Originally published by The Clifton Courier, July 10, 2019

If you want to be really productive at a bunch of things, concentrate on just one thing that you really, really don’t feel like doing.

Because as fabulous as will power and motivation is, the thing that really kicks you into gear is good, old fashioned avoidance.

I’ve just had a super productive afternoon and I have nobody to thank except my ability to put things off.

That thing I kept putting off was writing this column.

Believe it or not, sometimes it’s difficult for me to rant about absolutely nothing of consequence with zero stimulus to provoke me. I know. I usually have a cauldron of rage to rely on when things get super dull, but I wasn’t even able to draw on the repressed anger bubbling away inside me after an extremely minor inconvenience.

I’m pretty annoyed; usually I’m ruminating over something I spin into a yarn. Think of the carols they blast at the supermarket at Christmas – it’s like that but instead of songs about joy and bells and plum-based desserts we never eat, it’s a loop of things like “since when did people start calling ‘utes’ ‘trucks’ – what has our country come to?!” or “yeah, I was a nasty little snot in Grade 9, I absolutely deserve a good toe stubbing”.

But when I sat down to write earlier today, everything shut down.

I stared at the blank screen and my head flooded with the white noise you used to get on analogue television. I couldn’t get anything down.

And this really made me mad, because I wanted to get it done so I could finish the final 20 pages of the Jane Austen book I’ve been binge-reading and find out if the bookish, dignified young heroine shines despite her inferior circumstances and lands the conveniently rich and handsome man of honour. I had no idea which way it would go. I mean, the suspense was killing me.

I wanted so badly to put this column to bed, but I had nothing. So I avoided it.

While I usually just stare at the wall or smooth my hair between by thumbs until I fall into a trance when avoiding something, I decided to get other stuff done instead.

And look, it’s dangerous to say that procrastination is a great strategy for productivity, but it kinda is. I mean, you get a lot of things done… just not the thing you were hoping to get done.

Here’s the stuff I did while I was avoiding writing this column:

A sweaty, sweaty workout: it can be hard to motivate yourself to stay on a treadmill. But for every minute you’re running on a conveyor belt to nowhere, that’s another minute you don’t have to do your assignment. And that’s one heck of a carrot to dangle in front of your sweaty ass.

Unloaded the dishwasher: I didn’t even have to do it, there was another draw completely empty. But when I unload the dishwasher, I can put things away the way I like it. And that’s a victory I cling to.

Made a risotto I didn’t even really feel like: Yep, I opted to cook what might be the most demanding, time-consuming stovetop dish for dinner. I mean, it’s a piece of piss to knock together but you do have to do a lot of stirring and encouraging and hydrating – looking after a sloppy mate going back on the prowl at the pub after a messy breakup. I used brown rice too, which took even longer.

Vacuumed the kitchen: There were a few flakes of onion and garlic peels on the ground and, as a firm believer in a shoes-off household, I feel like you should be able to walk around barefoot without getting crud stuck to your feet.

Vacuumed the rest of the house: Because the vacuum cleaner was already out and if I had to put it away – the worst household chore of them all – it may as well have been worth it.

Mopped the kitchen and my room: Having grown up with a carpeted bedroom, running a mop around my living quarters is a bit of a novelty. I do like the extra zing of cleanliness it adds. And I think that everyone would be a bit better off if I didn’t have carpet in my room – that red ink and latex stain from when I was working on my edgy Year 12 art statement* may have made it look less like someone lost a limb in my room.

* About abortion, no less.

Finished my column: By tricking myself into doing other stuff instead of writing my column, I was able to come up with enough column fodder to write my column.

I feel like a bloody genius.

Please excuse the crassness of my illustrations – I drew them on the plane and didn’t have any water to activate the wonder of my water colour pencils. I just painted them using my fingers and some melting ice from a Starbucks iced tea.

However, I did this while at the Louvre, which makes this shit art… art. Voila!