Procrastination Lately I find myself procrastinating a lot. It is probably due to the weather and how gloomy and muggy it has been. Or maybe it is just my brain's way of saying "I'm not ready to do work yet" LOL. Either way, through this procrastination I am actually accomplishing other tasks. The first being that I have caught up on some housework! Clearing the clutter and dusting about makes me feel accomplished. Then at least when the sun has set and I begin to reflect on what did not get done in the day, I can count "cleaned house" as something that was accomplished. The other item I find myself doing a lot while procrastinating is surfing the web. Now initially surfing the web does not sound at all worthwhile. However, I've found that reading articles written by various authors and provided in varying contexts is serving to expand my knowledge and language skills. When reading, particularly in your second language, you come across unfamiliar words. When this happens to me I first try to read the rest of the sentence to determine what the word might mean. If that doesn't help I look the word up. At first I didn't like looking words up midway through reading, but the truth is I never could remember exactly which word I didn't know if I didn't look it up right away! By looking the word up in the moment it gives me the opportunity to reread the newly learned word in context. So next time you're procrastinating, pull up an article in a language you're practicing and give yourself permission to stop and look up unfamiliar words. Then at the end of the day, when you're reviewing what you've accomplished in the day, you can say you learned something new! And we all know learning something new is always an accomplishment!