Often in life, we have to think of great, shiny ideas: essays, powerpoint presentations, entrepreneurship ideas, internships, etc. But those so-called "eureka moments" do not come often. Usually, you go through either one of these scenarios: nothing pops up in your mind or something pops up but they are all unsatisfactory. First case is indeed frustrating but the second one makes you feel even worse. It feels like you are useless and your brain is filled up with sponges. Your body is exhausted and your brain is yelling 'I cannot think more! Let me go!' for the entire time. These obstacles eventually lead us to procrastinate in many ways: we just leave the assignment on the desk, trying to not look at it until the deadline, or we sit in front of the desk with our phone, typing two words in an hour while scrolling through instagram for three hours.
This suffering is not just our story. Martin Luther King Jr, one of the most famous Black Rights Activist, drafted his historical ‘I have a dream’ speech at 10:00 pm the night before. Think about this, the most iconic speech of our time was written down few hours before the historical day! Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Speech and Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa were all products of endless suffering.
This terrible situation occurs to me very often as I am also a college student who is often required to come up with something innovative, extraordinary, exotic, and basically, amazing. But come on, how on Earth can an individual ALWAYS manages to think of something like that? So, when I get stuck in the middle nowhere while squeezing my brain for something creative, I also go through the following steps: I stare at the screen for couple of minutes, unlock my phone, scroll down instagram, once again look at my laptop, and then went to a bathroom and have a cup of water on my way back, agonizing with the arduous state of blankness in my brain.
However, I do not worry too much when this sort of thing happen because I have my secret tactic to overcome this kind of situation. Curious? No worries, I will share it with you all right now.
First, do something else then the work you were dealing with for five hours straight. Stare at things on your desk, look through your photo gallery, see if there are any interesting books in your shelf, or listen to your favorite podcast. This is to let your brain breathe with something totally unrelated with work but can unexpectedly become a source of inspiration. When you are spending excessive amount of time concentrating on the first idea you thought of, a phenomenon called ‘cognitive fixation’ occur--the principle barrier to true creativity that hinders your ability to generate novel ideas. According to the experiment conducted by Jackson Lu and a team at Columbia Business School, it was found out that multitaskers who had to work on two different tasks performed better in terms of the sheer number of ideas and the perceived novelty of those ideas compared to the ones who had to focus entirely on one task. In other words, cognitive fixation jams your stream of thought and thereby limits the capability of creative thinking.
If the first step did not bring you anything innovative, it is time to try another ultimate method: procrastinating. Just leave it and begin working on it right before the deadline! Well, so many people connect procrastination with laziness, rushing assignments, low scores, etc, etc, I know. I am not claiming that we can procrastinate something really simple like our daily workout or inbox checking. What I am recommending is a concept called ‘active procrastinating’. According to the book <The Originals> written by Adam Grant, active procrastination refers to procrastination that aims to derive a creative outcome like writing a book, preparing a speech, or painting pictures. It involves starting a work but not finishing it. For example, when you begin working on something creative but decide to actively procrastinate on it, you allow your thoughts to circulate between the conscious and subconscious mind, generating endless amount of creative possibilities. In contrast, ‘passive procrastinating’ means you are simply delaying your tasks for a later time without even touching it.
So here’s my advice on how to actively procrastinate and ultimately arrive at above-average results. First, at least start thinking about your work. It is okay if you give up squeezing your brain in five minutes, just sit down and see what are your tasks. Get a slightest idea of what is it about and what are required. In other words, actively procrastinate by feeding your brain some food for thought. Second, do not overestimate yourself. Set enough time for you to work at the very last moment because it usually turns out we were not as efficient as we expected. Although it depends on the length and density of assignment, I usually leave about five to eight hours to use this rush-till-the-end method. Third, do not give up the quality of work and just focus on finishing it. If you did the first step properly, you will probably have enough time to not just submit something but something READABLE and UNDERSTANDABLE. Don’t give up early, make maximum effort, use your time wisely till the very end, and try as much as you can. Finally, always leave about ten minutes before the deadline to proofread. Proofreading is awesome, although we are all too busy and lazy to do that and usually do it after hitting the submit button. Simple reduction of grammatical errors like 'it’s' and 'its' or tiny little typos exponentially upgrades the quality of your work. I know it is hard, but try to do it. Proofreading will never betray you.
Life is full of works to do. And if they are inevitable, it is way better to accomplish them with our incredible talents, amazing skills, and unprecedented insight. If you have things to do today and your mind is totally blank, try one of these tactics and see if it works on you. If it does, good gracious, and if it does not, you at least knew that it does not work for you! There is nothing to lose.