How the hell does procrastination lead to originality?
o·rig·i·nal, n A thing of singular or unique character, a person who is different from other people in an appealing or interesting way; a person of fresh initiative or inventive capacity.
Being an original means you are a non-conformist. Originals are people who not only have new ideas, but take action to champion them. They stand out and speak up, driving creativity and change in the world.
Originals are procrastinators. This resonates with me as I am typically and procrastinator when it comes to most situations, and I’ve always viewed it as a negative trait. After listening to Adam Grant’s TED Talk, reading excerpts from his book, and doing some further research, my view towards being a procrastinator changed.

At one point, Jihae Shin was a student, not a professor at the University of Wisconsin. When she was a student, she hypothesized that most original ideas occur after procrastination. She investigated the hypothesis by carrying out surveys at two different companies, analyzing how often staff procrastinated and then asking their bosses to rate how creative and innovative they were. This student found those who procrastinated were often found to be the most creative.
She became a professor and conducted another study. She asked a group of people to submit business ideas, some immediately and others after they had played games like Minesweeper or Solitaire for five minutes. The people who submitted ideas after playing games rated 28% more creative by assessors than those who started their ideas straight away.

Adam Grant says, “When you procrastinate, you’re more likely to let your mind wander. That gives you a better chance of stumbling onto the unusual and spotting unexpected patterns.”
When I reflect on my ideas and projects in school, I can think of a few where I had procrastinated and it turned out to be a great success. The project most prominent that comes to mind is my final project for my entrepreneurial finance class in Spring 2017. I had been putting off this project for days, and then weeks. At about 8pm the night before the project was due, I sat down to work on my project.
I didn’t work on my project. I decided browsing YouTube videos for three hours was a better idea.
Finally, it was 11pm the night before it was due, and I had to present the next morning. This is when Tim Urban’s “panic monster” came out. (If you don’t know what the panic monster is and would like to know full details on it, please watch this TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator)
The panic monster comes out when you procrastinate on a project and the deadline is approaching fast, and you have to work or else you won’t meet your deadline.
As I was closing out the last video I was watching, titled “best cliff Jumping fails compilation Part 1,” which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8afVlGtmZw , an idea was sparked. I had been watching people jump into bodies of water from heights that they shouldn’t have been jumping from. I put myself in their shoes and empathized with them. They shouldn’t have been doing this dangerous activity in the first place, but if they’re going to decide to jump off cliffs, there’s no stopping them and they’re going to do what they want.

This is where I come in: I needed to design a product that would protect these people from when their jumps don’t go exactly as planned. My first idea was to wrap them up in tape with two pillows: one on their back, and one on their stomach and chest. This would have been unsafe, as the pillow would have been soaked with water, making it hard to swim.
I had ideated a bunch of other ridiculous, absurd ideas, including creating a turtle shell for a human to wear. Now, I know it may seem crazy, but I picked the turtle shell idea. This may be an outlandish idea, but when you bring it back down to earth and think about the realistic design, it doesn’t seem so ridiculous.

I researched realistic ways of creating this shell, and finally found some products that would work. I chose to design this “Turtle Shell” with multiple layers of polypropylene, a tough plastic, as the shell on the outside. Alone with this, there will be a cushion of polyurethane foam within to brace falls and whatever else life were to throw at you — or whatever your threw yourself on.
For full details on this project, it can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2081308381/turtle-shell-protective-gear
I ended up releasing it on Kickstarter, but didn’t get any funding. However, I did get a pretty incredible grade, given the idea was created the night before. I believe I received the grade I did because of the creativity sparked in that long procrastination process. Who would ever think to put a turtle shell on a human for protection from cliff jumping? Just me? Great, I guess I’m an original, like Adam Grant famously speaks and writes about!
Now, the story I just shared was a major success, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you should wait until the last minute to everything. Tim Urban waited to complete his 90 page senior thesis, which was meant to take the course of a year to write. He waited until 3 days before it was due. In the course of 72 hours, pulling 2 all nighters, he was able to complete his thesis. It ended up being a great failure.
Adam Grant talks about this “sweet spot” of procrastination, where originals seem to live. Procrastination gives you time to think about divergent ideas, to think in non linear ways, and make unexpected leaps. When he wrote the procrastination chapter in our book, he was in the middle of the chapter, actively writing, and told himself to stop. He shut his laptop, and put that chapter off for months. When he came back to it, he had all sorts of wonderful, new ideas.

A couple famous procrastinators: 1) Leonardo da Vinci, who worked on the Mona Lisa for 16 years; 2) Martin Luther King Jr., who rewrote his speech for the march on Washington at 3am the night before, and when he was waiting to go on stage, he was still writing it, and never even wrote, “I have a dream” in the script;
3) Jack Fryer, who put off writing several blog posts for his class this summer, due to his busy schedule. He definitely had the time to write them by the time they were due, but didn’t have the energy and they wouldn’t have been as good and definitely not as creative. He ended up with a good final grade in the class and will be able to make it past the first round in the hiring process of major companies.