Bucket list ideas suddenly seemed possible, like watching every "Star Wars" movie in chronological order, said Mr Bozza, who shares a Williamsburg loft with a Pomeranian mixed breed dog.
He also planned to finally plow through a pile of musical biographies next to his bed. But when spring came, Mr. Bozza, who could no longer rely on take-away, cooked three meals a day, which was a long time.
As a result, stories about Smiths, Bauhaus, and Jay-Z remain untouched. "After a while, the things you don't do mock you," he said, "so I put the books away."
According to Timothy Pychyl, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa who has written books on procrastination, those who give up on their quarantine dreams should not regret since to-do lists can be useless even in normal times. "You can't really motivate yourself like that," he said.
“When we suddenly have more time, we mistakenly assume that this will solve the problem of fulfilling our wishes. But it's not at all a question of time, ”said Pychyl. “We have never had firm intentions. They are just desires like repairing the basement or losing some weight. Had they been on purpose, we would have done them a long time ago. "
Of course, the pandemic that killed 200,000 people in the US in late September, nearly 24,000 of them in New York City, was hardly an ordinary time to pursue a self-improvement agenda. The lack of a vaccine, severe job losses and the closure of large companies have created a bleak picture against which all goals can be addressed.
In fact, the inability to execute plans or even save time for them is partly due to off-chart anxiety, said Dr. Charles R. Marmar, chairman of psychiatry at the N.Y.U. Langon health.
