behaviour today to help yourself be more creative?

Pick a project, get creating.

Create first, think later.

And procrastinate later! You’ll find it’ll increase your creativity – and your enjoyment of creating – many times over.

2 Comments so far

1. Do More with Less Resources | rearrange-inc.com on August 19, 2008 2:02 pm

   [...] I have a bad network connection at home currently; thus the lack of updates on this blog. Things keep playing in my mind and I have a lot of it, yet the post never existed *sigh*.Maybe it’s true that overthinking always led to procrastination - as per this article here. [...]

2. mae collins on August 20, 2008 10:13 pm

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