..... A Blog To Share ..... And To Recall Whatever .....: 2007

Top 10 Ways to Procrastinate
Mike Gorman (The Anchor - Rhode Island College's Paper)

Coming up with something to write about this week was not an easy task. I knew my deadline was looming but still I thought “I have plenty of time!” and I told myself, “Your best works comes out when you’re under pressure!” So there I sat, 12 hours before this piece was do, staring at a blank screen. A wise sage popped into my office and said, “You know, procrastination will never get you anywhere,” and in that moment I knew I had to prove her wrong! Procrastination will get me somewhere, or at least get me through this week! Light bulbs flashed on in my head and that little man who sits on my shoulder all week shouted, “Eureka!” What better topic to discuss on a college campus than procrastination? College students are the best procrastinators on the face of the earth so I encourage you to sit back, put aside your work for a moment, and peruse this compendium of time wasters I think you may be familiar with.

10. Shopping What better way to waste time than to waste money?! Hours can be spent at the mall jumping from store to store looking for things you don’t need when you have deadlines breathing down your neck. One of the best one stop procrastination stops… Target! Or “Tar-jhay” as the cool kids call it. Under their one roof you can get a new outfit, the latest DVDs, a loaf of bread, and a brand new highlighter to help you organize those notes sitting on your desk.

9. Video GamesX-Box 360… PS2… PS3… N64… You know what these initials mean! I truly believe that when time travel is finally invented it will be linked to playing video games because when I sit down to play Halo I blink and four hours have passed. My eyes are as dry as a desert. I’m disoriented and generally confused as to where my day has gone. If you don’t believe me fire up your old school Nintendo system and pop in Mario Kart. Let me know how that worked out for you when you finally come back to reality two months later!

8. Getting Coffee We live in an area where there is pretty much a Dunkin Donuts on every other street corner and a gourmet coffee shop on the blocks in between. So it is a no-brainer that when college students need to procrastinate the caffeine machine calls their name! “You wanna get coffee?” “Want a coffee?” “Man a coffee would wake me up!” are all common phrases heard when some time needs some wasting. If you are going to Dunks though, can you grab me a Vanilla Chai and maybe a blueberry muffin? You’re the best!

7. Help someone else with their work. In my experience I have found that I am never more helpful to the people around me than when I have a million things to get done for myself. For some reason it is easier to help someone else write up flash cards than to finish that report for you. I would like to say it is because altruism is a human trait that rises to the surface easily but that would be a lie. Instead I think in helping someone else we get a sense of accomplishment while still being able to completely avoid our own lives… bonus!

6. Check Away Messages Oh what would we do if we could not use people’s away messages to track every single moment of their days? Compulsive away message checking is an increasingly troubling problem amongst our society today. Nothing annoys me more than when I see a friend and they are asking questions about things I know I did not tell them personally. Duh! If I post my itinerary in my away message, then of course people are going to know what I am doing. I sometimes think we use messaging programs more for checking away messages than actually chatting. Don’t believe me? Well then, go to your buddy list and see just how many people you have on there that you have never really spoken to, but you keep around nonetheless so you can constantly check their away message. Told you so!

5. Contact Family For some reason it is never more urgent to return that call from mom or dad until the night before a big exam. You will spend hours on the phone tracking them down then lamenting to them about how hard it was to find them and how much work you have to do for school. Would it have made more sense to just have answered their call when you saw their number come up on your cell’s call waiting in the first place therefore freeing up all this time for getting work done? Of course the answer is yes, but if you did that you wouldn’t be a procrastinator!

4. People Watch in DDC You’ve got no money for shopping or coffee. You have already run over your minutes on your phone for the month and your roommate is using your computer. How are you ever going to procrastinate now?? Pack up your books and grab yourself a corner table at Donovan. After settling in with a Nantucket Nectar and maybe some pita chips you bought with your last few points, start looking around. There are some damn interesting people passing through DDC throughout the day. You don’t know them or their lives story but you sure as heck can invent a back-story for them! The wilder the better.

3. MySpace/Facebook “Stalking” If checking away messages is a problem, MySpace/Facebook “stalking” is a disaster! These two sites will give you more information about the people around you than you could gather if you stole their wallets (FYI – theft is frowned upon currently!) Of course I do not mean stalking anyone as that is just creepy and wrong. I just mean it can be fun to look at your friends’ pages and see what their favorite books are or their results to some inane quiz invented by a 12 year old in Minnesota. If you are truly a professional time waster you can spend hours dressing up your own MySpace page with unnecessary glitter and flashing videos. Need some help with that? I would recommend contacting a certain Sweet Hall Front Desk employee, as she is a MySpace pro!

2. Clean your room How can you get any work done when your room is a mess? This is something we all try to convince ourselves of as deadlines loom. “If I organize my desk, getting my papers down will be a breeze!” Sure, and clean laundry will make your exam studying easier too. Keep telling yourself that as you Windex your computer monitor and dust your desk drawers. However, if you are convinced that this tactic actually works, come on by my apartment some night. I could use your assistance!

1. YouTube.com Sure there are a million websites out there that you could visit to waste your time but why go anywhere else besides the treasure chest that is YouTube.com? Nostalgic for a cartoon from your childhood? It is probably on YouTube. Enjoy watching people make fools of themselves in any number of situations? YouTube is the site for you. Personal recommendations include the videos: “Shoes,” “Muffins,” and “Barney Lip synchs Tupac.” I should write something witty now to close this piece but I think the mail just arrived and I haven’t checked YouTube myself yet today to see what is in the top ten videos of the day, and I also should see what’s going on in the Facebook news feed… and I could really use a coffee! See you next week!