9: What is your favorite way to procrastinate? #LifeWideLearning16 @MrChase
— Ben Wilkoff (@bhwilkoff) January 9, 2016
I like the way you phrased today’s question, “favorite way to procrastinate” is a whole other animal than “most often used.”
There’s an implied choice here, that I don’t don’t know I bring to my procrastination game. It has me wondering if other people do. Do other people procrastinate consciously? Are they willfully delaying the inevitable? Am I doing it wrong?
More often than not, when I’ve procrastinated, I’ve taken myself too far down to the wire to reflect on how I got there or whether it was worth it or if I was doing something I enjoyed while avoiding doing the thing I should have been doing.
Sometimes, as exhibited by the above, I write long and winding sentences as a procrastination tool.
Other times, like when I should have been grading and commenting on student work one winter while living in Philly, I decided it was time I really dedicated the weeks necessary to finally watching all of the Stargate SG-1 series on Netflix. Spoiler alert: Every major world religion or mythology is based on an alien race.
I also procrastinate by doing the thing. While Chris and I were writing the book, I would sit down in front of my computer screen to write and stare at the cursor in a game of man-versus-machine chicken. After enough time had passed, I’d give myself credit for trying long enough, and move on to doing something else. The cursor, it turns out, always waits.
I expected to type that my favorite procrastination is running. I write about it enough here that it just made sense. That’s not why I run. I run to get things done. When a deadline looms, I go for a run to figure things out in my head, to plan for the doing, or to work through whatever problems I’m supposed to be solving. To use running as a means to procrastinate would feel disloyal or like an abuse.
I suppose I haven’t really answered the question. I’ll get back to you on it.