Oh where one goes when it comes to the purposeless pursuits of the procrastinating mind. Well, in this case, especially where this scribe finds himself, it tends to be diving right into the endless researching possibilities out there when it comes to wrestling this unruly and marauding menace 

Armed with the ammunition to shoot down those pesky and persistent time-stealing web-‘fairy’-sites, net surfing should also pop up some hidden little gems worth the wait. And speaking of the uncertain recesses of the mind, that is where some logic of thought suggests we go. This Meditation Exercise Builds Mental Muscle and Cures , brings a calmness and a centredness to our thinking, allowing us the ability to think more clearly and with more focus. The mind after all has to be our most important organ.

“Paris – MusĂ©e Rodin: Le Penseur” by wallyg is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Wait a sec; me thinks an edit is needed on that last line. Don’t I mean the brain? Yes, of course I do. Why would you, I mean I, or we . . . sorry, who again is doubting my intelligence? Ah yes, the mind is a very important muscle to exercise. Oh shoot, there you/I go again. Maybe this will clear some things up: How Are The Mind And Brain Related? | Philosophy Now

Though I of course should hesitate to make any formal introductions, I would like to introduce to you the inner ramblings of the highly distractible, constantly active, forever humbling, [ine]qualities of the ADHD mind, and one especially prone to the (wonderful?) possibilities of procrastination.

And so, it continues. I’m not sure exactly how many links resulting in countless open tabs later it was, but I arrived at a philosophy site that presented me with this little discourse narrative found within the human psyche.

The mind? It’s ‘nothing but’ the brain, we are told. A thought? It’s ‘nothing but’ electricity. The self? ‘Nothing but’ an illusion accidentally generated by neural activity
 and so on. The conclusion of this discourse is instantly assumed: the mind and its contents are bound, at the end of the day, to turn out to be completely describable in terms of the material features of the brain itself. You are your brain.

Dr. Stephen Anderson, Reviewing I am Not a Brain: Philosophy of Mind for the 21st Century, by Markus Gabriel, Polity Press, 2017.

So, of course now it became necessary to travel down these little laneways of loquacious loveliness. And although it’s never seamless (but some might say it is seemless), and it certainly never follows a straight line, its path holds on it discoveries ranging anywhere from the surreal to the sublime — the senseless to the sanguine.

Tumbling through more wormholes I found some of these, that to be honest kind of added to the procrastination, but also being linked to some helpful workshops and habit-forming activities. Personally, for me, it’s the laying out of a good mix of elements: humour that packs a punch; explicit and direct naming of what is actually happening when one procrastinates; and, the literature and scientific evidencing that puts it all together — all of these together draw me in. And to show that I am indeed trying to connect the dots and see where some of these connecting pieces can provide me with both reasonable and practical goals, allows some of the important elements to sink into deeper levels of consciousness.

created by Prof. Tim Pychyl and Paul Mason

Carpe Diem Procrastination Cartoons | Procrastination Research Group | Carleton University

 

Carpe Diem Cartoons

 

And, here’s the penultimate offering, that albeit unrelated to school per se, it does relate to this time of year — Christmas for some of us — where procrastination can absolutely trip you up when it comes to the attaining of those oh so perfect gifts for the loved ones in your life. I have certainly been down this path many a time . . . some of them turning out quite well, but others, so very poorly. It goes to a deeper or different type of introspection, but I do wonder why it is that the good ones tend to blur out the bad ones.

 

 

Therefore, traversing these trails of a most certain treasury requires one to ride with training wheels until more finely attuned to know when to turn off the distracting  . . .

 

 

. . . and finishing not so much with a mic drop, but an acknowledgment that this tantalizing piece of troublemaking technology, even with all its ubiquitousesque existence is still a torrid tormentor of one’s time well spent.