Somehow, I missed that John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) wrote a book on creativity last year (Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide). I bought it yesterday and have just about finished it (I’m not a fast reader; it’s just very short. For the record, if you’re going to go with one absurdly short book on creativity, I recommend James Webb Young’s fantastic A Technique for Producing Ideas. Lest I digress…).

I particularly enjoyed one passage in Cleese’s book, which highlighted a study I hadn’t seen, because it gave language to a phenomenon I’ve often observed in my own practice: the value of purposeful procrastination. As Cleese puts it:

“A remarkable psychologist called Donald MacKinnon (who had been a spymaster during the Second World War) had become fascinated by creativity, not among artists, but among people like engineers and journalists.

He had a particular interest in architects, because he could see that they needed to be both creative and highly practical. After all, it's no good designing a beautiful building if it's going to fall down.

Donald MacKinnon asked a number of architects whom they considered to be the most creative ones in their profession. Then he went to these ‘creative’ architects and ask them to describe to him what they did, from the moment they got up in the morning to the moment they went to bed at night.

Then he went to a number of uncreative architects (though he didn't tell them that that was why he was talking to them) and ask them exactly the same question.

The conclusion he came to (study here) was that there were only two differences between the creative and the uncreative architects.

The first was that the creative architects knew how to play.

The second was that the creative architects always deferred making decisions for as long as they were allowed… (which) simply means that they are able to tolerate that vague sense of discomfort that we all feel, when some important decision is left open, because they know that an answer will eventually present itself…”

What are the implications of this finding on creative (in)action? Cleese continues:

“If you have a decision to make, the first question you must ask is: ‘When does this decision have to be made?’ You live in the real world, so there is always a cut-off point.

But once it's been agreed when that real-world decision has to happen, why make it before the deadline arrives?

Why?

Well, it would be foolish, because if you can wait longer, two incredibly important things may happen.

1. You may get new information.

2. You may get new ideas.

So why would you make a decision when you don't need to?

Because you're uncomfortable, that's why!

You see, leaving a question unresolved, just leaving it open, makes some people anxious. They worry. And if they can't tolerate that mild discomfort, they go ahead and rush the decision. They probably for themselves that they're being decisive.

But creative people are much better at tolerating the vague sense of worry that we all get when we leave something unresolved. So if, like the creative architects, you can tolerate that anxiety, you will be able to give yourself the time to come up with a better decision.”

The benefits of purposeful procrastination been empirically demonstrated more recently by Shin and Grant, who demonstrated, “Employees who procrastinated moderately received higher creativity ratings from their supervisors than employees who procrastinated more or less, provided that intrinsic motivation or creative requirement was high.”

(Interestingly enough, Adam Grant refers to the same MacKinnon study in his conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda, which I referenced yesterday in my post on setting absurd deadlines.)

Related: Allow Time for Incubation
Related: Escaping the Tyranny of Reason
Related: Resist the Need for Closure
Related: Don’t Hastily Abandon Divergent Thinking

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