Like many others in our fast-paced world, I constantly find my proverbial in-box full and the out-box not as empty as I would like it to be. On a daily basis, things are constantly being added, while what I hoped to get done doesn’t seem to happen as rapidly as I would like. So, what to do and how to help our students/children who feel the same way? How do we guide our children to work effectively (doing the right thing) and efficiently (doing the thing right)?
A recent article in The New York Times by Wharton School Professor Adam Grant, “Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate,” challenges how we approach the tasks in our lives. All too often, we view procrastination as something to be avoided at all costs, particularly when we’re teaching middle and high school students. We become frustrated when we see our children wait until the last minute to begin a project or paper; the night before an important project is due can be anxiety-ridden and tense for the entire household. Believe me as a parent, classroom teacher, and head of school, I am not recommending that students wait until the 11th hour to begin working on a major assignment.
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| Credit: Marion Fayolle |
However, as Grant discusses in his essay, getting something done early just so we can check it off our “to-do” list may not the best recipe for success either. He encourages us to avoid pre-crastination, “the urge to start a task immediately and finish it as soon as possible.” In this piece, Grant cites examples from experiments on procrastination and creativity and argues that sometimes the act of delaying completion can actually produce a more creative finished product. As he argues, sometimes our initial idea may not be our most creative one since concepts need time and experience to come to fruition.
I see this often in working with seniors on their theses. Very often, they arrive for our first meeting thinking they know what their finished product should look like. However, as the process continues, they find more information, and their idea mutates. What was once certain becomes more inchoate, and they begin to reconsider their initial findings. As we try to explain to them, it’s not that they were “wrong” at first; they just didn’t have enough information, and now that they know more, they can approach their topic differently. This is one of the joys of researching a topic and learning more about it. However, this process can be daunting and destabilizing.
In an age when we simply cannot teach students all there is to think, our role as educators and parents is to help them learn how to think. As Grant says toward the end of his piece, “What I discovered was that in every creative project, there are moments that require thinking more laterally and, yes, more slowly. My natural need to finish early was a way of shutting down complicating thoughts that sent me whirling in new directions. I was avoiding the pain of divergent thinking—but I was also missing out on its rewards.” We need to help our students learn that some things can be done quickly; nevertheless, like certain recipes, there are times in life when we need to give ideas time to marinate and slow-cook for them to achieve their full potential. This is a crucial part of creativity; sometimes, it simply cannot be rushed.
Now, if I can only finish that letter I began weeks ago.
