I’m not usually a procrastinator, but this week I decided to act like one.  I wasn’t sure why at the time, though it’s clear to me now. Still, I wanted to commit.  If I’m going to choose to be a procrastinator, I thought, I’m going to do it passionately.

This passion taught me much. I know some of you out there may at times procrastinate, too, so I share with you many tips on how to maximize your procrastination skills so that you, too, may be a passionate procrastinator. (My particular project had to do with editing a manuscript from various editors’ comments, but you can apply these tips to almost any other project you might find yourself avoiding.)

Here goes:

• Write blog on procrastination tips
• Update Cozi calendar grocery list
  • Reorganize said calendar’s main lists
• Clean phone contacts that were screwed up in last software update
• Clean ALL notifications off home screen, especially Words With Friends (for extra delay)
• Check Facebook Feed
  • Facebook status on ideas for procrastinating steaming pile of edits
  • Get good ideas from Lois, dear friend and fellow writing superstar whose debut middle grade novel Paper Wishes, out next year by Margaret Ferguson Books (imprint of Farrar, Straus & Giroux), is sure to be an award winner:  call your mom, organize kid’s closet, meditative walk in the country, another cup of coffee, investigate the uses of coconut oil…
  • Get good ideas from friend and writer Jennifer Uhles: Um start the american horror story series. If u take this advice I promise no editing…not to mention parenting or personal hygiene…will occur for days.
  • And, noting a pattern that writers like to binge watch visual stories on TV, this one from Margaret Speaker Yuan: Binge watching Downton Abby listening to the rain on the roof.
• Eat
• Choose exercise documentary to watch off GAIAM TV while on Cross trainer
• Crosstrain while watching documentary on what happens to you after you die (Spirit Space. Really good!)
• Eat
• Join friend and blogging expert Nathan’s annual family Weight Challenge
• Read chapter on Emma Curtis Hopkins’ metaphysical perspective for new philosophy class starting next week
• Write supportive card for friend
• List all the TV shows I know (in my defense, technically research for said project)
• DO EDITS (fill in your project) for negotiated amount of time with butt in chair
• Check Facebook responses
• Celebrate accomplishment by floating in hot tub in rain
  • calculate time it takes for drop to fall from above lattice to forehead
  • calculate amount of time for Smart Water bottle to float in circle around hot tub with bubbles on
  • calculate speed at which gray clouds meld into each other in the sky
• Call Mom (thanks, Lois)
• Add Almond Milk to Cozi grocery list since somebody used the last drop and did not add to list (eh hem)
• Make list of ideas for procrastination
• Shower
  • Add Moroccan Oil to Cozi list
    • Make Specialty List entitled “Things to Buy When I Have Extra Cash”
• Start at channel one on TV guide and scan to 1,000 to check out shows while calling it research
• Clear all phone notifications
• Laundry! Why did it take so long to think about laundry!
• Scratch out Novel #3 outline (preferably on grody envelope for future speech when Novel becomes award-winning bestseller.

This is not an all-inclusive list, but it should get you started. Remember when I said I knew there was some reason I was doing this other than just pure insanity? Here it is. At the end of the day I received a note from my editor saying the stated word count was actually less than we had originally thought and needed to be cut. Now, had I done that work, I would have had to redo it, right? See that? Procrastination paying off right there.

The Universe is just one step ahead of me, thank God. And I may have just gotten it out of my system so that I may now become passionate about editing.