Is procrastination a stalling tactic or a facilitator of insight and innovation?
Neuroscience has explored the ancient practice of meditation and found its benefits for relaxing the mind to engage a heightened state of awareness and receptivity. Moreover, mundane or routine activities that allow the mind to wander have been shown to refresh the mind, much like meditation.
The underlying principles which make meditation so useful has correlations in distraction. To explain, when we focus arduously for long periods our capacity for thought (more aptly original thought) is taxed. In a state of depletion procrastination often surfaces (perhaps) as a coping mechanism (fail-safe). By definition procrastination is to delay or postpone action—to take one’s time. When we meditate we still ourselves, delay action and allow quiet observation to direct our attention with a more fluid focus.
We can restore and prime ourselves to be receptive to sensory stimulation and creative thought once our minds are open and relaxed. This leads to connections otherwise unseen when the limitations of forced focus are replaced by a vast potential in which discoveries lie.
So I ask you… When repurposed and defined as a deliberate distraction, is procrastination our foe or the key to insight and innovation?
