Creative Procrastination: Thinking out loud

Have you come across other artist's online postings and wondered why do they often share their thoughts and experiences? Some do not seem to be related to what they do as an artist. Ah, so it seemed. From my point of view, they are related—they can be entertaining, insightful, and occasionally abrasive. Of course there are procrastinations that amount to nothing simply because of laziness, indifference, or fear, but I believe most forms of procrastinations exercised by creative people are usually productive. When artists set aside something to fiddle with something else, they are not postponing a task to be eventually forgotten or never to be explored again. Instead they are quite unconsciously mulling about what and how they want to do something, or sometimes not even thinking about it. The latter is a time-out moment—to take a break so that an artist can come back to it with a fresh creative spirit.

With online social services like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, artist have taken advantage of these services to think out loud. This is importantly part of our creative process. It is one of our pet vices. It is what I like to describe it as creative procrastination. Yes I know, a misnomer, but it works. It is our time-out moment.

I use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and this blog, as my outlets. We artists like to think out loud on those sites when we are in our creative procrastination mode. For example, I like to try out new recipes, or experiment on recipes; I like sharing humour which some can be over the top; I like sharing some articles, but I avoid politics and controversies. If I do share such, it would be interjected with wit, but I like to interject wit into nearly everything I share online. The latter is the flippant or comic side of me, which is also part of my creative procrastination process. After some time, I would return to my work with a fresh creative spirit, and I would produce one piece after another, or sometimes nothing at all. If the latter, I sometimes would wallow in self-pity, which sometimes can be a good thing, but that is for another topic. Back to procrastination, I am sure Dr. Timothy A Pychyl Ph.D. will beg to differ about procrastination. Regardless of his position described in Procrastination As A Virtue For Creativity, Why It’s False, I make no apologies when I procrastinate. Of course, on the other hand, somethings should be tackled without delay. I would just do it, and see where it takes me.

No matter what happens in the [studio], never apologise. — Julia Child