The Make Work Play Project

Procrastination gets a bad rap. Hands up if you've loaded the dishwasher, made a beautiful revision time table, sharpened all your pencils ( ??♀? ), tidied the drawer of random stuff, weeded, hoovered, washed the car, made you 35th cup of tea, written a post about procrastination, [insert other displacement activity here] to avoid getting down to the hard thing you're supposed to be doing. I know I am guilty of this. When I have a report to write or a deadline looming, I can guarantee that all the cushions on my sofa are beautifully plumped, everything is straight and jobs that have been on my to do list for an age have suddenly, miraculously been ticked off. And for a long time, I berated myself for this. For procrastinating, for not knuckling down. And yet, what I have come to realise is that this so called displacement activity is actually an essential part of my process for getting the thing done. I see it like a spiral with the completed activity in the centre. In order to get to the centre I need to pad around it like a cat. Looking at it from all angles in a non linear way. I need to let it percolate in my brain. And as per my post last week, making soup, tidying or sharpening pencils allow the shape of the job to settle in my brain. So when it comes to the actual putting pen to paper, it flows, often quickly and relatively easily. The act of physically getting things straight helps me get things straight in my mind. Chatting to Nick Entwistle from One Minute Briefs the other week, he described himself as a natural procrastinator and explained that a lot of creative work happens in his head well before it makes it into the page in the form of a poster or an ad. I'm not saying that all procrastination is good. I know there are times when I slip into avoidance and that can create problems of its own. But my invitation to you is to acknowledge that the work that gets done at your desk is not all the work - often it's just the tip of the iceberg. So some questions....... .....what's your relationship with procrastination? .....what are the things you do that help you process and allow your ideas to percolate? ....where does it tip from helpful to avoidant? Dm for pencil sharpening assistance, help doing hard things in a fun way and for more info on my upcoming programme Work Play 101.

Here are me and the boy packing bags of craft and junk for a think-with-your-hands world building exercise at tomorrow's New Story Experience. I'm wildly excited about this project. Tomorrow the brilliant Kim Willis and I are bringing together a dazzling group of creative leaders to dream into what a new story for Britain could look like. In partnership with The Land Of Hope And Story (https://lnkd.in/eiS4qRfC) and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and the Collective Imagination Practice Fund we hope to sow some seeds for a different sort of story of Britain. One that inspires and unites us and has creativity at it's heart. Tune in tomorrow for updates! We'll have the brilliant Iris Maertens illustrating the conversations as we go and Ryan Osmond filming the process. What a crack team! And all with the stunning back drop of the Heatherwick studio. Whoop whoop!

A beautiful day last week running a playshop for the Crane Valley CIC at the beautiful Yavington Studios. They look after the green and blue space around the River Crane in west London and we were helping them unearth a new story for the work they do. Lovely team and fab to be working with my work wife of old Holly Tuppen again.