Things to Do

Every time I feel a sense of boredom overcoming me, I find it rather difficult to imagine anything to do that will occupy myself so as to alleviate my ennui with life. I find myself instead procrastinating about things that I want to do, instead of doing things that I need to do.

It is effortless to fall into the misconception that there is nothing to do. I have begun to realise that that is your mind attempting to fool you in order to severely stall whatever it is that you must do. I have so many things to do, in actuality, so much so that it seems rather impossible to execute them. My to-read-list, for example, spans across four pages, with book titles and authors branching down two columns on each page. This list expands weekly, and I frighten myself when I look at it and think of all the books that I already own that I have not yet read, and I am frightened even more when I look at the slow rate that my reading has gotten to as of late.

I always have to prepare for university. Whether it is printing unit guides, finalising my timetable, procrastinating on my results page, checking if I have overdue library books, or staring at the many other options available on my university website. I even have the checking out of other university websites to tend to, to ensure a smooth sailing into another course after the completion of the current, yet I do not bother. This is partly due to the fact that each time I sit at my desk, I am overcome with and overwhelmed by the amount of mess that sits there that I, on several days, promised myself I would tend to.

I must not forget to mention my bookmarks bar, which expands daily. I have always hated the idea of bookmarking websites because they end up never being visited by myself again, and that is happening all over again. My webpages' borders are cluttered with sites aching to be revisited - it reminds me of my desktop, the place that I once promised never to clutter but I ended up breaking it, yet again; I always break this rule a certain amount of months after owning a new device, particularly when it comes to my mobile phone(s).

I enthral myself with these actions. I know that they are nothing to be proud of, and I know that procrastination is the biggest distraction attacking students all over the world, but I wonder if there is a way to combat it? I know for a fact that if I go on to research this I will procrastinate some more, just like the time that I had a presentation due and I looked up procrastination videos to ironically place in my presentation and instead, ended up spending the rest of the day procrastinating myself, by watching other YouTube videos. It was a dilemma.

I always wonder if this sort of procrastination is beneficial or not. I know that it is not due to the sense of mistaking my lack of activity for the lack of activities, but it could be productive in the sense that I could use that time to plan my next moves. I know that I certainly do this, I have done so on multiple occasions and the things that I come up with from these times prove rather extraordinary, and I cannot perform in the same way with a different approach. But at the same time, I move as slow as the tortoise when it races the hare. The only reason I continue, though, is that just before the race is over, I beat that hare by far.

I do not know what to think of all of this. I suppose it is my way of coping, and my way of performing. I would not have it any other way, despite how slow-paced it all seems at times. I think I will just have to remember to do things when I feel as though I have nothing to do. And I suppose feeling that I have nothing to do is mildly escaping them.