The Great Escape…ism Balancing Act
Escapism! Also known as Procrastination’s hotter older brother, is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “an activity or form of entertainment that helps to avoid or forget about boring or unpleasant things”.
I define it as playing hours upon hours of Halo, going “oh shit! My assignment! It’s due in twenty minutes!” before continuing to play Halo to help my anxiety over not doing the assignment. The astute readers amongst you will notice that this form of study is un-fucking-sustainable as a strategy, and one that I would benefit from ceasing.
Yet here I am, with two assignments due on Friday, writing this article as I wait for the next match to load.
I suspect this is something a lot, if not all of us, have found ourselves doing at one point in time. Especially under the current circumstances, the need for escapist fantasies is higher than ever.
The biggest irony right now, is that this whole piece is taking much longer than it should BECAUSE I’m doing escapism stuff… HOLY SHIT I’M A GENIUS!
FIELD RESEARCH – TOTALLY NOT JUST ME PROCRASTINATING
Research hypothesis – playing video games will chill me out. My match has loaded so I will have the results soon… I’m writing this 11 minutes later – we lost 43-50. Yet here I am loading the next one, because I’m stressed about not finishing the article yet, so I want to play to relieve stress.
The more I play Halo, the more stressed I am about not finishing. Yet, WHILE I’m playing, i.e., performing my escapist task, I feel fine. Unbothered even.
My research has come to a conclusion – escapism while in the middle of work can be a vicious cycle!
You start your activity to relax but then because you’re not working you get behind and because you’re behind you’re stressed so you keep doing your activity but because when you’re not working you get behind… see what I mean?
But what if we incorporated it into our work… No no… unless…
Getting Lost in Stereo
Some of the best escapes can even be incorporated into what we’re doing. Talking to some of my friends, I found out they used escapist tactics in very similar ways, creating completely different vibes for themselves which further motivated them to get work done.
A running theme I found between them was using audio while they worked to place themselves in a new scenario, escaping from the monotone reality of the everyday and instead doing their work in a more exciting or comfy environment.
“If I’m at home, I’ll use YouTube videos which create a ‘café’ setting in the background – they have jazzy background music, the clinking of the register, occasional murmurs of people talking… And for some reason pretending I’m there helps me to stay on task. I think it’s ‘cause the part of your brain that would normally get distracted and make you pick up your phone is being partially entertained.”
“I think my biggest escapism tactic is reading fanfiction of comfort media, or listening to music and essentially making myself imagine I'm in different scenarios I'm in - sometimes it's kinda positive procrastination (like project ideas), sometimes it's spiralling things, or it's legit like ‘fuck this shit I wish it were *insert fictional related thing I'd rather work on*’ (e.g. charms homework at Hogwarts, hero ethics work for BNHA, or like tutor paperwork for Ciel in Kuroshitsuji).”
By incorporating their own interests and fixations into their workload, many of them find it a lot easier to focus, essentially pretending they were in a whole other space while writing their assignments.
“I like to listen to dramatic music and just, space out? Like nope, I'm not currently stuck on an assignment. I am running through a castle while this dramatic song play.”
----
Escapism isn’t just about throwing yourself into a void where your work doesn’t exist. In the long run, as useful as that is it can create more stress. As students, the idea of sometimes just stopping our work and doing something entirely different is so enticing but can lead to sticky situations down the line. Even while writing this very article, I found myself spacing out and gaming instead, putting off the writing process as well as writing other assignments. Incorporating escapist fantasies into the work we’re doing can allow us to actually get shit done instead of just staring at the page for hours, or running off elsewhere only to come back and have a panic attack. Soundscapes, music, even just background noise can place us in areas where we’re actually able to do quality work. And during a time where going out into the real world can be utterly terrifying, being able to create an escape in the comfort of your own room is perfect.