February 07, 2014

Practical procrastination and combinatorial creativity


Chain Reaction is Radio 4's long running hostless chat show where last week's interviewee becomes this week's interviewer. Last week's interviewee Graham Linehan said in his sit down interview with this week's interviewee Adam Buxton on Radio 4:
"I try to use practical procrastination... The real work is actually being done by your subconscious. Your conscious mind is sitting there thinking I suck. But your subconscious Is actually getting to work on stuff... Your best ideas come to you when your walking or something. Not when you're thinking about the idea. Your subconscious is this huge glacial thing under water that's just doing a lot of work when you don't realise it. Unfortunately it doesn't let you in on the fact that it's doing that, so you just feel perpetually stupid."
Adam Buxton added:
"You've got to have the skill-set to respond to those ideas when they come."
Show in full here. My Tumblr note on the tyranny of procrastination and perfectionism here. Read the famous New Yorker essay on procrastination, 'Later - What does procrastination tell us about ourselves?'
by James Surowiecki here. Samira Ahmed wrote a piece on procrastination here.

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