Your greatest procrastinations

After about 20 years I finally visited the dentist today.

30 mins of cleaning was a bit of a slog but now my teeth look very good.

20 years!

Iā€™m not sure which aspect of this is procrastination Theo

Iā€™ve actually been a couple of years since an appointment. I moved and havenā€™t got round to finding a local dentist yet.

Did they say anything about the length of time since your last appointment?

Iā€™m been meaning to go for at least 15 years just never gotten around to it.

I see, so youā€™re saying that the 15 years of life between then and now, having a child etc etc has ALL been procrastination to avoid going to the dentist? Thatā€™s a hell of an effort pal.

Yeah he was shocked naturally.

He was even more shocked about how much sugar I consume and how healthy my teeth were, huge amounts of tartar aside.

I had fissure sealing back when I was at Uni (because of free/cheap treatment) so that combined with electric toothbrush and (according to him) good genes, means Iā€™m fine.

I received a letter from my GP about 2 months ago about booking an asthma review ā€˜As soon as possibleā€™. I got round to trying to do it a couple of weeks ago, but rang them 3 times and nobody answered :confused:

Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished.

Iā€™m not sure what your point is. Yeah weā€™re blurring the lines between this and laziness but generally laziness covers tasks that might be fun that you canā€™t be bothered to do. Going to the dentist is something you really SHOULD do.

Getting an NHS dentist always seemed so much effort and I moved within 18 months a few times so it never really seemed worth the effort.

I thought procrastination was the act of doing something else to avoid the thing that needs to be accomplished, weā€™re all friends here though.

3 Likes

Iā€™ve organised nearly 12 years of my personal emails at work over the last couple of months. Down to less than 1000.

2 Likes

Fair enough. But yes, I tended to avoid doing this task by having a job and a social life, etc.

If you would like a real example, Ant, I once convinced myself that I couldnā€™t revise because my notes were so creased up so I started ironing pages of lecture notes

6 Likes

Thatā€™s exceptional

Oh god, revision. I just ended up doing literally nothing at Uni for whole sections of the year even because Iā€™d think ā€œI could read this book,ā€ swiftly followed by, ā€œNo! I should read a text book and go over lecture notes,ā€ followed by me not having any mental energy to do that so I just did nothing to avoid feeling like I was actually avoiding studies.

1 Like

I feel like small potatoes in comparison to this masterwork, tbh.

1 Like

I have also just broken a 20 year dentist hiatus. Iā€™ve had three appointments in quick succession.

Appointment 1: the bollocking
Appointment 2: the punishment cleaning
Appointment 3: the ā€œgum chartingā€ which is not a nice thing, rather it involves him poking the gum around EVERY SINGLE ONE of your teeth with a pointy thing and then saying a number.

This thread has got me to sign up for the dentist for my first appointment in yonks. cheers

1 Like

Ouch! Yeah I can imagine. Interesting you had yours split into so many appointments.

Iā€™ll be honest, I just went to the practice in Highgate village weā€™d used when I was a kid. 20 years ago it still did NHS but now I had to pay. Ā£190 including registration fees.

Are you also buying me and desertshores dictionaries with signed dedications from you and Ant?