The art of procrastination

ANYTHING would be more interesting than this

Our generation have more tools for procrastination at our disposal than ever before thanks to the wonder that is t’internet. But if you have exhausted the delights that Facebook has to offer, or joined the ranks of Twitter under the guise of “essay research” (because you never know when Charlie Sheen or Holly Willoughby will come out with a quote that’s relevant to your history/social policy/biology essay) only to get bored of clicking the refresh button every 30 seconds, here are a few more ways for you to pointlessly but efficiently wile away your hours.

• Obviously the procrastination has to start with something work related, otherwise how will you justify it to yourself (and more importantly, to your nosey and oh-so-smug flatmate who keeps popping in to remind you that they finished their essay a fortnight ago)? So rearranging your textbooks is a good (if somewhat obvious) place to start. It is also good practice to go to the library and max out your account, adding these acquisitions to the organising challenge-after all, the more books you have, the longer it will take. Procrastination is a long game, my friend. The walk to the library and back obviously contributes further to this time, and is easily justifiable as a legitimate form of exercise.

• Notes also need to be organised alphabetically. And cross referenced. And colour coded using highlighters and sticky notes.

• Next, I would have made the somewhat obsolete suggestion of arranging CDs alphabetically, towards the end goal of finding the perfect music to work to (undoubtedly getting sidetracked by discovering old classics on the way.) Obviously computers tend to take care of this these days, so perhaps technology is conspiring against our procrastinating ways after all.

• Perfect your tea/coffee making skills. Gather every cup/mug from around your house. Plant pots also acceptable (preferably empty). Line them up on the kitchen worktop. Now make a cup of tea/coffee in every one, varying the amount of milk/sugar by a minor degree each time, until you have your perfect brew. Justifiable because you need the energy from this before you can even consider beginning to work.

• Watch the entire back catalogue of Friends. Or How I met your mother. Or Sex and the City. Again, this is justifiable by the fact that inspiration often stems from the strangest of places.

Obviously there are many others too; cleaning the house (it’s no accident that student houses are normally cleanest during exam periods), going to the gym, food shopping, job hunting, career research; the possibilities are endless.

By the time you have done all this, you should be an expert in the art of procrastination, so write a book about it, and refuse to stop writing until it is of a length to rival ‘War and Peace’. If you have exhausted all of these possibilities, you can always try epilating your legs. Using tweezers, one hair at a time. Bet that essay or mountain of revision isn’t looking so bleak now?

I make no apology if you thought this article was going to be a solve-all guide to stopping procrastination; if you were sitting absent mindedly clicking your way through the world wide web when you stumbled across it, or got here via a link posted on Facebook or Twitter, you had no intention of doing any revision today anyway, did you?

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