Positive Distractions

I’m frightfully good at procrastinating, and after reading an article on ‘how distractions can facilitate creative problem solving’ I feel as though I ought to employ the technique more often.

http://www.physorg.com/news142012820.html

Sometimes I use absurdly cosmic events to procrastinate or simply be lazy. Most times it happens when I’m faced with everyday chores or simple maintenance.
For instance, when it has reached approx. 2am – I’m still editing but at this point falling asleep in front of the computer– and it is clearly time to retire, I use the inevitable destruction of the Earth by the Sun (http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.4031) as an excuse to skip brushing my teeth until the morning.
Then I wake up the next day and ask myself, “Why should I continue this project if the entire galaxy will inevitably be sucked into the giant black hole at its center?”
So then I find other things to do, like go out to buy an envelope and…
“...have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around.”
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
There is of course an obvious danger in too much of this sort of thinking.