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Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Suffering from chronic idiocy since 1977

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Quite Distracting

It’s some­thing every­one is guilty of when under pres­sure: Find­ing things to dis­tract you from the (likely) more impor­tant task at hand. I remem­ber my par­ents doing “busy work” when I was grow­ing up, espe­cially when there were stress­ful things wait­ing to be dealt with.

It occurred to me that I’m guilty of the same method of pro­cras­ti­na­tion, how­ever mun­dane the sub­sti­tuted task may be. Seem­ingly out of nowhere, when a dead­line looms, the dishes need to be washed, bath­room cleaned, laun­dry done, shelves reor­ga­nized, garbage taken out, and a mul­ti­tude of projects on my less-important to-do lists all seem to jump to the front of my mind.

I brought this up to a good friend the other day, and we com­pared notes–it was her opin­ion that we often let some of these tasks accrue over time, for the sole pur­pose of hav­ing things to dis­tract us when we feel the need to pro­cras­ti­nate. I think I might agree with her, sub­con­siously of course, but it makes me curi­ous: what do you do to dis­tract your­self when the pres­sure builds? Or are you the type who doesn’t let them­selves get off-track?

Come now, be hon­est: drop your dis­trac­tions in the com­ments, if you don’t have any­thing more press­ing to do first…

This item was posted by Dan Rubin on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006.

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14 comments on “Quite Distracting”

  1. Posted by Jina Bolton on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006.

    Me? Dis­tracted? Heh, who am I kid­ding. I think you know what my dis­trac­tion is…

  2. Posted by Jeff Croft on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006.

    I’m the type that’s never behind. I’m always on top of all my tasks. I never miss a dead­line. Basi­cally, I’m bet­ter than you.

  3. Posted by Dan Rubin on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006.

    In real­ity, Jeff’s list looks like this:

    • Check news­reader
    • Com­ment on every new post in the newsreader
    • Check news­reader again
    • Go out par­ty­ing with chicks

  4. Posted by Jina Bolton on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006.

    Jeff has the life…

  5. Posted by Lance E. Leonard on Thursday, August 31st, 2006.

    I have a com­plete IA due to a client tomor­row and am gear­ing up for a late night tonight (it’s already 11pm). What got me here? Wast­ing all day paint­ing ran­dom parts of the mural I’m doing in the nurs­ery for our soon-to-be-born baby boy. Not quite as mun­dane as doing the dishes, and will prob­a­bly be the loom­ing dead­line as we gear up for birth, but your post was a wee bit timely.

  6. Posted by Jeff Croft on Thursday, August 31st, 2006.

    Dan, you for­got the last step: “Come home to angry e-mails from project managers.”

  7. Posted by Thomas Baekdal on Thursday, August 31st, 2006.

    I usu­ally find myself drawn towards sev­eral things (when on a deadline):

    - check­ing the news­reader (it was dur­ing a dis­trac­tion that I noticed this post)
    – check­ing design, archi­tec­ture or car design sites
    – start walk­ing around in the office and prob­a­bly annoy­ing the every­one by doing so
    – draw­ing small car­toon fig­ures (not very good ones)
    – feel­ing insanely frus­trated by being dis­tracted, and solve it by star­ring out the win­dow to see if the trees do some­thing funny (they rarely do)

  8. Posted by Anton on Thursday, August 31st, 2006.

    Well, I’d like to think that my dis­trac­tions aren’t all so.…

    …ooh look, some­thing SHIINY (runs off).

  9. Posted by Matthew Anderson on Thursday, August 31st, 2006.

    I con­sider myself lucky to have dis­cov­ered cof­fee at such an early age. If I ever get dis­tracted I need only take a break, walk to get cof­fee and return to my desk. The act of get­ting cof­fee kicks in some placebo focus. The act of drink­ing it, keeps my focus going. Like I said though, I con­sider myself lucky.

  10. Posted by Mike Stickel on Thursday, August 31st, 2006.

    My dis­trac­tions are those lit­tle “here, look at this link” mes­sages I get from co-workers and friends who aren’t on the same dead­line as I am. Of course, because I want to be cool like them I check the link and they keep send­ing them. Bastards!

    Other dis­trac­tions are sim­ply real life. At times it gets to a point where I don’t want to be in front of the com­puter any more so I go some­where else, start hav­ing fun there and refuse to leave. Damn dead­lines, whomever invented them needs to be tarred and feathered.

  11. Posted by luxuryluke on Thursday, August 31st, 2006.

    I’m never distrac.…

    Woah, check this out!

    […walk­ing away.]

  12. Posted by Steven Ametjan on Friday, September 1st, 2006.

    I do exactly what I’m doing now… I spend my day read­ing items in feeds rather than doing my actual work.

  13. Posted by Chris Griffin on Friday, September 1st, 2006.

    My dis­trac­tion is down at the moment (Blog­lines), and has been down most of the day WTF! As soon as it comes back up I’m pack­ing up my OPML and hit­ting the road.

    But its even more dis­tract­ing now because I keep refresh­ing because I need to know what’s going on here on the inter­nets! I guess Bloglines’s series of tubes are clogged.

  14. Posted by Chris Griffin on Friday, September 1st, 2006.

    Ha, your blog is magic. The sec­ond after I post that com­ment, lo and behold blog­lines is back up.