Procrastination – An Enemy Or An Ally To Creativity?

One of the biggest differences between my professional career and my now day to day life in retirement is the absence of severe time pressures. Over the past 5 and a half years, having control over how I spend my time has unequivocally resulted in a significant reduction in stress levels and frustration as I no longer have to split my time across a number of fronts. The proverbial ‘spinning of plates’ was a constant aspect in the daily grind as a strategic manager within the fire and rescue service and for me, the fabled work-life balance was more of an aspiration rather than a reality for a good proportion of my final years in the service.

One particular challenging period in my former career when this pressure was intensified arose between 2013 and 2015. In the latter part of April 2013, I took up the role of Area Commander for the Ayrshire area as part of the amalgamation of the 8 fire and rescue services across Scotland along with the Scottish Fire Services College to create a single entity (the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service). The immediate challenges I faced included, the formation of a new command area bringing together on the most part, 2 former command teams, establishing new structures to ensure the effective management of 500 people across 27 fire stations and 2 administrative offices. The new area also had to discharge its statutory responsibilities across 3 local authority areas, therefore new professional relationships needed to be formed with chief executive officers, senior council officials, elected members for each local authority, whilst also forging new links with other organisations within the sphere of 3 separate community planning partnerships. This was in conjunction with other responsibilities associated with my role such as responding to emergency incidents, therefore, personal time rapidly became a valuable commodity.

In addition to the challenge of balancing the time pressures on my professional role against those of my family commitments, I also had a 3rd area of significant demand on my time, and this was due to an academic journey I had embarked upon in 2012. As a result of successfully completing a strategic managers’ Assessment Development Centre during 2011, my employer at the time (Strathclyde Fire & Rescue Service) offered me the opportunity to attend university on a part-time basis to undertake a fully funded MBA. I duly took up the invitation and as I had accredited prior learning from other professional courses prior to this offer, I started my post-graduate course at Year 3, in effect diving in at the deep end. Although I had undertaken a range of professional development prior to enrolling at university, this was my first real exposure to the reality of academic studies which compelled me to not only get to grips with the subjects being taught, but also to learn the nuances of developing an academic writing style in order to submit a range of assignments. Over the course of 2 and a half years, I completed 8 separate modules culminating in the submission of a 13,000-word dissertation and was honoured to graduate with my Masters with distinction in 2015.

It was during this academic period; I faced the constant challenge of procrastination when it came to meeting the requirements of my post-graduate degree.  All module assignments along with my dissertation required each subject to be researched, drafts compiled, and final versions completed all within prescribed time periods. The spectre of procrastination was never far away and stalked me throughout, as the demands of the ‘day job’ prevented me from affording time to my studies during my working hours, which meant it was a battle between home life and my academic obligations as to the limited time I had remaining once the working day was done. I am extremely proud in being awarded my MBA and although I had an encouraging discussion with my dissertation supervisor exploring the potential for undertaking a PhD, I decided back in 2015 following my graduation, that any potential future academic development, would be for the purposes of fulfilling a personal goal at a time of my choosing. Reflecting back on my academic journey, I very much considered procrastination to being an enemy to my creativity (my university work) as it was always a threat to the limited time I had available and when it did occur, the result would be elongated days with early rises and lates nights either side of my working day, in order to meet ever collapsing deadlines.

Post retirement and nearly 10-years later, I have never felt the urge to return to further education. I find my photography journey fulfils my curiosity in relation to the process of learning and I very much gain a feeling of accomplishment through my creative endeavours. My attitude to procrastination has also changed, principally due to the reason it no longer has a negative influence on my daily life. Family time along with the time committed to pursuing my photography are very much in equilibrium with each other and for me, I now see procrastination as an ally.

One of the bear traps of some social media applications is falling into the habit of feeding the algorithm and I was no different to begin with. For a short period of time, I was caught in a cycle of producing work, posting it online, getting the brief dopamine hit from likes and comments which would then result in me repeating the process again and again. Thankfully I broke away from that cycle and nowadays I feel no compulsion to upload a set amount of images over the course of a week, month or a year and only post whenever I have something I want to share as opposed to feeling the need to share in fear of falling out of favour with said algorithm. Whilst I appreciate circumstances will be different for those who undertake photography in the pursuance of a living, for me, I am happy for procrastination to act as a natural barrier to my creativity. In other words, I will head out with the camera or process something from my image archive when I feel inspired to do so not because I feel I have to and, if I end up procrastinating, then so be it.

Taking this approach and not being concerned about reach, engagement, likes or comments online, has given me a greater feeling of creative liberty which means I have the freedom to post on a regular or irregular basis. It is not uncommon to for me, especially when it comes to processing to sit down with the best intentions to work on an image, only to find the intention morphs into a period of procrastination and before I know it, time has elapsed with little progress being made on an image. I do however, see this as a positive, as I know when I am working on an image without procrastinating, then the time will be put to maximum use. Another reason I see procrastination as an ally, is on those occasions when it arises, quite often it will result in some other photography activity arising such as writing up notes in my ever-expanding processing handbook, tending to my image archive, refreshing my memory on tutorials or webinars I previously signed up to or update my website and be creative another way such as writing a blog such as this.

If you consider procrastination as an enemy and you want to defeat it, then there is a range of information out there that can be accessed that will give you strategies for defeating your enemy and I wish you well in that battle. For me, for the time being, I will continue to utilise procrastination to my advantage and let it act like a barometer to provide an indicator as to my creative appetite and how that can best be appeased.