Why Creative People Procrastinate (And It’s Not What You Think)

By Sue Pendleton, Founder & CEO

While building ENSOhello, I uncovered a pattern in my early testers and in myself.

Over the past few months, I’ve noticed something with the early testers of ENSOhello. Their struggle isn’t the app itself. It’s starting. I can see it in their faces. Hear it in their voices. Just thinking about:

Downloading something new.
Navigating settings.
Dealing with Facebook.
Remembering passwords.

The dread is palpable.

So I started digging into research on creative minds, wondering: Is there something deeper behind this avoidance and anxiety? And then I realized…I was feeling something eerily similar.

The Task I Kept Moving

I am typically very productive. I build things. Launch things. Create consistently. But recently, I noticed something on my to-do list. One item. I had moved it from one list to another for over a year. Not because it was difficult. Not because I didn’t care. But because every time I looked at it…it felt heavy. Filled with dread. And that feeling was familiar. It was exactly what I’d been seeing in my early testers.

Becoming My Own Case Study

Instead of pushing the task aside again, I made a decision. I would spend the day intentionally doing the things I’d been avoiding. And I would pay attention.

Every spike of anxiety.
Every moment of shutdown.
Every wave of emotional heaviness.

I treated it like research. Was I just procrastinating? Or was something about these tasks genuinely harder for the way my creative brain works? Because if I could understand it in myself…Maybe I could reverse-engineer a better experience for artists.

Themes Emerged

The year-long task involved closing a small bank account connected to my late Aunt Helen’s estate. I had already gone through one round of confusing paperwork the year before. It was dense. Institutional. Full of unfamiliar language. I delayed a year. Then I was notified that something else was needed. Back on the list it went.

I noticed a few other lingering tasks, too: Finding new doctors after our insurance changed. Doing my kids’ taxes. Gathering final documents for my own taxes. None of them was complex. But all of them felt heavy.

What I Noticed

It wasn’t the tasks themselves. It was the forecasting. Phone trees immediately triggered simulation:

If I press 1…
Where does that lead?
What if that’s wrong?
How long will this take?
Will I get stuck?

My brain wasn’t hesitating. It was rendering the entire map. That uses energy. A lot of it. I also noticed something subtler. Creative minds tend to feel tone. Before every call there was an undercurrent of:

What if they’re impatient?
What if I use the wrong language?
What if I can’t explain this clearly?

It wasn’t dramatic. It was just… weight. And when you stack:

Ambiguity
Authority
Unknown next steps
Possible follow-up
Tone sensitivity

It makes sense that a task feels heavier than it looks.

Selective Procrastination

That’s when the phrase surfaced: Selective procrastination. I don’t procrastinate on creative work. I don’t delay building. I don’t avoid complex ideas.

But I delay:

Institutional systems.
Authority-heavy processes.
Undefined navigation.
Tasks that might spiral.

There was a pattern. And once I saw it, something shifted.

Sometimes Avoidance Is Protection

Avoidance wasn’t laziness. It was protection. My brain was conserving energy. Avoiding open loops and anticipating friction. And that realization changed everything. Because if delay is protective…Then maybe the answer isn’t force.

Maybe it’s a redesign.

Backward Engineering the Process

If creative minds:

Simulate possible paths
Forecast tone
Anticipate loops
Feel authority pressure

Then starting something new — especially in tech — can feel heavier than it “should.”

It’s not incompetence. It’s cognitive load. And if I can see that clearly in myself…Then I can build ENSOhello to reduce that load.

Clear arcs.
Visible steps.
Human tone.
Contained navigation.
No endless loops.

Not to fix artists. But to work with how they’re wired.

The Next Step

Now I’m experimenting with ways to make heavy tasks feel lighter. Not through productivity hacks. But through shifts in framing and structure. Because there won’t be one perfect solution.

I think of it like an art workshop. Twenty people paint the same subject. And every finished piece is completely different. No one is wrong. There’s a shared thread. But infinite variation.

The thread here is universal: Creative minds forecast. But how each of us works with that? That will vary. The answer isn’t a black-and-white fix. It’s a shift. And for creative minds, sometimes a shift is enough.

Create freely. Share easily.

If you enjoy exploring how creative minds work (without black-and-white answers), join The Circle. It’s where I regularly share reflections like this.