The 7 best ways to procrastinate
Sometimes a mental wall comes up in front of what you’re supposed to be doing. To get past that, you’ll often have to make a few detours. But what should you do when even the main avenues of social media become too dull to distract?
Learn Party Tricks
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When you’re found covered in random pen marks after four hours learning to twirl, you’ll be able to point to this as the reason. Flicking cards into a bin from across the room, solving Rubik’s Cubes in record time or that thing where you hold burning lighter fluid in your hand – all of them are more fun than bashing out three thousand words on a topic you haven’t thought about in weeks.
Do “Pretend Work”
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Well your essay has 12 words out of 3,000, but there’s other work you can be doing. Research? Finding quotes? Nah. Your room needs tidying, and you’ll be damned if you’re going to get the work done without having all your pens laid out on your desk in a pretty rainbow pattern and your clothes planned out for the week. It’ll help you get work done faster, you say to yourself three hours after you should have started.
Become a Chef
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The typical student diet is a beautiful tragedy. A combination of low-cost, high-fat ready meals and bulk foods like rice which you’ll insist taste delicious on their own. But when it’s exam or essay season, suddenly out come the cook books. It’s time to make some brain food – in the sense that it occupies your brain as you spend three hours making a fancy cheese on toast using ingredients and utensils you didn’t previously know existed.
Revert to Childhood (In a good way)
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Did you know LEGO have a free program called LEGO Digital Designer that lets you build whatever you want, then print out building instructions for when you have the bricks? No? Well wave goodbye to your afternoon. You haven’t thought about it since you were eight years old, but suddenly building a pillow fort and drinking lots of squash seem like great ideas.
Revert to Childhood (In a bad way)
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Throwing a tantrum about your chores never worked when you were little, nor will it work now. But there is something to be said for the cathartic adrenaline and endorphin release of having a good scream and cry about it. After you’ve shaken the foundations and made yourself sick, you’ll be all set for some good hard work.
Plan Your work (Without Doing It)
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Well of course you would be writing your essay, but how are you supposed to start when you don’t know what’ll be in your introduction, paragraphs and conclusion? Honestly. And then you need to map out which hours will be for which bits (and colour code it with highlighter) before going to the library and vaguely looking for books to use. What do you mean the deadline is tomorrow?
Kid Yourself
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There are 24 hours until your deadline and 2900 words to write! That’s fine as long as you do your necessary amount of work. That’s only two words a minute. I mean, as long as you don’t subtract sleep and don’t stop working. By that point though you’ll be so sleep deprived that everything you smack out of your keyboard will be brilliance in your head, even while it’s incoherent on paper.
This article was written by Sian Bradley.
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