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“I will choose a lazy person to do a difficult job, because he will find an easy way to do it”, these words by Bill Gates alone have given people more hope than hope itself (and I am no different). But is there really any rationality behind it? Or we have to swallow the hard pill that says, someone working in Microsoft and for Bill Gates already has a repartee better than us even if he is lazy?
We all have, at least once in our lives said this- ‘the best study happens only a day before the exam’ or ‘the ability to develop answers, and the writing speed increases about 1000 times at the last hours of the exam’ haven’t we? Or ‘the best articles, presentations are developed when the deadline is ticking on the head’. Why is it so? In spite of being taught the whole time to finish the work on time, don’t procrastinate, we still are tended to do our best work under pressure. Of course, there is no Yin and Yang to it; there might be people who might not relate with it. But what is intriguing, are the people who identify with this. Is there something wrong with our anatomy? Too many questions already, now let’s look for the answers.
A research by Adam Grant on and about precastinator vs procrastinator offers a lot of insight for the topic. According to him, neither being an absolute precastinator helps creativity nor the procrastinator; instead, there is a ‘sweet spot’ between the two where things get different. He defines the people falling in those category as ‘Original thinker’. Now, having said that, the question that arises here are- what makes someone an original thinker? What is the specialty the ‘sweet spot’ holds? The answer given by Adam says, the people who are quick to start but late to finish. And the reason he explains behind it is- they are non-conformists, are full of doubt, and fear. This makes them question the default, to analyze, and the fear of not being good enough makes them work on every minute detail. Which ultimately results in getting the job done perfectly.
Looks like being a little late is not as bad. The hare and the tortoise story do have resonance. The ideology is to not simply burn out your brain in the rush to be first, or neither to not use it at all because it is too much work. Strike-a-balance. Let your ideas drive you, listen to them, work on them, modify them, and finally submit them.
And yay! We didn’t have to swallow the hard pill.
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