Procrastination Station: top 10 things to do when you don't want to do what you should be doing

I’ve gone a bit quiet over the last week, because I had a presentation and a midterm due this week and I had, naturally, left them until the last minute. Add to that the facts that we have a show opening in two weeks in the theatre department (where I work in the scene shop, mostly doing props and painting work) and I’m getting all my ducks in a row for an application to graduate school, and I’ve been a bit on the busy side.

Of course, last weekend was UIW’s fall break, when we get Thursday and Friday off – I believe the logic is that when you combine those two days with the three we get off for Thanksgiving, it adds up to the equivalent of Spring Break. The whys don’t really matter, of course, because I was just happy to get a break. I told myself I was going to get so much done over fall break. I was going to get my presentation and the midterm done, I was going to deal with a bunch of grad school stuff, I was going to BE PRODUCTIVE.

I will give you three guesses as to how that went, and the first two don’t count.

Now, we all have our character flaws and a tendency to procrastinate has always been one of mine. Since I generally still end up getting everything done in a satisfactory manner, I am usually not ashamed of it, although occasionally when I’m guzzling even more Coke than usual because it’s 3:30 AM and I still have two pages to write in a paper I get rather frustrated. Before I start navel-gazing regarding why I procrastinate and why I really probably should make more of an effort to stop procrastinating, I’m just going to start listing various wonderful things the internet has to offer you when you feel like putting things off.

1. Tumblr

Tumblr advertises itself as a “microblogging” site. I like to explain it thusly: if a Blogger/Wordpress/etc blog is the internet’s version of a diary or journal, then Tumblr is the internet’s version of a scrapbook. It is also the place where a large sector of online fandom migrated to after LiveJournal lost its favor. (I still make it back to LJ occasionally, but fandom discourse on Tumblr is definitely more active than it is on LJ these days.) But if fandom isn’t your thing, you can probably still find a haven in some corner of Tumblr. Outside of fandom, it’s rather popular with hipsters, but browsing through the tags will yield a plethora of posts about just about anything. You can follow tags or follow other people’s blogs, and in addition to filling your blog with original content, you can “reblog” the posts of others. It’s fun, and a major time-suck.

2. Pinterest

I must confess, I don’t really use Pinterest that much, because when I signed up to see what all the fuss is about, my impression of it was that it is a poor man’s Tumblr. But I have a lot of friends who are really into it, so. Your mileage may vary, as they say. I’m told it’s especially useful for people who want to collect inspiring things for the execution of projects and/or the planning of major events like, say, weddings.

3. I Waste So Much Time

It would be remiss of me to not include a site called “I Waste So Much Time” in an article about wasting time. So here it is: a site filled with memes and macros and videos and basically everything you need to waste huge segments of time. Or just keep yourself awake during class. Not that any of us ever browse the internet during classes, of course.

4. Wikipedia

You may laugh, but I have spent many a satisfying hour randomly clicking links and learning all sorts of interesting information. For all that we are (entirely appropriately) warned against using Wikipedia as a research tool, there is still a lot of worthwhile information contained in its pages. In fact, whilst you should never use it as your sole research source, for major topics it’s actually an excellent starting point, because it will give you a fairly reliable overview and will do so with an extensive bibliography at the bottom, which you can use to jumpstart your research. But that’s another post; what about the time-wasting aspect? Well, maybe it’s just because I’m a nerd and like learning about random things, but I like a good random-wiki-links meander. And it’s not just me: the time-suck properties of Wikipedia were immortalized in one of my favorite XKCD comics.

5. TV Tropes

TV Tropes is such a time-suck that I can’t even go there to get their official explanation of what they are to quote it for you because if I do, I will be trapped. Per Wikipedia, then, TV Tropes “is a wiki that collects and expands on various conventions and devices (tropes) found within creative works. Since its establishment in 2004, the site has gone from covering only television and film tropes to also covering those in a number of other media such as literature, comics, video-games, and even things such as advertisements and toys.” When fandom-type people link to a TV Tropes page in online discussions with fellow fans, they will include a disclaimer warning that they are doing so and advise people who click it to use the buddy system. TV Tropes is also immortalized in yet another one of my favorite XKCD comics. THAT IS ACTUALLY WHAT HAPPENS. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

6. Cracked.com

Cracked lies somewhere between Wikipedia and TV Tropes on the how lost can you get in its pages scale. It consists of snarky articles about a variety of topics, including pop culture, history, science, general geekery, and many more. The majority of the articles are in list format.

7. YouTube vloggers

YouTube is not just for funny videos of cats and laughing babies. There is a thriving community of vloggers (video-bloggers) creating a huge variety of content. And I’m not talking about the things you hear about starting on the web and getting turned into television pilots, I’m talking about stuff that is designed to be web video and holds web video as the goal result rather than as a means to an end. The community has gotten big enough and awesome enough that an entire web video convention was created in the last couple years, VidCon.

My favorite vloggers are Hank and John Green of vlogbrothers, and all their various other channels. These include a games channel, two educational channels, a vlogging version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (which I blogged about here), a quiz game, and a miscellaneous channel. They’re pretty prolific. I also enjoy Charlie McDonnell (charlieissocoollike) and Liam Dryden (littleradge). A lot of my friends are fans of Jenna Marbles. If none of those sound good to you, then use your procrastination time to find some channels that do sound good to you, because I am 100% certain that you will be able to find something.

8. Check out the daily t-shirt sites

I have developed a reputation amongst my friends for wearing great t-shirts all the time. I owe it all to a selection of daily t-shirt sites. These are sites which offer one t-shirt a day for a cheap price (generally around $10-12 plus shipping), changing the design every day. Each day you can kill at least five minutes checking the sites out, and you can improve your wardrobe while you do it. My go-to sites are: Qwertee, Ript Apparel, shirt.woot, and TeeFury. There are new ones popping up all the time, though, so with a little googling I’m sure you could find more.

9. Cake Wrecks

Cake Wrecks is a hilarious blog dedicated to chronicling pictures of terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad cakes “decorated” by supposed professionals and actually sold to unsuspecting customers. The horror is punctuated by regular “Sunday Sweets” posts which highlight incredibly excellent examples of what real professionals can actually do with a little fondant or some buttercream.

10. Go Fug Yourself

Snarky commentary from a couple of LA ladies on the fashion faux-pas and triumphs by celebrities. Their omnibus posts about events such as the Miss Universe pageant, the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, figure skating competitions, and of course award shows like the Emmys or the Oscars are invariably hilarious. Additionally, their last post of the day on Fridays is always a linkspam post called “Fugs and Pieces,” providing you with even more material to waste time reading. (For example, one of the links today was to a Vulture post about trying to figure out which guys all the songs on Taylor Swift’s new album are about.)

So there you are, my friends. Ten awesome ways to waste your time on the internet. Go forth and procrastinate!