When Putting Work Off Pays Off: The Curvilinear Relationship between Procrastination and Creativity

Although it is widely assumed that procrastination is counterproductive, delaying task progress may have hidden benefits for creativity. Drawing on theories of incubation, we propose that moderate procrastination can foster creativity when employees have the intrinsic motivation and opportunity to generate new ideas. In two experiments in the United States, we tempted participants to engage in varying degrees of procrastination by making...