7 Websites To Help You Procrastinate

There’s a reason writers are often advised to completely disconnect themselves from the internet whenever they sit down to write: the internet is simply teeming with a million different things to distract you from what you’re supposed to be doing. It only takes one single moment of weakness and the next thing you know, you’re sucked into a swirling online vortex of time wasting.

Of course, these young whipper-snapper writers with their Facebooks and their Instagrams wouldn’t know a good time-wasting website if it came along and bit them on the nose; but if you want to waste time online without having to listen to all your acquaintances broadcasting their opinions that nobody cares about then you’ve come to the right place. I have scoured the internet looking for websites that you can waste your entire writing session on without having to interact with another human being anywhere else on the internet. Some of these are overtly useless (mostly free and silly games); others create the illusion of productivity by convincing you that you’re researching your story or tracking your progress when, in fact, you’re just procrastinating.

But be warned, gentle reader: when you visit these websites you might not leave and you’ll accomplish nothing.

The Secret of Monkey Island Insult Sword-fighting – Free Browser Game

Gamers of a certain vintage will remember Ron Gilbert’s masterpiece, The Secret of Monkey Island; the classic point-and-click adventure game following the adventures of the goofy, mild-mannered pirate-wannabe, Guybrush Threepwood.

Well our good friends at Karza have knocked together this free-to-play online version of the insult sword-fighting mini-game from The Secret of Monkey Island, including three difficulty levels: Normal (Monkey Island 1 insults only), Hard (Monkey Island 3 insults only) and Very hard (all the insults!).

It’s a thing of beauty.

Enjoy.

Click here to play!

Letters of Note

This fascinating little website is jam-packed with a collection of ‘fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos’. Most of them are from or to famous people, or else are just plain interesting. Some are really old. Some are really new.

Procrastinating writer, beware: once you start reading these letters, you might not be able to stop.

Anyway, you’re struggling for a story idea aren’t you? And reading all these letters is bound to help stimulate the imagination, or some other lame excuse like that.

Click here to read mail more interesting than your own.

Level Up Life

If you love old fashioned role-playing computer games with their experience points based systems, and if you’re looking for a means of er… tracking your progress as a writer (😉), you’ll love Level Up Life. Once you make up an account (for free), you can then begin earning experience points and levelling up for completing all your real life achievements.

As you progress through life, you will also earn skill points. The skill points you earn are dependant on the particular things you achieve, allowing you ‘to see where your strengths and weaknesses lie’.

Faffing around with this is a great way to pretend you’re getting your life and writing organised when in fact you’re just faffing around.

Click here to ‘play’

Find the Invisible Cow

I spent way too long ‘researching’ this website when I decided to write about good procrastination websites, so this one definitely had to make the cut. You are presented with a blank screen and invited to move your cursor across the screen, listening out for a voice repeatedly shouting ‘cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow…’. The louder the voice gets, the closer to the invisible cow you are. Click on it once you’ve found it and boom, you score one point.

Five points allows you to unlock goats.

Fifty points allows you to unlock another animal, which I am sure to unlock soon and then I’ll let you know…

Click here to go cow-hunting

The Moth

This is another good ‘I’m not wasting time, I’m researching’ website. In it you will find a collection of true stories told by a diverse collection of people, unscripted and in their own words.

Moth shows are renowned for the great range of human experience they showcase. Each show starts with a theme, and the storytellers explore it, often in unexpected ways. Since each story is true and every voice authentic, the shows dance between documentary and theater, creating a unique, intimate, and often enlightening experience for the audience.

~ ‘About the Moth’

It’s not really my cup of tea personally, but like Letters Of Note, it’s another great source of real life material that can ‘inspire your next story’ (or as I prefer to call it, ‘distract you from your current story’).

Here’s the link!

Dinosaur Game (Chrome Users Only)

You’re hard at work on your story. You’ve got a deadline looming and the clock is ticking. You mean business, so you’ve physically disconnected everything in your house that vaguely resembles an internet connection.

By sheer force of habit, you open Google Chrome, intending to peruse Letters of Note for a little inspiration, or perhaps to have one quick game of Find the Invisible Cow, but are rudely stopped in your tracks by this:

Don’t worry, there’s no need to rebuild your router. Just press the space bar and enjoy the free game which you play simply using your space bar to make the dinosaur jump and your ‘down’ key to make him crouch down.

I don’t have a link for this one. If you want to play it, you’ll need to disconnect your internet then try to use your Chrome browser.

Sell Me Something Weird or Confusing

Fancy a bit of retail therapy to take your mind off your story? This website features one great big pink button which will link you to some of the most random and bizarre products money can buy. Whether it’s a an inflatable unicorn horn for your cat, a nose aerobics game, or the ever-popular pants for your hands this website will give you hours minutes a minute or two’s worth of fun marvelling at the things people will spend their money on.

Click here to be disturbed and appalled by what people will spend their money on.

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Thanks for taking the time to read this post. If you’ve any more suggestions for good time-wasting websites, I’m sure there’s many a bored or frustrated writer out there would love to hear about it, so why not post some of your favourites in the comments below? And don’t forget to ‘like’ this post and follow us so you never miss another post. You can also follow Penstricken on Twitter and like Penstricken on Facebook, if that’s what tickles your fancy.

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

I’m hoping to do author interviews here on Penstricken over the coming year, especially with new fiction authors. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter.

You can check out our previous interviews here:
Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]