Procrastination 101

How to feel like you're getting your assignment done, only to realise you have a couple of lines along with a lot of "NEED TO WRITE MORE HERE."

• Dust and tidy desk.
• Dust and tidy office.
• Dust and tidy entire house, including grouting in shower and de-clogging of kitchen sink.
• Play with Basil.
• Go back into sparkling office, with a bottle of water and a cup of tea.
• Turn computer on, and wait 20 minutes for it to start.
• Check all favourite blogs and Facebook and Gmail and Wikipedia and TradeMe.
• Finish cup of tea and make another.
• Remember to put washing on. Fuss around putting all clothes in the right way out with a dab of Frend on the most miniscule stains.
• Play with Basil.
• Lunchtime. Make baked bean and cheese toastie, and become engrossed in Dr Phil. The Jena 6? Never heard of them. But totally enthralling.
• Drag self back to office. Stare at assignment question. Google the answer. Re-word it to sound like I wrote it.
• Celebrate getting work done by pottering in the garden. May as well pull out that tomato plant, it's getting out of hand. And those grapes are about to get eaten by the birds, better get those in. That palm there is way too top heavy, better chop off some fronds. Roses - deadhead. Veggie bed - fertilise and weed. Trim the buxus hedge.
• Collapse exhausted on the couch and congratulate self with cold Coke Zero.
• Play with Basil, who is looking at me weirdly. All, woman, leave me alone to SLEEP!
• Slink back to office. Research the US sub-prime mortgage crisis on Google. Learn more about it in 10 minutes via the web than I ever would have by asking someone at work. Fire off 300 words.
• Go to kitchen and begin preparing exceptionally difficult meal, with hundreds of ingredients and at least 3 hours of preparation time. Call this "a quick healthy snack."
• Back in the office, check blogs again, Facebook and Gmail. Check bank account for any surprise, large donations. There are none.
• Dream about winning the lottery.
• Look at accommodation in the Maldives and contemplate booking a trip and going.
• Check bank account again, just in case.
• Google some more about tax imputation credits and listing rules and OCRs and the export sector. Jot some notes down and highlight question saying "elaborate on this one."
• Write a blog post.
• Turn computer off and watch back to back episodes of the Simpsons.
• Shove guilty feeling far far away with a lovely spicy Bloody Mary.
• Hunt Basil down (hiding in the linen cupboard) and plant him on my knee. A most successful day.