Procrastination

It's not something I'm proud of, but there's no point in trying to hide it. I am a procrastinator. And not a wishy-washy oh-I-sometimes-leave-the-dishes-for-a-day-or-two, or I-occasionally-put-off-things-to-the-last-minute procrastinator. No, I always leave the dishes for a day or two, and that's the dishes that are on their way to the dishwasher. I hardly ever do things before the last minute. I'll spend a whole day doing nothing even when I have supposedly "better" things to do.

nothing includes surfing the web, reading forums, blogs and internet community stuff, and searching for and downloading porn

Yes, I'm a bona fide, round-the-clock, seriously-detrimental-to-my-quality-of-life procrastinator.

There are two main modes of procrastination:

Mode 1:

There's nothing I really need to get done, at least not right away. Tomorrow is soon enough, and it really isn't that much work. This is when I'll usually fritter the day away doing nothing (see above for definition of nothing).

Now I could be sociable, or get some chores done, or do my work and then play, or go cruising for teen chicks at the mall. Which would be healthier for me. Well except for the last idea. But I don't, I just don't.

Mode 2:

There are plenty of things I need to do, and I probably should get to them right away. If I put them off until tomorrow I might have to cancel family dinner, skip my favourite TV-program, work on Sunday evening. There are non-trivial amounts of work to be done, and there are important deadlines. This is when I'm at my most efficient, doing other things.

Now I could get my work done first, and then play, but a fear strikes me that the work will take all the available time and leave me with none for play. And as they say Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now. But this is not the time for doing nothing (def. above), no, that'd make me feel too guilty. This is the time to do something, continuosly, such as the dishes, or tidying up various messes around the apartment, or washing the car, or shopping. I'm never as efficient, or my apartment as tidy, as when I've got something more urgent to do.



This almost sounds beneficial, especially when I include that I hardly ever fail to meet my deadlines (admittedly my quality of work sometimes suffers), but doing chores aren't the only allowable somethings. Reading is also a something, as is watching certain must-see TV programs (House, Grey's Anatomy, CSI reruns), blogging, updating web-pages that no one ever reads. And I also need my daily dose of nothing (da), and even without the fritter-the-day-away repeated refreshing to look for updates that I know haven't appeared in the seconds since I last checked, my daily dose of nothing takes about an hour.

So that's not so good. Input, one day, output, not much. Inbetween the efficient and non-efficient procrastination of mode 2 are things such as my current addiction, updating my genealogical database. Plenty of output, but even less urgent than combatting the things that grow on pots that have been left on the counter for months. But that's a topic for another post.

Happy easter, faithful readers. :-D

Posted by: retroflex at 09:36 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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