Would you rather be productive or creative?

HALLIE EPHRON: A few weeks ago I found a new word: pre-crastinate. I discovered it while not writing my book – in other words, roaming the Internet. AKA PROcrastinating.

The Scientific American blog talked about pre-crastinators (turns out most of us are) who are likely to hurry and get something done so we can cross it off our mental to-do list, even if the rush ends up being wasteful.

You’re a pre-crastinator if you need to…

• Deal with emails as soon as they come in
• Write thank you notes the week you get the gift
• Return phone calls the same day
• Get to the airport at least an hour before you know you need to be there
• Pack the night before
• Start and finish assigned work long before it’s due

Guilty as charged, your honor. As long as what needs doing is a relatively easy task to knock off. The low hanging fruits of a busy life. And it FEELS like I’m being so productive as I check them off my to-do list.

But the ugly truth: I do them in order to put off writing. I do the easy stuff in order to put off doing the hard stuff. 

In other words, for me pre-crastinating can be a form of PROcrasinating. (Like right now I’m dashing off this blog instead of chipping away at my novel.)

Fortunately (for me), though procrastinating is lethal for productivity, it turns out to be something of a boon for creativity.That's according to Adam Grant, a professor of management and psychology at the Wharton School. (Another article I read while I was NOT writing my book.) 

Procrastinating isn’t such a bad idea if you’re involved in a creative endeavor. And you're in good company. Steve Jobs was a procrastinator. Ditto Bill Clinton and Frank Lloyd Wright. 

Writing is a creative endeavor, right?

I can relate to this, because my first ideas are rarely my best. When I hit a fork in the road, which is every other day in the course of writing a book, the options need to incubate. Gestate. Stew in my brain while I’m knocking off my email and blog and updating my web page. Until voila, what I hope is a golden egg pops out. Hopefully not weeks or months after my manuscript is due. 

What about you? In writing and in life, pre-crastinator or procrastinator, or "it all depends"?