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V.com weekend vote: What is your favorite method of procrastination?

February 5, 2012 at 10:53 PM

It's Super Bowl Sunday, and the cheese fries, popcorn, chicken wings, soda and general prospect of four hours in front of the television has me thinking about an important topic: procrastination.

Why practice, when you can procrastinate?

I can give you a lot of reasons to practice instead: so you can become a competent, maybe even excellent player, and so you can stay that way.

But for the Type-A, workaholics among us: now and then, it's okay to procrastinate. You know how long you can do it before you have to get to the wire and put in the time. At some point you'd best get down to work! But in the meanwhile...What is your favorite method of procrastination? I've listed a few general categories; feel free to elaborate, or to describe for us your own favorite procrastination activity:

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I have to admit that cooking ( though not necessarily eating) is the only thing I enjoy as much as playing.I love learning new techniques, revisiting and perfecting familiar recipes, and improvising with elements of both...exactly what I do with music...I share this proclivity with many musicians I know..
Hmm . . . cooking, exercising, and dealing with people are usually activities that I am trying to avoid by procrastinating. I sometimes even use violin practice as procrastination to avoid those things!
The human available for procrastinating will generally remind me I should be practicing.
dancing. though the dancers I know would say that I procrastinate by playing the violin... ;)
well, this website...
The most effective way of procrastination for me is doing something creative and productive, such as cooking, sewing, knitting, soapmaking,etc, plus doing research on all of these things. I can say, see, I'm busy and working hard. Sorry Mr.Violin, it's not all about you.
READING! I can't believe "reading" wasn't one of the choices. I devour historical mysteries and sometimes venture into non-fiction as well. Recently finished "The Great Silence" which is a non-fiction study of the years immediately following WWI in England. And I am a huge fan of Gerald Elias's mysteries.
This is not such a well thought-out question & none of the responses apply in my case, nor do I really like marking that catch-all response, "Others."

Indeed, the violin is my preferred tool of procrastination. Most often, I play the violin to procrastinate other things that I need to do, as other respondents to this column have related as well.

Notably, I also "play" the violin to procrastinate "practicing" the violin. That is, I play other music than what I ought to be practicing. I like to think of that as being "constructively naughty"! :-)

I garden, cook or compare notes with my mother about gardening and cooking. If I'm really procrastinating, I'll play "wiggle the string on the stick" with my cats.
Interacting with other people is my favorite but screen time is what is most used. Practice however, is what I use to procrastinate for school:)
The only sense in which I procastinate when it comes to practicing is to try to put it off until my room warms up in the afternoon. In that case, everything I do is procrastination. Other than practice, I procrastinate when it comes to paying bills and such, and probably I procrastinate most by reading v.com.
I read.

Reading!

(Some of us, even regular internets users and e-reader owners, are still clinging to our old-fashioned, outdated, outmoded, so like not cool, paper books.)

I wish I had TIME to procrastinate! Between working more than 40 hours a week, kids, pets, laundry, dinner, bills, one or more of us having to be to various musical activities six nights a week, etc., procrastination doesn't have a chance. By the way, reading is just as much a necessity as breathing or eating; it doesn't count as procrastination!
Reading violinist.com, of course!
25 march is "international day for all procratinators", founded by David d'Equainville, reference daily telegraph page 21, 25 march 2011. A vote similar to this has been held before around march 2009. Playing the violin is my procrastination activitity - I should be doing scientific research.