Last week I went to The Design Conference in Brisbane, Australia. Kitiya Palaskas said that she doesn’t mind that she heavily procrastinates, as it’s part of her process. This resonated with me as I procrastinate a-lot. Procrastinating effects most aspects of my life, but right now I am only focusing on it in terms of my media. It got me thinking, is procrastinating assisting in my editing process, or do I just want to use it badly as an excuse?

I was always under the impression that my procrastination was a weakness. Since high-school I’ve been handing things in last minute.* I was told by my parents and teachers that it is a bad habit and I should learn better self-discipline. They said I would fail university if I kept it up. Once I got to university, nothing changed, and somehow, I maintained a credit plus average on completion.

If I am not working to a deadline, I take a long time to edit my photos. A single, individual photo (in a large set) may take an hour to edit, but that hour may be spread over a whole week. As I scan across the set many times, I slowly tweak the photo, maybe -0.1EV in exposure, maybe a spot heal here and there. 

I always presumed that If I was better at focusing on work I could achieve the same result in half the time (important if I want to run my own photography business; time is money). Days may pass without me editing, in that time I would have thought of more ideas and techniques to apply to the images. So does that mean procrastinating is actually assisting in my editing?

There are times I have had to edit for many hours on end; I would still achieve my own standard. When I look back on finished images, I do not notice a difference in the ‘procrastinated’ and ‘focused’ images.

I will keep thinking about this, but for now I think I will attempt to moderate my procrastination, hit a middle ground, until I can understand how important it is to my process.

*Note: In a WORK situation, I am quite punctual, this is only in terms of my personal media.