How to procrastinate in 2021?
We all need to escape the news cycle of doom and gloom.
I have spent most of today doomscrolling. I didn’t, until recently, know that this was a thing but it pretty much sums up my Covid existence. It has become my procrastinating distraction of choice and its doing me absoultely no good whatsoever.
Doomscrolling is the activity of scrolling through a feed to read items about tragic or disastrous events.
To be honest, I was a doomscroller well before the pandemic. The omnishambles that is British politics necessitated the installing of a news app on my phone a couple of years ago. It seemed so innocent but within days I was spending hours huddled up against the the radiator in my kitchen refreshing headlines, obsessively checking the live feeds before heading over to Twitter to find out what everyone else was thinking (or tweeting — I’m not so sure the two are analagous).
After the election last year I confronted myself, admitted this addiction and deleted the app. It took a while for the anxiety of being ill-informed and out-of-the-loop to subside. I fell back to the procrastinating distractions of old, consulting seed catalogues, clearing out random kitchen cupboards and sock drawers, repainting the skirting boards and staring out of the window watching the world slide by.
And then 2020 happened. Back to square one.
I know that I need to take a deep breath, delete that app again and block the news notifications that slink across my home screen hinting at new disasters, more doom, always gloom.
But how to procrastinate in 2021? Our cupboards and drawers and bookshelves are already suitably curated. Anything that was unwanted has already been recyled or re-homed and I think I’ll be divorced if another paint pot finds its way into the house.
New strategies for world-avoidance required please.
