The New Year has arrived…about a week ago. It’s a perfect time to talk about your New Year’s Resolutions…later. Maybe later…right now I’m kind of preoccupied.

Yes. Let us discuss procrastination. Ah, the glories of procrastination. You can get so much stuff DONE when you procrastinate, right? You know what I mean…that thrilling hour before a project is due - the mad rush to format those files, burn those discs, call your mom, feed your fish, get married and buy that sweet new six-ink deskjet that you would have bought earlier but just didn’t have the money really available.

Here’s a big secret: no time is ever truly wasted. Because what efficiency experts fail to realize is that procrastination is the adult version of daydreaming…of playtime. Play is the most valuable thing in the human condition, and even more valuable to the creative mind. We’ve all read the articles about companies who incorporate play into their business model only to see efficiency skyrocket. Play relieves stress. Play opens the creative mind. Play frees the spirit and makes good work possible.

Make time for procrastination and play, even during the workday. Those who make the push to finish early are left sitting at their desks with nothing to do anyway…fools. And procrastination strips away the ideas that sounded good in the morning…like week-late stories about New Year’s resolutions. To that end, you must play eight hours of Hedgehog Catapult to make that ninth hour devoted to work. You must clear your head of the need to visit eBay before you can build your client’s website. And even better than the Zen-like clearing of clutter from our brains is the inspiration that comes from such play. Three torturous hours of Boomshine will inspire a beautiful poster of candy-colored bubbles. That playtime procrastination pays for itself over and over again. Think about it.

I sing the praises of procrastination in all earnest! Nothing truly would get done without the deadline dash. Because people…are like toothpaste tubes. We require a period of kneading, of rolling along, of a certain amount of pressure to provide usefulness. Too much pressure and we pop at both ends; too little pressure and we’re not going to be of use to anyone.

Oh, I was going to talk about New Year’s, wasn’t I? Oh well…I’ll get to it later. In the end it wasn’t that important anyway.

Thomas (Tom) Stephan | Director of Something Clever
BoDo Author | Dyer Straits