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ome of us make lists. Elaborate, painstakingly crafted ‘mega’ lists (colour-coded and

accessorised with Post-it notes if we’re feeling particularly adventurous). Others choose to scroll through the Mail Online’s ‘sidebar of shame’, or take an extra 20 minutes just to correctly name their standing orders while internet banking, or browse property porn on Rightmove. We daydream, we potter, we tidy our desks so thoroughly we disinfect our keyboards and our phones. While writing this feature I resorted to blasting pan pipe

music at an uncomfortable level through my headphones to stop myself watching the #thuglifecat video on repeat. The reality is, we have many, many different distractions at our disposal when it comes to avoiding important tasks. But there’s one thing that unites us all – we have the fine art of procrastination (the action of delaying or postponing something) down to a tee.

A recent study by YouGov found that adults in the UK spend an average of 218 minutes procrastinating every day. That’s over 25 hours a week, and adds up to an alarming 55 days a year.

Twenty five per cent of us describe ourselves as ‘chronic’ procrastinators, and the behaviour manifests itself mostly in the office. Yes, the very place we’re supposed to be most productive. In fact, we spend 43 minutes at work each day doing very little indeed (from covering our notebooks with doodles during meetings, to getting lost down the YouTube rabbit hole while ‘researching’). But while we might previously have berated ourselves for these ‘avoidance tactics’, new research suggests that actually – when approached correctly – procrastination can be an

Tend to prioritise doodling over actual work? Fear not. New research has found procrastination can do

wonders for your career. Stylist investigates Words: Lizzie Pook Illustration: Sarah J Coleman

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daydream achiever

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invaluable workplace tool, making us more creative,

helping hone our decision-making skills and acting as a marker for intelligence in high-achievers (tell that to your super-efficient colleagues).

i n o u r n at u r e We may not like to admit it, preferring to see ourselves as skilled multi-taskers, but we all procrastinate. It’s ingrained in us. Scientists have found that as much as 50% of our daily thoughts are spent on ‘spontaneous cognition’, otherwise known as daydreaming or mind wandering. And evading unappealing tasks is certainly not a new behaviour. In fact, it dates back to the very beginnings of civilisation. University of Toronto egyptologist Ronald Leprohon recently translated a set of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs that read, ‘Friend, stop putting off work and allow us to go home in good time’, and Ancient Greek orator Demosthenes was known to shave one side of his head so he had to stay indoors rehearsing his speeches rather than be tempted to wander outside for a distraction and face being ridiculed. But the opportunity and therefore the temptation to waste time has become easier over the years and as a result the number of ‘procrastinators’ has exploded.

“In the last 40 years there’s been about a 300-400% growth in chronic procrastination,” says Dr Piers Steel, world-leading researcher on the subject and author of The Procrastination Equation. This is arguably because our everyday lives – and the office space in particular – are breeding grounds for it. Tea rounds are there to be made, our chair (and its various adjustment levels) are there to be tinkered with and for most of us, the computers we use to produce our work are also the means by which we access our emails, watch

Game Of Thrones

bloopers and send our friends BuzzFeed articles titled, ‘50 dogs who are really happy to be wearing hats’. Plus work is no longer rigid – we don’t toil away in factories while the overseer glowers at us threateningly and shoos us out promptly when the bell tolls. Nowadays, it’s easier to spread out our work, hanging around in the office late into the evening should we choose. As long as we complete our set tasks by the end of the day, finding something else to do in those quiet moments is too big a draw.

ta k e yo u r t i m e But perhaps we should be re-framing the way we look at procrastination. “If you’re able to organise your procrastination and be in control of it, it can be a beneficial behaviour,” says Steel. Along with other academics and psychologists, he argues that procrastinating in the correct way can actually make us smarter. “While procrastinating, there are

two types of attentiveness: inward and outward,” he says. “While outward attentiveness, such as playing Candy Crush Saga, occupies your mind in one particular direction, it doesn’t really have any benefits. Inward attentiveness, such as doodling, daydreaming and mulling things over, is associated with improved cognitive capacity as it allows our brains to rest and explore connections that we might not have made before.” Consider how much easier a crossword or Sudoku is to finish when you’ve spent two minutes reading the cartoons. It brings a new depth to the advice to “sleep on it”.

