Productive Procrastination

Maybe all that lollygagging you’ve been doing isn’t so bad after all?

Sometimes we need to do something else—or nothing at all—so we can find the right way to tackle a difficult task.fizkes/Shutterstock

Victor Hugo had just five months to write his novel “Notre-Dame de Paris,” or “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” as it is known in English. But the already accomplished French author was completely blocked. An entire year past the deadline he had agreed upon with the publisher, Hugo hadn’t written a single sentence of the book.

Too many other things were competing for his time.