motivation burnout and procrastination

    One of my greatest attributes is my time management ability. I've always thought that I was good at just getting stuff done, because, historically, I have been. When I was still in school, I never really had to worry about getting shit done. Now, as a teacher, I'm caught up on grading and I'm still writing and doing creative things on the side. Now I'm getting a little behind on some creative things, but that's because of one thing. One thing that is both my greatest achievement in avoiding burnout and my greatest detriment in timely working. 

    That thing is the procrastination line. 

    To explain: I've been doing this since high school. When school started up until this week, pretty much, I only had it running on the weekends, because it takes a long-ass time to get through the procrastination line. What the procrastination line is, essentially, a line of tabs that I check briefly/watch a video/enter GR giveaways/read a chapter of a book/during NaNo, write a page of my project before doing anything on my to-do list. It takes a long-ass time to go through. It means I only get through one thing roughly every hour. 

    However, when I use the procrastination line rather than just doing shit, I do not burn out. I actively have to keep an eye on the time to have a set end-time for my activities (right now during the week is 9:00), because otherwise, I mean, I'm not going to get bored before like, five or six hours in. I do not burn out. If I'm just checking shit off of the to-do list, just one after another, at some point I'm going to go lie on the couch and watch Facebook videos or election TikToks. Does not happen with the procrastination line. 

    The exact line-up of tabs is this:

     Don't pay attention to the fact that I have three goddam e-mails, and also reading always goes first. The first thing for every set on the to-do list is read a chapter. I rotate my Warrior Cat book and my other book so that it stays relatively even. And because I'm keeping myself engaged, I don't get burned out. Burn-out, I think, really mostly comes when you get bored with what you're doing. So my solution is to just not let myself get bored.

    Ever. 

    Because boredom leads to stagnation, and stagnation is the enemy.