This mind wandering has been scientifically proven to sharpen our brains. We might find ourselves at our desks staring

listlessly out of the nearby window, or directly at our

colleague who is

awkwardly in our ‘resting’ eye-line. And as our minds drift we might think about how to tackle that sensitive HR issue that’s been playing on our minds, or how we might get our fledgling business idea off the ground. This type of daydreaming may seem positively docile, but – as a 2012 study by scientists at Bar-Ilan University in Israel corroborates – it actually involves a highly engaged state. This is because it requires input from lots of different parts of the brain (something called ‘cross-brain involvement’). The areas that deal with self-awareness, evaluation, future planning and memory consolidation become highly focused, meaning we’re ‘honing’ our cognitive function as we think in this way. The same study even found those with a wandering mind have a distinct cognitive advantage over their peers. So giving your brain 10 minutes of downtime at your desk might actually give you the edge in that

upcoming budget meeting. And if your favoured type of

procrastination takes the form of browsing the Net-a-Porter website, there is evidence that this behaviour can have a positive impact on our work relationships. Research has shown that surfing the internet activates the basal ganglia, a cluster of nuclei in the brain. This triggers the pleasure hormone dopamine to be released – which has been proven to help strengthen bonds with those around us, such as our colleagues. (At Stylist, a Friday BuzzFeed list has often brought the office together after a tough week.)

Putting things off also makes us more creative. If your frenetic commute and militant 9am to 6pm routine has left you lacking inspiration, ‘structured’ procrastination could be beneficial if you can exercise the right sort of self-control. “Mind wandering seems to be very useful for planning and creative thought,” says Dr Jonathan Schooler, from the University of

California Santa Barbara’s department of psychological and brain sciences. “It seems that allowing people an incubation period in which to let their minds explore really helps the creative process.” Put into practice, this means that by ‘scheduling’ regular periods of procrastination or ‘incubation’ throughout our day, we could be opening our minds up to a wealth of creative ideas released by our subconscious.

Steel agrees. “Doing everything the moment it’s required is somewhat obsessive and not always functional.” He believes that by delaying tasks but remaining in control of them, we will end up with a more creative result. “Starting a project before you have all the information or tools that you need is counterproductive,” he says. “By all means we should start getting notes down, reading up about it and allowing our subconscious to start coming up with ideas, but then we should give it all time to bake. Then when you eventually come back to it later with a little bit of time pressure added in, that’s when you have the ‘aha’ moments. It might look like pointless procrastination to some people, but it’s actually closer to efficiency.”

Having the patience to wait for the right moment to tackle a troublesome task actually requires a lot of self-control. But evidence suggests that by opting to give ourselves that sort of time pressure, we can improve our performance at work. “Some amounts of stress are good to push you to the level of optimal alertness, behavioural and cognitive performance,” says Daniela Kaufer, associate professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. So while chronic stress puts our health at risk, a limited amount of adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine – the hormones activated by the fight or flight response –

“mulling things over allows our brains to rest and

explore connections we might not have made before”

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push us to be more aware, focused and responsive to

what’s happening around us. There are actually some

people who use procrastination as their main method of getting things done, including Lena Dunham who has publicly praised its benefits. The idea of ‘productive procrastination’ was first floated by Stanford University professor John Perry in his 1995 essay, Structured Procrastination (he went on to win the Ig Nobel Prize in literature so we’re happy to take his advice.) “Perry’s theory works on the basic idea that any vile thing can be used as a basic motivator if it helps you avoid an even more vile thing,” says Steel. “We’ve all cleaned the bathroom, or written thank-you letters, or done something we really don’t want to do because it provides justification to avoid something else even worse.”

