Procrastination, Improvisation, Flow

Spectre over Los, from William Blake's Jeruesalem

For as long as I can remember, I've waited until the last minute to accomplish tasks. At this point in my life, I tell myself that it's either because I find something the be pointless (but required nonetheless) or that I like having my feet to the fire. It really depends.

One thing I will say is that procrastination forces you to improvise. Or, at the very least, it removes time for deliberation. Unless you were putting off work to consider your options (often a useful trick), you are going to be winging it. And often times, I end up finding that which I seek most: Flow.

I'd been familiar with this concept, coined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, for many years. Simply put, a flow state is reached when a person's skill level is matched with an appropriate level of challenge. As a result, that person becomes engrossed with the activity, and their perception of the passage of time is altered. When a basketball player takes over a game to bring his team back from behind, he is often in a flow state. Same can be said of a lead guitar player soloing during a jam track.

While I knew about flow, I'm not sure I was ever conscious about it's place in my life until recently. Historically, I've seen the it manifesting itself in a few ways:

• Putting off a task, or otherwise shortening available time, in order to microdose a flow state.
• Signing myself up for long, continuous events, like ultramarathons or exceedingly long dates and social interactions.
• Learning something new.

Previously, I was doing these things, but didn't realize that I was trying to put myself into situations that would put me into a flow state. It was only when these things began to fail as flow triggers that it became evident what I was doing.

I think they started to fail because those situations became comfortable, and comfort bores me. Looking at the graph below, my bag of activities started to fall out of the right side of the graph and drift leftwards into boredom, apathy, worry and anxiety.

Lately, I've been finding myself in some more challenging situations, where I am being forced to push my skills again. I'm improvising again, but still too often procrastination plays a big part in it. I still get to a flow state, but I'm not giving myself adequate time there.

And that bothers me, because if I never allow myself the time, I'll never get something else I crave: Depth.

So, hopefully one day I learn to work without pressure. But until then, I guess I'm just going to keep throwing up shots at the buzzer.