eduify | write faster

by Adam Krause

Working is all fine and good. But as Jack Nicholson in The Shining pointed out, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. If you have nothing but white walls to stare at, you might find yourself kicking your laptop down the hallway at three in the morning instead of using it to write your seminal paper on Stanley Kubrick. Eduify doesn’t want that to happen. So we’ve assembled this list of distractions to keep on your desk, giving your eyes and brain a rest before plunging back into the labors of a scholar.

1) Doodling supplies

None of your teachers want you to doodle in class, but doodling can often be a focusing tool for many students, especially visual learners. When the eye and hand are busy making an image on the page, their mind is able to better absorb what they are hearing or studying. They might look at the doodle later on and be able to subconsciously conjure up an entire lecture, even if their sketch of a man floating down from a cliff using his umbrella has very little to do with the phases of cell mitosis. When studying alone, a sketchbook or Moleskine notebook, together with good pens (I like Pilot Rolling Ball Fine) might both provide an escape from your paper and a way to break the mental block preventing you from finishing it.

2) Toys

Games on your computer are not the be-all and end-all of distraction. When’s the last time you took out a yo-yo from your desk drawer and brushed up on your old tricks? (My best trick, the Tangled-Up String, is really something to see.) And what about Slinky? I dare anyone not to be mesmerized by the shiny coils undulating from one hand to the other. While studying in Japan, I once saw an entire group of monks amused at the sight of a Slinky moving end over end down the long front steps of the temple. Along those lines, you could always keep a miniature Zen garden on your desk. Grooming a little square of sand and rocks can help you organize the much larger chaos of a semester’s worth of notes.

3) Workout equipment

Maybe you don’t use a ten-pound dumbbell as a doorstop, as I did in college. (Yes, ten pounds was about all I could handle.) But you might be able to keep a rubber resistance band in your desk drawer. Just sit on the floor, put your foot in the middle of the band and pull each end inward, alternating between hands. If you prefer a more mobile workout, go for a jog (if you aren’t working in the middle of the night, that is.) Even ten pushups or situps might provide some much-needed adrenaline and help clear your head.

4) Art and photos

There’s a reason so many college students have complex M.C. Escher prints or Magic Eye drawings on their walls. When you spend so much time inside your brain, it helps to have something you can just stare at and get lost in for a moment or two. By the same token, office workers almost always have framed photos of friends and family around to help them get through the day’s tasks. Even if all your photos are online at Facebook or Flickr, keep a few particularly important ones in old-fashioned physical form on your desk. You might rather be back on that kayak with your best friend or dancing at your cousin’s wedding again than writing your paper, but at least you can return there for a brief mental vacation.

5) The Internet

Yes, you probably don’t need this online guide to tell you how to use the Internet to distract yourself. You know how to obsessively check the stats of your fantasy basketball team and how to become an expert pumpkin farmer in FarmVille on Facebook. But this list would be lacking if it didn’t mention the greatest procrastination tool in human history. It is possible to use the Internet for educational good rather than evil: for instance, the site freerice.com lets you generate rice donations to aid organizations by taking multiple-choice quizzes to test your vocabulary. And you can easily kill an hour following random links across the vast compendium of knowledge on Wikipedia, or the often intriguing news flashes and blogs of the moment at MetaFilter.com. In fact, you have already embarked on this virtuous path by choosing to read this post. Time spent looking at Eduify’s blog and useful writing tips isn’t procrastination at all: it’s research. Score! The end of that paper has never seemed closer.