There is a seminar on Ted talks from a gentleman named Adam Grant, its called “The surprising habit of original thinkers”

Adam is an organizational psychologist who studies individuals who have original ideas.

I highly recommend listening to his talk.

He discusses a common behavioral thread among people who come up with original thoughts. In his talk he jokingly refers to this common behavior as moderate procrastination. Grant says that people who procrastinate tend to develop more creative thinking.

I’m not going to recount the entire talk. I invite you to listen for yourself. I do however want to address the perception that thinking is a form of procrastination.

We beat ourselves up. We think of ourselves as slackers. We didn’t get enough done. We suffer from our lack of achievement. But are we being too hard on ourselves? Is thinking really procrastinating? Why is thinking not as important as doing? Shouldn’t we spend more time thinking and less time doing?

If you spent more time thinking about what you are about to do wouldn’t your actions be more efficient and thoughtful?

We live in a society that places tremendous emphasis on achievement, but without thought what we achieve can be mundane and unimaginative.

Grant differentiates between people who are true procrastinators and those who allow thoughts to grow in their minds.  I too want to acknowledge that thought without action can be worse than action without thought.  I have been part of organizations that analyze problems to death.  I’m not proposing that analysis paralysis is the way forward, but I don’t like that thinking has been relegated to procrastination.

So Today, I wanted to write this blog as a call to action!

I want to call on all of you to procrastinate more today. We all need to be moderate procrastinators. And we should be proud of wearing that badge.

Who is with me?