Sometimes procrastination doesn’t look like procrastination at all. It can disguise itself as something productive or even self-improvement. Here are a few examples:

• Continuing your education when you know you won’t benefit from it or use it. For example, you already have a BS or MS degree, your career is going well, but you have spare time and money and don’t know what to do with them.
• Writing RFCs for small features where the implementation would take less time than writing the RFC itself.
• Scheduling meetings for next week when the discussion could easily happen asynchronously.
• Buying additional devices or gadgets because you believe they’ll make you more productive, when in reality they only add more distractions.
• Reading books. Yes, even reading can become procrastination if you’re reading just to avoid doing the work that actually matters.
• Attending random conferences and meetups without a clear purpose.
• Organising your notes or TODO list for the fifth time instead of starting the task.
• Switching from one LLM to another, even though any of them could answer 90% of your questions.
• Thinking about how to stop procrastinating instead of doing the thing you’ve been avoiding.

To me, the activity itself isn’t the problem. Learning, reading, writing, and networking are all valuable things. But I sometimes notice they become a form of procrastination when I use them to avoid something more important, difficult, or uncomfortable.

That reminds me of a quote I once heard:

Procrastination isn’t always avoiding work. Sometimes it’s choosing work that feels safer.