CreativeMornings Ottawa, April 2021: Procrastinate, with Dr. Tim Pychyl

Hands up: Who wants to procrastinate less?

We thought so. And for those who didn’t raise their hands, well – we know you were just putting it off.

Dr. Tim Pychyl has spent a career studying why people choose to put things off rather than get them done now.

But the conclusions he’s arrived at in explaining why we procrastinate are somewhat surprising. Turns out, the reasons we put things off is not because we collectively have a time management problem.

In the April 2021 talk for CreativeMornings Ottawa, taking place virtually on April 30 at 8:30 a.m., Dr. Tim Pychyl draws on decades of research to explain why we procrastinate and what we can do if we’d like to procrastinate less.

Tim is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University. He has garnered an international reputation for his research on the breakdown in volitional action commonly called procrastination.

In addition to his scholarly publications as well as books such as Solving the Procrastination Puzzle and Procrastination and Health and Well-Being (co-authored and edited with Fuschia Sirois), Tim has produced the iProcrastinate podcast and the Don’t Delay blog for Psychology Today.

April’s event is the Ottawa variation on the global CreativeMornings theme, which is examining the ways that procrastination works in our lives – as creatives and as human beings.
The things that we perpetually push to tomorrow’s to-do list can become a mental weight. Even though we know the welcome relief that will wash over us when that thing we’re avoiding is complete, still, we delay, just a little while longer.

Procrastination can be a sort of art form: the art of deferred action. It’s a technique that’s got a bad reputation, one often tinged with shame. But it can also be a way to claim the ways you wish to spend your time. It harbors creative possibilities, too.

In that game of waiting-waiting-waiting until it’s almost too late but not quite, a coiled spring of potential energy hides, ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice. Narrowing a timeline can be a fruitful creative constraint, an exercise in trusting the unknown. When a window of opportunity shrinks, improvisation and spontaneity might unfurl like a flower in a time-lapse video blooming at super speed, a confetti cannon of petals bursting in full color.

Registration for April’s event opens on Friday, April 23 at 11 a.m.