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Monday, August 18, 2014

Your Best Procrastination Techniques: GO! When You're Ready, That Is...

It didn't even hit 10 AM this morning before this Monday felt like a particularly aggressive, spiteful, headache-inducing, cocktails-required Monday.

What option does a girl have when faced with such a day other than procrastination?



I don't know about you folks, but I'm motivated to do my best procrastinating in two specific circumstances:

CIRCUMSTANCE 1: Nothing is really due, so why worry about getting started?

CIRCUMSTANCE 2: Everything is due yesterday. But I'm telling you about it today. You'll make time, right?



Circumstance 1 is pretty self-explanatory; it's the bear I face every morning, when I wake up early specifically to work on my current in-progress novel. Sure, I'd LIKE to bang out somewhere upwards of 500 words before I go to work (a modest goal, to be sure), but it's not like anyone is waiting with bated breath to see them.

This is best dealt with via email and social-media refreshes, occasional trips to the dishwasher to empty a few items (how can that POSSIBLY wait til the rest of the house wakes up?) and cat-nuzzling.

Circumstance 2 is more familiar to the desk-jobbers like myself. I believe they have mantras for it, actually:


I'm the kind of person who plans my time out in advance meticulously, taking into account the fact that I will need to get up and take a walk, dick around on facebook, and probably watch an episode of at least one franchise of The Real Housewives before I can expect myself to fully complete whatever I'm working on. 

I don't work slowly; I just plan my work so that I rarely if ever feel intense deadline-pressure. I say this as someone who is used to working on deadline. It's not about the amount of time available to you, it's about knowing that amount--as well as what you need to complete within it--well in advance, and planning your own expectations of how the day is going to go. 

So when Monday goes all Monday on me before I've even finished my coffee, my response isn't to buckle down to the 75 new things (or usually old things only now being addressed) that require my attention ASAP HURRY JILLY! 

It's to read an advice column, or visit a friend's wedding registry, or write this blog. 

Am I alone? And since we're on the topic, anybody have any delightful suggestions for how I ought to be wasting my time (yes, I already know about the existence of Buzzfeed)?

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