The Art of Procrastination by John Perry

Author:John Perry
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Personal Growth, Self-Help, Psychology, General
ISBN: 9780761171676
Publisher: Workman
Published: 2012-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

Surfing Without Drowning

Some correspondents helpfully embed links to pertinent websites in their emails, and following these links can be something of a rabbit hole. You can end up spending hours investigating websites, jumping from one to another, and then suddenly discover that the sun has set and the day is over. Sometimes this pays unexpected dividends. You develop little pools of expertise, perhaps about the sort of metal roofing that is available for a barn—if one has a barn, which I don’t—or the history of Tajikistan. These pools of expertise occasionally prove useful in conversation or when working a crossword puzzle. But it is easy to lose an hour or two procrastinating without having anything to show for it—or a day or two, for that matter.

Surfing from irrelevant link to even more irrelevant link is a bit like watching junk TV. It’s very hard to stop watching a junky program by simply relying on willpower. I’ve waited for the better part of an hour just to see how much they charge for a Ginsu knife, or green bags that keep your vegetables fresh, or a bottle opener that looks like a bass and plays “99 Bottles of Beer” when you use it, even though I have no intention of ordering any of those things. What is needed is something to break the spell, like lunch, or an urgent need to go to the bathroom, or a completely boring commercial, or any program involving Paris Hilton or Glenn Beck doing anything whatsoever.

I’ve learned one trick that helps when I am going to be on the Web, and thus inevitably tempted to surf. I try to start my session only when some natural event is sure to interrupt me. I log on when I’m already hungry or I’m pretty sure my wife is going to pop in with some urgent task before too long or I am already feeling the first signs of a full bladder. If you use a laptop, another ploy is to unplug it before you start your email; the spell will be broken when the battery dies—although as batteries improve, this technique becomes less useful.

If nothing else works, set an alarm clock to interrupt you after an hour. Of course, you may end up knowing a little less about Tajikistan than you would have liked.

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