Creativity and Procrastination: A Literature Review Analysis

This literature review investigates the complex relationship between creativity and procrastination, examining various types and their underlying sources. The review delves into the pros and cons of procrastination, highlighting its potential negative impacts on performance, mental health, and creativity, while also acknowledging its possible benefits in fostering incubation and innovative thinking. Different classifications of procrastination, such as arousal, avoidance, and decisional procrastination, are discussed, along with the influence of factors like perfectionism, anxiety, and deadlines. The review emphasizes the need for further research to clarify the types of procrastination and the moderating factors, such as anxiety and stress, that influence the link between creativity and procrastination, ultimately aiming to provide a comprehensive understanding of how these two concepts interact within the realm of psychology.

CREATIVITY AND PROCRASTINATION
An Investigation into the Relationship between Creativity and Different Types of
Procrastination
Literature Review
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CREATIVITY AND PROCRASTINATION
Literature review
Definition and Types
Procrastination refers to intentionally delaying commencement or completion of a
given task (Subotnik, Steiner & Chakraborty, 1999)1. Procrastination is the pathological or
pervasive delay in performing a task. Procrastination can be classified based on various
factors depending on the domain. The types of procrastination may be due to a self-reported
justification or reason such as arousal or rebellion, and by the cause, such as value-driven or
self-efficacy. Procrastination is often described as acting against an individual’s will as it is
facilitates by temptation or environmental factors (Steel & Klingsieck, 2015)2. Researchers
have also labeled procrastination as arousal procrastination, whereby individuals believe that
they can produce the best results working under pressure, and avoidance procrastination
where individuals delay tasks due to actual or imagined fear. Other categories include
decisional procrastination and behavioral procrastination (de Palo et al., 2017)3.
Sources of Procrastination
There are various sources of procrastination. For instance, perfectionist tendencies
have a negative impact on procrastinations. Perfectionists often avoid working on tasks in the
first attempt as they may deliver less than exemplary of fail to meet the expected standards.
Additionally, perfectionists do not adopt risk taking habits, in most cases, and often lack the
capacity to adopt creativity in tackling new tasks. Anxiety also contributes to procrastination
and commonly affects individuals employed on a part-time or casual basis. Such individuals
work towards creative productivity and are often anxious about procrastination. On the other
1 J Lim et al., "Procrastination is Detrimental to Undergraduate Students’ Self-Rated Creativity: The Mediating
Role of State Anxiety", in Creativity. Theories – Research - Applications, vol. 4, 2017, 99-115.
2 P Steel & K Klingsieck, "Procrastination", in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral
Sciences, , 2015, 73-78.
3 V de Palo et al., "Decisional Procrastination in Academic Settings: The Role of Metacognitions and Learning
Strategies", in Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 8, 2017.

CREATIVITY AND PROCRASTINATION
hand, individuals employed on a full-time basis are more comfortable about procrastination
since they have more time to complete their tasks (Subotnik, Steiner & Chakraborty, 1999)4.
Pros and Cons of Procrastination
Procrastination has its advantaged and disadvantages. Procrastination has a negative
impact on performance in jobs, academics and other issues such as mental health and self-
efficiency. Procrastination can also have a negative impact on creativity with individuals who
have a tendency of procrastinating demonstrating low creativity. Anxiety is a mediating
factor between procrastination and creativity. Individuals who procrastinate working on tasks
may experience anxiety, which may negatively impact their creativity in handling the specific
tasks. Additionally, people who have low self-efficacy often have thoughts that they are
unable to deal with the threatening situation; hence increasing their anxiety (Subotnik, Steiner
& Chakraborty, 1999)5. Procrastination is also associated with sloth and idleness based on the
existing society characterized by calendars, times and measurable deadlines6. Therefore,
procrastination may result in reduces productivity.
Procrastination can also be used positively as a source of the required stress to trigger
positive action. For instance, it can be essential and more reasonable to delay come activities
in order to tackle some more urgent or important responsibilities, so long as it enhances
satisfaction and productivity. Procrastination has positive impacts on creativity as it allows
individuals to think more about tasks at the incubation stage. During incubation, individuals
first set the tasks aside and take adequate time to develop ideas and generate novel solutions
(Subotnik, Steiner & Chakraborty, 1999)7. Positive procrastination can also be described as
4 R Subotnik, C Steiner & B Chakraborty, "Procrastination Revisited: The Constructive Use of Delayed
Response", in Creativity Research Journal, vol. 12, 1999, 151-160.
5 J Lim et al., "Procrastination is Detrimental to Undergraduate Students’ Self-Rated Creativity: The Mediating
Role of State Anxiety", in Creativity. Theories – Research - Applications, vol. 4, 2017, 99-115.
6 R Subotnik, C Steiner & B Chakraborty, "Procrastination Revisited: The Constructive Use of Delayed
Response", in Creativity Research Journal, vol. 12, 1999, 151-160.
7 J Lim et al., "Procrastination is Detrimental to Undergraduate Students’ Self-Rated Creativity: The Mediating
Role of State Anxiety", in Creativity. Theories – Research - Applications, vol. 4, 2017, 99-115.

CREATIVITY AND PROCRASTINATION
positive procrastination. In the academic domain, positive procrastination refers to the
situations where the students postpone assignments to work on easier and less important
assignments. Within the non-academic domain, productive procrastination can be used to
describe situations where individuals undertake activities that are more essential but may not
necessarily sound enjoyable (Gevers, Mohammed & Baytalskaya, 2013)8. Therefore,
procrastination can result in increased productivity and better outcomes.
Procrastination and Creativity
Deadlines are essential motivating factors that determine the intensity and patterns of
goal-directed behavior among individuals (Gevers, Mohammed & Baytalskaya, 2013)9.
Individuals who take procrastination positively often use it to their advantage. An incomplete
or abandoned task is always present in the mind, hence an individual may think about undone
tasks more than the completed responsibilities. Therefore, for innovators, procrastination may
trigger creativity in addressing pending issues and problems. Working on tasks with shorter
deadlines leave little time for creativity. Spending more time accomplishing tasks may trigger
the generation of better solutions. Therefore procrastination is beneficial if it allows an
individual to develop better ideas and solutions.
Based on the available research, there lacks consensus on the types of procrastination.
Various labels have been given to types of procrastination based on the context of the
research, they include arousal, avoidance procrastination, behavioral, decisional, academic,
non-academic, productive, and non-productive procrastination. Therefore, there is need for
intensive research to identify the most reliable and distinct classification of procrastination.
Additionally, while procrastination is associated with creativity, there lacks clarity on the the
8 J Gevers, S Mohammed & N Baytalskaya, "The Conceptualisation and Measurement of Pacing Styles",
in Applied Psychology, vol. 64, 2013, 499-540.
9 J Gevers, S Mohammed & N Baytalskaya, "The Conceptualisation and Measurement of Pacing Styles",
in Applied Psychology, vol. 64, 2013, 499-540.

CREATIVITY AND PROCRASTINATION
moderating factors between creativity and procrastination. Some important factors mentioned
in research include anxiety, and stress. However, there is inadequate research on the factors
associated creativity and procrastination. Therefore research aimed to investigate different
types of procrastination can address two concepts. The first concept involves the
classification of procrastination and the second concepts can explore the role of
procrastination in enhancing creativity.