Relaxing procrastination

[jack]

When I was playing Ingress a lot, I would plan too much "where should I go at lunchtime, where should I hack? where should I attack?"

I do this too much for many games, when I'd learn more by thinking less and experimenting more.

But it also matters for my real life :) That could get addictive and eat up time when it felt like I was being productive and wasn't.

But it's also true, it served a useful purpose, that I need SOMETHING to occupy my mind if I'm a little distracted, that's sufficiently mentally engaging I don't get bored and wander off to do something EVEN MORE proacrastinatey and something that tires me out MORE (like obsessively reading webpages), but not so engaging I get addicted. I'm not sure what to fill that hole with. It's often "thinking about whatever hobby I'm currently doing", but that varies, and it's easy to get sucked in, or not have anything and default to hitting "refresh". Or coffee-break-puzzle type games, but... I tend to get frustrated and addicted. What works well? Maybe I should actually try music -- I really don't have the habit of music, but I think it does this somewhat for other people?

Comments

[sfred]

This is the function that swimming fulfils for me: it's so hard to do something else at the same time that when I'm swimming I'm just swimming. I'm sometimes thinking at the same time but often just counting lengths.

[hatam_soferet]

Knitting! Or crochet. It's so good for that kind of timeslot. You need a bit of engaged brain, but not too much, and you can be all "ok I will do four rows and then back to work." Plus it uses your hands instead of your thinkybrain, which is a good change.

[chess]

This is why I have an elaborate and well-developed doodling style - I doodle to fix my 'this isn't taking all of my bandwidth but I need to keep my input channels open rather than doing something entirely else' problems.