(inspired by a sharp little essay from Strangest Loop about all the ways we circle the work without touching it)
A museum for living creatures is technically a zoo. But we’re polite here.
We join our subject at a reliable hour: late enough to feel consequential, early enough to still pretend.
The room is quiet. The desk is clean in the way hotel rooms are clean—temporary, performative, slightly ominous. A beverage has been selected with ceremonial care. The phone is face-down, but nearby, like a sedated cobra.
Our subject—the Procrastinator—approaches the work with the cautious reverence of someone approaching a wild animal that might bite.
They sit. They inhale. They place their hands near the keyboard and pause, as if waiting for the work to speak first.
And then, with the grace of a creature perfectly adapted to modern life, they begin doing everything except the thing.
The remarkable part is not the avoidance.
It’s the craftsmanship.
The Gift Shop of Preparation
Before the zoo even shows you an animal, it shows you merchandise.
Notebooks with paper so thick it has moral authority. Pens engineered to imply “serious person.” Timers. Stickers that say BEGIN in fonts that look like they’ve been to therapy.
Our subject drifts toward the display as if pulled by ancient instinct.
They pick up a notebook and flip through it slowly, as though listening for prophecy.
They whisper, softly: “Fresh start.”
This is a key behavior. Humans can purchase the sensation of becoming someone new.
They don’t want a notebook.
They want amnesty.
A placard reads:
STARTER KIT Includes: pen, notebook, new identity (Actual starting not included.)
Our subject laughs. The laugh is important. It means they understand the joke.
They still consider buying it.
The Scheduling Conservatory
Deeper inside, the air changes. It becomes calm. Controlled. Rectangle-shaped.
Our subject opens a calendar and drags “DO THE THING” into Tuesday at 7 p.m.
Observe the immediate physiological effect: the shoulders drop. The nervous system softens, as if Tuesday has agreed to do it on their behalf.
This is the calendar’s gift: relief without exposure.
But then—inevitably—Tuesday begins to look like a day in which a human being exists.
So the block moves. Wednesday. Friday. “Next week when it settles down.”
In nature, migration is common. In this zoo, the work migrates to the future where the subject is rested, disciplined, and fictional.
The Tab Savannah
Now we enter the Research Habitat—quiet, respectable, and socially approved.
Here, the Procrastinator becomes dignified.
They open tabs like laying out evidence in a courtroom.
“How to start.” “How to start when you don’t feel ready.” “How to start even though you’ve never once in your life felt ready.”
They read intensely. They nod. They highlight a sentence. They whisper, “This is exactly what I needed,” which is fascinating because it sounds like movement while producing none.
Research is camouflage. It makes delay look like responsibility.
It is, in many ways, the tuxedo of avoidance.
A plaque reads:
CLARITY Highly prized Has never typed a paragraph for anyone
The Best Practices Habitat
This enclosure is newer. Sleeker. Corporate.
Here, the Procrastinator is trying something different: they’re outsourcing their own process.
They’re not avoiding the thing by doing nothing.
They’re avoiding the thing by becoming a professional about how one should do the thing.
They study “ways of working.” “Best practices.” “The right workflow.” They collect frameworks like rare shells.
Watch them carefully. They are constructing a method so correct it will remove the need to be human.
They speak in phrases that contain no sweat:
- “I need to standardize my approach.”
- “I should build a repeatable system.”
- “We should align on expectations.”
- “I want to operationalize creativity.”
This is a subtle trap because it offers a kind of dignity: if you do it the approved way, you won’t feel like a beginner.
But the approved way often belonged to someone else’s nervous system.
Someone else’s life.
Someone else’s tolerances.
Sometimes “best practice” is just a polite name for “a method that turns you into a cog,” which is great for factories and less great for making a weird first draft.
The Procrastinator loves this enclosure because it makes them feel disciplined.
It also gently removes their fingerprints from the work.
A sign reads:
WARNING: Some workflows are just procrastination wearing a badge.
The Tool Migration Tank
Now we see a classic behavior: the Great App Migration.
Our subject has decided the real problem is the system.
They are moving their entire brain from one app to another.
Export. Import. Reorganize. Rename.
Their screen contains a sacred artifact:
NEW SYSTEM FINAL v6
It is not new. It is not final. It is not a system.
It is a shrine built to delay the first messy contact.
Tool migration is a form of molting.
The subject sheds skins.
The subject rarely emerges.
The Announcement Stage
You’ll hear applause before you see it.
Here, the Procrastinator collects the emotional reward of completion at the moment of intention.
They step into the spotlight and say, “Big things coming.”
The crowd reacts as if the thing has been done.
This is the zoo’s most reliable magic trick: applause as nutrition.
The subject leaves glowing. They feel like a person in motion.
No contact has occurred.
The Perfectionist Terrarium
We now enter a climate-controlled room where potential is preserved like an artifact.
The Perfectionist sits with a blank page and the expression of someone holding a fragile heirloom over a sink.
They can imagine the finished version with painful clarity.
Which makes the first version feel like a betrayal.
Their enclosure is spotless: no drafts, no evidence, no embarrassing beginnings.
They keep the dream perfect by keeping it unmade.
This is not laziness.
This is preservation.
The Emotional Theater
Finally, an immersive exhibit: effort without output.
Here, the subject performs the full inner drama of doing the thing.
They scold themselves with conviction. They bargain. They rehearse future praise. They resent people who finished theirs. They swear tomorrow will be different.
It is a moving performance.
It produces nothing.
A plaque reads:
FEELINGS Important Real Not a delivery service
The Smallest Room
Near the exit is a plain door with no neon, no quote in cursive, no merch.
Most visitors miss it because it doesn’t flatter them.
Inside, someone is doing the thing.
It is unglamorous. Almost offensively ordinary.
They type a bad sentence and keep going.
They make a rough version and don’t apologize for it.
No audience. No system. No identity shift.
Just contact.
A sign reads:
CONTACT The only place anything changes
Exit Through the Gift Shop
The zoo routes you through the gift shop on purpose.
It knows you’ve just watched your own habits behind glass, and now you want something: a souvenir, a cleanse, a fresh start you can carry in a tote bag.
A display greets you:
THE STARTING BUNDLE Includes: notebook, pen, timer, a sticker that says BEGIN (Starting sold separately)
Our subject smiles. They pick it up. They imagine themselves using it.
They put it down, bravely.
Then they step outside.
Daylight is harsher out here. Reality has no flattering bulbs.
A museum worker stands by the door holding a walkie-talkie and the calm expression of someone who has watched this species for years.
They ask, casually:
“So. Off to do the thing now?”
Our subject nods, straight-faced and sincere.
“Yes.”
They walk three steps into the world.
They pull out their phone.
And, inspired by what they’ve just seen, they open a new document titled:
The Productivity Zoo
They begin to type.
Because writing about the thing is—how shall we put it—an especially elegant form of not doing the thing.
The worker watches them go, nodding slowly, like a naturalist watching a beloved animal return to its habitat.
“Beautiful,” they say. “Classic.”
And the zoo, behind them, opens early—because tomorrow is its busiest day.
🧠 Filed under The Deductionists: field notes from the Museum of Almost.
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