“Okay, self, you can take 10 minutes to delay your pending duties, but then you have to get right to it.”

“Very well,” I say to myself, “10 minutes.  Will do.”

Now the special purpose behind granting 10 minutes is that it’s an awkward amount of time: too little time to start on any work or project (or game) that would clearly take more time (and thus feed my procrastination), but also too much time to just sit around and do nothing.  So what to do with those 10 minutes?  You could use the time to be productive (if you’re the productive procrastinator type) and do something like: take out the trash, brush your teeth, take a shower, clip your nails, sweep the floor, eat an airplane-sized packet of peanuts.  However, I usually choose to use my 10 minutes to be non-productive.

By far, the most frequent use of those 10 minutes lately is to play “Xplorers” (aka “Settlers of Catan”) or “Toulouse” (aka “Carcassonne”) over at AsoBrain.com.  Now, I don’t play against humans.  While more challenging, playing against humans takes much longer.  Instead I play against three computer opponents.  Games take about 10 minutes.  Perfect.  Go give it a shot.  Just remember, when your game is over, you get back down to work: you made a deal with yourself.

Procrastie the unproductive, but unusually happy, paperclip

It seems that businesses with mascots do better than businesses without mascots. For example, Disney with Mickey Mouse does better than Six Flags with… uhh… Loony Toons, is it? Right. See right there? Six Flags doesn’t have a mascot, it has flags or something. Take Australia and Brazil as another example: Australia with Koala bears clearly wins against Brazil with not a single marsupial that comes close to the Koala, even though Brazil is in fact larger by area than Australia and has roughly a bazillion more species of animals.  No mascot, no wins*.

So with this research in mind, I figured that ProcrastBlog must have a mascot in order to be better than its competitors (you know who you are). So I made some Office Supply Art utilizing some readily available paperclips and dimes. And there we have it… or him: a mascot. And he needs a name of course… like John. John would be a fine name… nevermind John. I didn’t mean to offend any Johns. Right… we’ll name him Procrastie the Paperclip Art, because no one in their right or wrong mind would ever name someone Procrastie.

So there we have it: the ProcrastBlog mascot. Success is almost certain now. Just don’t confuse this mascot with Clippit. You know: Microsoft’s failed office assistant.  Maybe this will help your memory:

* There is one exception to this: Soccer.  Brazil clearly has more wins than Australia who despite my cheers at 6am in the 2006 World Cup was taken down by Italy in the Round of 16.  (Brazil beat Australia in the Group Stage, but went on to lose to France in the quarter finals.)