101 Ways to Procrastinate
- Check email
- Get a drink
- Check facebook
- Reread the last section
- Edit something
- Research something
- Open another document
- Make a snack
- Pay a bill
- Take a nap
- Reread from the beginning to “make sure it flows and has proper continuity.”
- Plan your writing.
- Plot out the book in greater detail
- Watch a movie to “inspire you.”
- Blog 😉
- Write down the great idea you just got before you forget it
- Write the first chapter of that book while you’re excited about it.
- Scrub the bathroom
- Check email– again
- Play solitaire to stimulate your mind
- Plan menus
- Schedule a dental cleaning
- Remember that you wear dentures and cancel the cleaning
- Write a paragraph
- Erase it
- Read a book on overcoming procrastination
- Search Istockphoto.com for the perfect cover photo
- Design a mock up to see if it works
- Trim your daughter’s hair– you know, that hair that you’ve been saying no to for weeks but now you’ll do because it means you don’t have to be responsible.
- Balance the checkbook
- Realize you don’t have a checkbook register anymore and wonder what it was you just balanced.
- Send a birthday card– for someone you haven’t sent one to in years.
- Read a story to your child/grandchild.
- Oil hinges
- Clean your monitor
- Blow out your keyboard
- Exercise to get the juices flowing
- Take a nap to recuperate from the exercise
- Pick your nose
- Trim your fingernails
- Clip your toenails
- Make a color coded schedule with time blogs FOR procrastination so you can do it later.
- Turn on messenger so you have an excuse.
- Change your facebook profile picture
- Defragment your disk
- Download a trial for a writing program
- Check message boards to see if anyone needs you immediately.
- Update the website.
- Start a new budget
- Make cookies
- “doorbell the neighbor”
- Twiddle thumbs.
- Put chicken chests into the sink to defrost
- Clean your fingernails
- Moisturize your hands
- Scold the kids for running in the house.
- Ask if they were born in a barn
- Realize that there’s nothing wrong with being born in a barn– Jesus was.
- Start a novel about the birth of Jesus.
- Decide you don’t like historical novels and delete it.
- Check your email again.
- Click 5 dozen MyPoints emails to get 300 MyPoints.
- Decide you need new business cards
- Design new business cards
- Rearrange the living room
- Clean off your desk
- Delete the trial programs from your computer
- Clean out your ears
- Design the perfect workout schedule
- Delete the schedule
- Eat hot cookies
- Answer the phone.
- Chat with the telemarketer
- Convince them to look at your books online
- Start an online serial story
- Make a blog to post it on
- Delete the blog because you decided it would be a great story
- Ask your editor fifty questions, one or two per email
- See a long line of emails in your inbox.
- Clean out your inbox.
- Go Christmas shopping online– yes, in February.
- Plan a new wardrobe
- Make soup for a shut in
- Take soup to shut in
- Put gas in the car– yes, even if it was 7/8 full from yesterday’s procrastination attempt.
- Organize photos for scrapbooks
- Remember you hate scrapbooking and put it away
- Look up a few dozen words in the thesaurus
- Change the wax in the scentsy warmer
- Dust the shelf the scentsy warmer is on
- Dust the rest of the shelves
- Have an asthma attack
- Close your eyes and dream out the next scene
- Take notes
- Consider a nap but two in one afternoon is too much
- Fall asleep at the keyboard
- Look up the meaning of pulchritude just to be sure you used it right five chapters back
- Decide that pulchritude sounds revolting instead of exquisite and decide to use exquisiteness instead.
- Answer the door
- Tell the pizza guy that he’s got the wrong house– dad burn it
- Read the newspaper– you know that thing you haven’t read in six years.
Then, once you’ve exhausted every procrastination device you can imagine and you really are interested in writing… your document is open and the juices are flowing, your words are flying across the page– realize that it’s time to get up and make dinner.
I noticed number 62. Click 5 dozen MyPoints emails to get 300 MyPoints.
Have you tried swagbucks? You can earn digital dollars and redeem them to purchase any of several gift cards, and/or products. I earn most of my swagbucks by searching the web, but there are several ways to earn those digital dollars.
I’m a big fan of swagbucks. I’ve got a nice big pile of gift cards to Amazon thanks to them. And with all my research, I rack ’em up pretty quickly!
Love it! Some of them have me pegged. Okay…many of them have me pegged. 😉 Thanks for a funny post. Like Ron–who commented before me, I wandered in from the A to Z list 🙂
Aw, thanks. I enjoyed the silly little ditty too. Can’t WAIT to do a-z. Gotta get my posts lined up soon! I’ll have to step over and see what fun ditties you have on your blog!
I love this list! I could have written it, I do an edited version of this list every day…just wandered in from the Z-Z blog challenge list, I will return!
Thanks! I’ll have to check out your blog. I’m really looking forward to that A-Z challenge. I love to blog.