Avoidance is something we are all adept at. Avoiding schoolwork, avoiding conversations, avoiding studying. We have many ways from which we choose to avoid responsibility. We discover new ways every time we need to sit down and accomplish something, and as completing the task increases in importance, so does our desire to focus our attention on just about anything else. Suddenly, things we never thought were intriguing before become much more interesting, and things we would rather be doing become much more tempting...
1. Watch Netflix
Let's face it, more than a few times we have succumbed to the charm of the red logo. Netflix, beckoning, has been a constant distraction and often a depressing reminder of all that we should be doing instead. Suddenly we begin to find thousands of cooking shows, home renovation series, and horror movies, rated one star and far more interesting than we did before we had things to accomplish.
2. Eat
This is one of my favorite methods. Whether we stuff our faces with Doritos, Hot Cheetos, or Oreos, we use this strategy frequently to avoid checking things off of our to-do lists. Get up, eat, sit down, attempt work, get up, eat, sit down, attempt to work, eat, feel nauseous from eating too much, go to bed having accomplished nothing.
3. Shower
Bathing, showering; with both we find another excuse to avoid cracking the books. We feel overwhelmingly filthy. Filthy to the point that not another minute of studying may be accomplished until we wash ourselves of the day, or at least of the guilt of procrastination.
4. Pinterest/Online Shop
This is a big one. We turn from what we need to get done to instead what we need to get. Why? Because the life we wish that we had becomes very interesting in contrast with the life we actually have, slaving away over textbooks and essays.
5. Social Media
Oh look! A video of cats being flung across the room after grabbing onto ceiling fans! Funny, hilarious even. But let's just admit that this is one of the most common ways we all procrastinate. We scroll and click, scroll and click. Selecting link after link, video after video. Donald Trump said something inappropriate, Bernie Sander's supporters like free hugs, apparently, "this girl sent this sick note to her professor, you won't believe what happens next." We fall into this trap countless times, and I, like many people, owe a lot of my nonproductivity to sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
6. Text/Call
Once again, an example of something that becomes a lot more interesting once you are faced with tasks that need to be completed in a timely manner. Desperate to prolong responsibility, we stall, calling or texting old friends, family members, and people who've fallen off the map and out of our minds. We think that maybe if we reestablish connections with people, we might get to put off certain tasks just a little longer.
7. Clean
Cleaning is a task that a very small portion of the population finds desirable. We open the six page history paper due tomorrow morning that we have yet to begin and suddenly we are drawn to the messy closet we have ignored for months, getting a sudden urge to get up and reorganize everything we own. We conveniently forget all about what we had originally sat down to complete.
