The HC Leeds Guide to Top Procrastination

May means only one thing in student world: stress! Yes you’ve guessed it, it’s the time of year that all students dread; the time when you need to put down that bottle of vodka, pick up that hefty book you’ve been ignoring for the past semester, and actually knuckle down to some revision – exams are approaching. Gone are the carefree days of just relaxing, ignoring the mundane seminar readings you’ve been asked to look at and sitting in front of the TV or your laptop, pretending you don’t actually have anything to do. Instead, say hello to long hours in the library, mountains of books and so many notes surrounding you that you’re scared you might just drown in a sea of paper. I would go down the route of telling you lovely readers how to cope with this stress, or how best to revise, but I fear that in doing so, I would not be being true to what I do (that, and I don’t actually know myself). Instead, I will help in possibly ruining your university degree and bring you all down with me as I share my top procrastination techniques, which I am ironically doing by writing this article.

Social Media

Let’s start with the most obvious: Twitter and Facebook. You can’t beat them for a good bit of procrastination. It starts with the innocent, ‘oh, I’ll just check that notification I have’ and then two hours and a good session of friend (and friends of friends) stalking later, you are no more knowledgeable on the topic you were supposedly revising than you were when you first started. We’ve all been there. Twitter is just as dangerous, and can be even more so than Facebook in my opinion. I have discovered that going through an interesting Twitter profile like ‘Very British Problems,’ – I can guarantee you will relate to at least five of the things it’s tweeted – can take up a good hour or so of your life. Another good time waster is going through people’s favourites. You’d be surprised at the amount of amusing or entertaining things you will find, giving you yet more hours of entertainment (depending on how many you go through of course). These two just can’t be missed if you are looking for a good distraction from work.

You Tube

The classic way to take up your time, without even realising that it’s happening. It could range from a series of funny and extremely entertaining videos to even just watching a selection of different music videos. You become consumed in this viral world, sucked into it until you reach the point of no return. There are no limits to the lengths people will go to in order to get away from a boring afternoon of revision – animal videos are my personal favourite. Who knew a cat could look so funny jumping? Or that you can actually watch ‘Baby Monkey (Riding Backwards on a Pig)’ over and over again without getting even the slightest bit bored? My housemate also found herself devoting lengthy periods of time to watching those goat videos. You must have all seen at least one of them – the goat version of Taylor Swift’s ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ is well worth a watch. I warn you though, if you take this up as one of your procrastination methods, don’t be surprised if you find yourself missing many of the important hours from your day.

Looking through old photos

Once you start, you literally can’t stop. Taking a trip down memory lane is well worth the time you spend not doing work. All of those great nights out that you had almost forgotten, those memorable holidays with your family where you look so tanned that you can’t quite believe it’s you. My favourites are the photos with friends that you no longer speak to and leave you wondering how so much has managed to change. They can bring a smile to your face or a tear to your eye, but they also have the ability to take away a portion of your day.

Tidying/Cleaning

This is possibly one of the weirdest ways that I will procrastinate. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not the tidiest person in the world; I will not go to great lengths to make everything look immaculate. So if you catch me having a good old tidy up of my room, or generally doing something that didn’t really need doing in the first place, you’d be right to assume that I’m avoiding something, and nine times out of ten, that something is uni work. You’d be surprised how much time a good clean actually takes up (and energy I might add). It’s bedtime before you know it, and you haven’t even started that essay, woops, maybe more luck tomorrow?

Now these are only a few of which I advise you to try. There are of course other popular techniques such as watching TV, playing a game (for me Sims is a good time-consumer and avoidance strategy), reading a non-academic and actually entertaining book, or even doing absolutely nothing. So don’t let exams, revision or essays get you down – procrastinate instead!

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