Most people admit to procrastination. It plagues over 80 percent of college students and 20 percent of adults “suffer from” chronic procrastination. We have all stayed up until ungodly hours cramming for exams or waited until the last minute to start writing papers.

But for me, I like to do things early.

It’s something that I have always done and it is a symptom of my type A personality. I like to get things done, check it off a list and move on to the next thing I need to do. My thought process is that getting something done right away is better than waiting until later. Psychologists call this “pre-crastiation” or “the urge to start a task right away and finish it as soon as possible.”

Pre-crastinators must answer emails as soon as they see them or they feel like life is spinning out of control the more their inbox keeps piling up. They have to finish projects as soon as they’re assigned, else every day that passes without completing the assignment feels agonizing and anxiety ridden. They have a hard time relaxing because they are constantly wondering what is the next thing is that they need to do, to check of the list.

To some degree, I understand this phenomenon. I hate having things hanging over my head and become stressed when assignments start to build up, so I like to start projects premature. I always feel like I need to be doing something and hate wasting time idly. My mind can sometimes race with what needs to be done next rather than just relax and be in whatever experience I am in at the moment. While this ‘productive’ form of OCD has many benefits, I’ve learned my hyperactivity stunts creativity and can keep me from enjoying the present.

Procrastinators might put off assignments, but doing things last minute does not mean it is done worse than those who begin early. Studies actually show procrastinators are more creative than “pre-crastinators” by up to 28 percent. This makes sense because our first ideas tend to be the most ordinary and the more time we give ourselves, the better our ideas can be. So the more we procrastinate, the more time we give our minds to wander and explore alternative solutions. It’s not that procrastinators forget about a project, but just that they delay doing it. A psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik found that people have a better memory of tasks unfinished than ones completed, therefore, when tasks remain unfinished (a result of procrastinating), they don’t forget about them but they stay active in their minds.

So my argument is that sometimes, it actually pays to slack off. Rather than being so focused on completing a task, it might bode “pre-crastinators” well to just sit back and enjoy whatever moment they are in and wait on getting something done.

If we are too busy focused on what needs to be done, we can miss the world around us. We end up being blind to the present and unable to see clearly. But when we revist projects, we tend to bring new ideas and fresh solutions as a result of absorbing the world around us a little longer.

So despite my natural instinct to write this article in the beginning of the week, I waited until the deadline to start writing. It's OK to push tasks off until the last minute in order to allow yourself time to think it over and pick up new information. Next time you feel pressured to complete something immediately, or are getting scorned for procrastinating, remember that maybe, it will actually turn out better if you do push it off until later.