When done correctly, this is something we can make work for us. As long as your alleged ‘top priority’ is something sufficiently intimidating (learn Cantonese), it’ll feel comparatively easier to do something that’s actually more important (ring the council tax people). As Perry puts it, “Procrastinators never do absolutely nothing.” De-cluttering

have the capacity to foil us, but when used in the right way, it can be one of our most valuable workplace devices. It helps us slow down and think, focus and make better decisions in the whirlwind of stress our ‘immediate gratification’ culture perpetuates. It can also help others, as sometimes not acting immediately creates the space for others to step up and solve problems. Historically, the most intelligent people were considered to be those who took the time to ponder life rather than run around doing endless tasks. In Ancient Rome and Greece the wisest leaders would sit around and think and do not very much at all unless they absolutely had to. So maybe we should take a leaf out of their book.

“Procrastination is part of the common pulse of humanity,” says Steel. “From politicians to factory workers, all of us struggle with procrastination and we always have. It’s what makes us human. But instead of seeing it as this major vice we should recognise its benefits and make our peace with it.” So spend your next 10 minutes doing absolutely nothing. It could be the most productive thing you do all day.

W h a t y o u r d o o d l e s ay s a b o u t y o uThose drawings on your notepad could reveal more about you than you might think. Graphologist Elaine Quigley explains

our desks, making that tricky phone call to a client or completing more ‘menial’ chores that are lower down on our ‘to-do’ lists, is at least something. He even suggests making a ‘task triage’ list – with the worst things you don’t want to do at the top and more achievable ones below. By actively avoiding the ones at the top; you’ll accomplish the ones beneath them much quicker.

And when you do eventually come round to that big task, having given your ideas time to percolate, you’ll end up with an even better end product. Case in

point: author David Nicholls. While writing Us, the follow-up to One Day, long-time procrastinator Nicholls decided to use a rather brutal anti-procrastinating app called ‘Write Or Die’. If users ponder too long over the next word they type, an ominous red glow will descend over the page and their text will disappear haphazardly (this is what a sntnc lks lk ftr prcrstntng fr 20 scnds). Nicholls likened it to “writing with a gun to my head” and admitted

that he produced some of the worst work he’d ever done. He eventually discarded two years and 35,000 words. If that’s not proof that it’s occasionally good to dawdle, we don’t know what is.

t h e d o w n s i d e That said, this feature isn’t an excuse to doodle away your afternoon. Procrastination can be destructive if you’re missing deadlines regularly or not prepping for that important meeting because you’re spending an hour every day watching the Carly Rae Jepsen/Tom Hanks

video. When this happens, take stock of the situation. Structured procrastination does not mean doing what you want all day and then finishing your work in a frenzied caffeine high at 3am. If you’re losing control, impose mental deadlines on yourself; break your goals into small pieces and ‘tick off’ each stage; reward yourself with a cup of tea after you complete a task – don’t make it beforehand ‘in preparation’.

Procrastination will always

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“we’ve all cleaned the bathroom or written thank-

you letters to avoid doing something else even worse”

Fac e s A profile suggests upset or worry. Large eyes could indicate a sensitive nature and long lashes frustration, while big eyebrows can emphasise a sexual element. Spiky hair can show you’re mentally alert.

P y r a m i d s /t r i a n g l e sThese show a constructive mind and practical approach. You might not have a lot of imagination and creativity but are good when a task needs accuracy and attention to detail.

s ta r sStars suggest you’re comfortable being the centre of attention. Sharp angles can show determination to succeed and strength to hold on until a goal is reached. Stars with shaded areas can suggest worry.

Z i g Z ag sThose who draw zigzags are not always gentle people. Like the stars, the sharp points reveal determination and a desire to climb to the top, and you will be likely to use ingenuity to get results.

s P i r a l sOn their own or in repeat formation, spirals indicate a desire for security, within the family or workplace. When a spiral is doodled over and over again this can reveal anxiety and a tendency to brood over problems.

B ox e sBoxes imply self-control and a logical mind. If you don’t shade in the boxes it can suggest confidence, but if you do it indicates a caring nature. Boxes within a box show you don’t like being alone.