PAUSE – Unveil The Path of Procrastination
PAUSE to discover a new way of seeing procrastination. What is procrastination to you? Is it also a postponing action where you feel guilty afterwards because of wasting time doing something inefficient? That’s a long question that might take time to answer.
We all procrastinate in some levels and my project aims to focus on procrastination in designers and creative fieldworker. This was a way to simplify a complex topic that involves many variables such as: mental health, capitalist system, neoliberalism, history, questioning needs, etc. Therefore, focusing on a target group that was accesible to me, allowed me to begin a journey of change in the way we procrastinate. From seeing it as a negative aspect in our lives, to seeing it as a needed process to just live.
As this project evolved, I had the access to collaborate with peers that helped me build the steps of procrastination in a designer’s creative process. This way I could structure a story through personal experiences that my target group could relate to. I wanted a moving image that could use metaphors and personal reflections in order to convey the message of procrastination not being bad to our lives.
“In this capitalist world, we have to be efficient 24 hours a day for us to succeed”
This was the first drawing I did when feeling stuck with my topic and needing to let out my inner emotions towards procrastination. When showing this simple, sort of silly, skecth to our tutors, I realized it was not a bad idea to incoorporate it in the whole storyline of the film. The worm being a red thread to the story, from start to end.
Is Procrastination the enemy of Efficiency?
When contextualizing this project to young designers, I’ve realized how impactful the worm was to the story. Being the engaging element but also having different meanings to everyone. Some people said the worm was procrastination, others said we, humans, are the worm and surprisingly some mentioned how by having a worm procrastinating in its journey, it symbolizes that procrastination is in every living being; the symbol of natural process.
In our conversation about the film someone said:
“At the beginning of the video I thought: but I can’t just procrastinate – that’s not how the world works – I still have to make money. Is not possible for me to give up efficiency. But then I like at the end the reassurance that is about not fearing efficiency.”
At the end of the film it says “Don’t Fear Procrastination, Fear Efficiency”.
The film reflects upon our lack of sustainable lives between the imposing productive lifestyle and the side effects that comes with it – procrastination. Is not about only procrastinating but also not being efficient at all. The film is about stopping this idea of you “should never procrastinate because you will fail and never be successful” – based on the needs that capitalism imposes us to have, spiralling around economy.
This film allowed me to communicate a positive view on procrastination and how to deal with it by balancing capitalism’s efficiency and procrastination. This project is meant for young designers to be able to work in the system yet not fall for the fear they implant in us about failing by not meeting their economic and superficial standards. Procrastination is not just a postponing action that makes us delay projects and makes us waste time doing useless things. Procrastination is a way for our mind to make us realize that we need to live minute by minute focusing on the journey rather than just the destination.
I believe that procrastination is a tool for us to use when we need a break from the loop of efficiency and a stop to the capitalist view of always needing a high goal to achieve.
If you want to watch full film, here’s the link: https://youtu.be/z8HXRyr12xE
