Inside the mind of a master procrastinator (Tim Urban)

Inside all of us is a procrastinator trying not to be found out. He wants to make us think that this is the way to not do things right. Our instant gratification monkey is doing all he can to to keep us off the rational, organized path, the one that says, "make a plan" "set short term and long term goals" "make a list" "make another list about the lists you need to make about making lists"... then check the fridge and TV to see what's on or just tidy this or that. Re-arrange your books or record collection.

Who doesn't struggle with their Rational Decision Maker and their Instant Gratification monkey. This TED talk by Tim Urban of Wait But Why so closely describes my working method that I think he copied it from me. Having said that though I was very pleased to hear from Steven Johnson in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, that there is an incubation period which he calls the Slow Hunch...which can last for years!!

I'm sure that my brain is working quietly in the background, synthesizing, amalgamating and formulating ideas, being creative, so that when I'm not thinking about them, I'm actually working on them! It's just that you can't see the working out!!

Actually there's a lot of evidence out there that creative thinking often works this way. Einstein said "If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in 5 minutes".

The so-called Aha moment is often the result of long slow incubation. sometimes years. Then the right connection comes along and it all fits into place. Most ideas start as a hunch, in a partial incomplete form. These are the seeds of something more profound, but there's a feeling, a hunch that this is the right direction. That's the first part of the creative process. seeing the problem and beginning to try to understand it or re-define it. Slow hunches mature in small steps.

Darwin and others would keep what were called "commonplace books", notebooks to you and I, where they would write down their hunches, intuitions and thoughts, perhaps just their observations, gently and gradually cultivating and connecting them by constantly reading and re-reading them. Reinforcing their attention to the problem and enhancing their working memory. "This is how they kept in check the tension between order and chaos, between the desire for methodical arrangement and the desire for surprising new links and association", says Johnson.

Our minds are pattern-makers and pattern-seekers. We look for connections in random and non-random events in order to make sense of them, to give them some sense of meaning and purpose. Pattern, the stringing together of one phenomena with another, is our way of making meaning, of connecting things into meaningful stories.

So perhaps we should just let our minds get on with it in the background whilst we check out if there's anything good to watch on TV or any good snacks in the kitchen.