The Power of ”Pronapsticration”

By Stan Holden for Chicken Soup For The Soul

I do a many things backwards. Flipping something upside down, turning it around and starting at the end can often fuel creativity. Including waiting until the last minute. Take this story for instance, I knew about it for months but waited until just the right time for inspiration to strike, which coincidentally happened to be the same day it was due.

Of course, as I’m prone to do, I intentionally waited until the twelfth hour to sit before my glowing screen and peck away at my well-worn keyboard to write this missive. A little ditty—or a big one depending on how you look at it—about the power of procrastination. After all, with a subject as important as this, I would be remiss, and downright irresponsible, if I did not at least wait until the figurative egg-timer in my mind ran clear as it’s last grain of sand tumbled and fell. One of my early mentors used to say, “If it were not for the last minute, I’d get nothing done.” And this, I have learned, is when I am the most creative.

Having been a professional art director for the majority of my career, I am more than aware of the almighty deadline. As a matter of fact, working so closely to these forlorn defining moments of time, I had deadlines for everything, including, and not limited to, brushing my teeth and taking a shower. Over the years I wielded my creative sword so affectively against my business deadlines that I am proud to say, I never missed one! As I am very fond of saying… “I like to jump out of the plane and put the parachute on while on my way down… but boy, what a view.”

I have oft’ wondered about the virtual tug of war between the “left” and the “right” brain. Yours and mine. The ying and the yang of being creative. One side is analytical and liner… whereas, the other is steadfast in its power to create through spontaneity and yes, sometimes frivolity. A proverbial giant bowl of spaghetti laced together with a creative red sauce of thoughts, ideas and inspirations. That’s not to say that the “left-brainer” cannot be creative—which is my whole point here. We can apply creativity to any situation, but the less time we have to mull things over, creatively speaking, is when we have no choice but to create.?

I am not to advocating procrastinating on everything such as your taxes or that pesky gallbladder that’s about to explode. But to use time to clear out the clutter of distractions where you have no choice but to create. And this can be used regardless of which brain side or profession you profess to be.

One of my greatest sources of creative fuel, much like Rip Van Winkle, is the nap. To escape his wife's nagging—lets not go there, Van Winkle wandered up into the mountains with his dog, drank some moonshine and fell asleep for 20 years…only to awake to a completely different world. Aside from the fact that I don’t drink anymore, the nap is my creative sauce for the precarious balance between being creative and the risk of dropping the ball completely. I like to call it “pronapsticration.” Daydreaming is an art form in of itself. I have spent many an afternoon?pronapsticrating?on my couch while at the same time earning copious amounts of money for the ideas I dreamed up.

At this point you might be asking yourself—and hopefully scratching your head which is also a great initiator to creativity called curiosity, “How did this all come about?” Well, I’m glad you asked.

College!

As an art student of meager means I started out in junior college from which I ascended to a university. Studying art at junior college is akin to learning how a pencil works, as opposed to a university, where one learns what it means to use a pencil. But in this particular case, I landed at Long Beach City College and in the care of Mr. Hooten and his Three Dimensional Design class. As it turns out, this was?thee?most influential class of my entire education.

Mr. Hooten was very eclectic to say the least and always pushed his students to think-out-side-the-box regardless of the “assignments” he threw upon us. He also encouraged us to dig deep and research whatever we were working on—and this was before the point-and-click instannious and effortless days of the Internet—therefore he would often be very sparse with the details. One day Mr. Hooten walked into class, wrote on the chalkboard,?“Wrap something,”?then turned and walked out.

That was it. That was the extent of the assignment! Wrap something? All of us looked at one another in puzzlement as though we were in a home economics class rather than an art class.

What we didn’t know at the time is that Mr. Hooten wanted us to explore the art of Christo.?Christo Vladimirov Javacheff and his wide Jean-Claude are the artist team that wraps large buildings and landscapes and by doing so, they project new meaning onto them. You may remember their “Red Umbrellas” along the central coast of California. A building, after all, is no longer just a building when it is wrapped.

The big day arrived for our projects to be turned in and displayed. Of course I had not completed the assignment that many of my fellow schoolmates had been working on for weeks. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t even started on it! However, this was not by design (so-to-speak) because, at the time, I had more important things to attend to… like partying and girls; not necessarily in that order.

After a good nap that fateful day, prior to heading out for class, the usual anxious feeling of knowing I had not created anything washed through my bones. I shrugged it off, briefly looked around, grabbed something off the counter—a roll of aluminum foil, ran to my car and headed to class.

The rest of the class was already set up as I ran in out of breath. Atop each table stood a diorama of photographs documenting each “artist’s” interpretation of the assignment. The smell of foam core floated through the air as did the smell of boredom. Why couldn’t anyone do something different other than wrapping a cereal box! I do have to say I was rather impressed with one student’s project of wrapping her cat’s litter-box. How’s that for thinking outside of the box? Or in it… or… never mind.

Mr. Hooten entered the room and by the look on his face he had obviously offered up this project for many years in a row. You might say he phoned it in. Yes, I see the irony here that he too needed to think outside of the box. As Mr. Hooten walked around the class, hands clasped behind his back, muttering to himself, he shook his head and shuffled to the next table.

Soon he arrived at my table, bare, blank and without a foam core triptych. The roll of aluminum foil sat across my knees…a bundled idea yet to be bestowed. The empty spot at my table must have looked like a missing key on a piano. He looked up from my desk at me and with a with a puzzled look, “Mr. Holden, where is your project?” he asked.?

With as much bravado and confidence as I could muster, I said, “I have not done it yet. I am about to create it now—right in front of your eyes!”

Suffice to say, the disdainful look that painted his face began to wash away to reveal one of elation. Could it be that someone will do something different?

I asked for the assistance of the two pretty coeds that sat to each side of me and said follow me. The class, the coeds and Mr. Hooten followed me outside to the middle of the school as though I were the Pied Piper holding up a silver foil trumpet that sparkled like a beacon in the bright sun.

I struck a pose and more students from around the campus began to collect. The coeds started to unfurl and wrap. And wrap. And wrap. Several engineering students starred on in stunned silence as I transformed into a large baked potato or a swan with arms and legs as though I were a giant left over from a fancy restaurant. Soon I was covered from head to toe, sans two eyes-slots from which I squinted out to see Mr. Hooten running back from his office, camera in hand and sporting a very large grin.?

After the photo shoot was done I broke free from my “foiled” confines. Mr. Hooten slapped me on the back and said, “‘A’ plus!” Years afterward, I heard, that he used those photos every semester as an example for that project. Over time I learned very quickly (yes, that’s correct) that?Pronapsticrating can be very powerful.

You might say I raised the bar for everyone else that day, but what I did for myself was learn how powerful waiting to the last moment can be when it comes to being creative. Because?within limitations, such as a deadline, we can become limitless! Try applying this philosophy to your business in areas you may have taken for granted and you will be surprised at the outcome.

If you would like more helpful tidbits of unorthodox and out-side-of-the-box information that WILL GROW YOUR BUSINESS visit or read Giving Candy To Strangers at: www.givingcandytostrangers.com