‘Procrasturbation’ Is the Last Refuge of the Over-Burdened, Under-Pleasured Worker

In the course of writing this article I have made five false starts, checked Twitter eight times, refreshed my email four times, texted plans with two friends and IMmed a third, four times run out for coffee, and masturbated—twice. All of these things are forms of procrastination, but only one is a form of procrasturbation.

Procrasturbation, the top Urban Dictionary entry says, is "procrastination by masturbating!" Somewhat more abstruse is an article in Psychology Today that says it's "delaying the performance of a task feels so good, it results in... euphoria," a definition that leads me to wonder if its writer has ever properly jerked off. In April of 2013, Jon Stewart suggested that it's "Using masturbation to otherwise occupy yourself while pressing matters await."

It may seem like simply putting off until later when you can pet the kitty right now, but procrasturbation is so much more than that. It's replacing torment—or at least tedium—with pleasure, and as its name suggests, it's slightly obnoxious. Procrasturbation is a juvenile act in an adult world. It's scrawling physical graffiti on the walls of corporate America, written in ink that can only be read with Luminol. Most germane, procrasturbation is something you and I and everyone we know learned when we were adolescents. (Read More)