In college, Mr. Grant finished his thesis paper four months before the deadline, and when he was a kid, he woke up at 5 AM to practice Nintendo games until he mastered them, which led a local newspaper to profile him for a story called “The Dark Side of Nintendo.
” Unlike himself, who is considered a precrastinator, Mr. Grant discovered that original thinkers are major procrastinators.
“I had a student named Jihee, who came to me and said ‘I have my most creative ideas when I’m procrastinating’ and I was like ‘that’s cute. Where are the four papers you owe me?'” She was one of his most creative students, so he challenged her to get some data.
She surveyed people on their procrastination habits and then got their bosses to comment on how creative they are.
The precrastinators were rated as less creative than those who procrastinate moderately. Next, Mr. Grant designed some experiments to see if the relationship between procrastination and creativity is simply a correlation or if the former actually causes the latter. He asked people to generate new business ideas, tasking some to do it right away and others to do it five or 10 minutes later later.
When independent raters reviewed them, those who procrastinated by playing Minesweeper for five minutes (as opposed to doing it right away or playing for 10) were rated as 16 percent more creative. And it wasn’t because of Minesweeper itself; the creativity boost only occurs when you procrastinate after learning about the task.