STRESS RELIEF

Work or school got you down? Procrastibake!

All procrastibakers do not bake alike.

Procrastibaking — the practice of baking something completely unnecessary, with the intention of avoiding “real” work — is a surprisingly common habit that has only recently acquired a name. Medical students, romance writers, freelance web designers: Almost anyone who works at home and has a cookie sheet in the cupboard can try it.

“I started procrastibaking in college as a way to feel productive while also avoiding my schoolwork,” said Wesley Straton, a graduate student in New York City. “Baking feels like a low-stakes artistic outlet.”

Some procrastibakers like to make long, slow recipes that break up the entire day, returning to their spreadsheets or study guides in between steps like proofing, chilling and rising. Those who use baking as a transition into a creative state of mind are more likely to stir up a quick banana bread or pan of brownies.

“My personal favorite time suck is baking macarons,” said author Jessica Cale. “Not only does it take quite a lot of time and patience to figure out how to get them right, but it can take up to three days to complete the process.”

Procrastibaking is also a thriving hashtag on Instagram, where #procrastibaking posts seem to proliferate just before annual rituals of anxiety like exam weeks, Tax Day and Election Day. And on any given day, baking photos are popular on Instagram, whether they are of plain chocolate chip cookies or a pastel rainbowstripe cake.

It’s clear that for many cooks, today’s telecommuting jobs, combined with the comforting rituals of the kitchen and the lure of Instagram “likes,” have made procrastibaking irresistible.

“I should admit that I find many ways to procrastinate, but most of them, like weeding out the sock drawer for singletons, are just not as Instagrammable,” said Allison Adato, an editor at People magazine.

Rachel Courville, a veterinary student at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has baking sessions alongside study sessions “to prepare for hell weeks where we just have an inhumane amount of tests,” she said. “To decide what to make, I just think, ‘What will make my future, super-stressedout self a little happier?’” (The answer, she said, is usually cake.)

Tim Pychyl, a professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, says that procrastination is one of few situations in which people consistently make choices that are demonstrably bad.

“We make an emotional, irrational decision to do what feels good right now,” instead of doing what is necessary, he said. “Present self feels better, but future self gets jerked around.” Procrastibaking, he added, like procrasticleaning, is an unconsciously deployed strategy that makes us feel skilled, nurturing and virtuous in the present while distracting us from the future.

“The kitchen gets a mighty workout in March and April,” said Renee Kohlman, a freelance writer in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. (Canadian income tax filings are due on April 30.) “I know I should be at my desk, calculating how much I spent on internet and groceries and gas, but somehow I find myself at the counter, measuring out yeast and flour to make cinnamon buns.”

Best practices for procrastibaking are still being established.

“The ‘fun’ component is essential to procrastibaking, so the content of your product should not be something that you need to make in order to meet your daily nutritional needs,” Amy Sentementes wrote in an email. Sentementes, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, writes a blog about eating well as a graduate student. Baking sweet potatoes until they caramelize is a great project, she said, but it’s not procrastibaking.

Also, any recipe that requires leaving the house to buy ingredients is not in the spirit of procrastibaking. The procrastibaker must believe that it is possible to be simultaneously working on a document, buttering pans and separating eggs. A shopping trip to buy cocoa powder destroys the fantasy that the baking is not really an interruption of the work. That’s why recipes like “kitchen sink” cookies, which use whatever ingredients are on hand, are ideal.

Many writers say that procrastibaking is actually part of their work, allowing them to enter a “flow state” that is conducive to creative thinking.

Mia Hopkins, a Los Angeles writer of racy romance novels, came to procrastibaking late. “When I was schoolteacher, I used to procrastinate by reading and writing romances,” she said. “When I started writing romance full time, I had to find a new way to procrastinate.”

She said that procrastibaking is her way out of writer’s block — especially pie, because it is more stimulating to the senses than other recipes. “You can bake an entire cake without touching anything,” she said. “With a pie, you squeeze the dough, you slice the fruit, you crimp the crust.” Baking helps her get out of the tangle of words in her head and into the physical world, she said, which helps with her particular line of work.

ORIANA KOREN / THE NEW YORK TIMES Mia Hopkins, a romance novelist, with a pie she just baked in Los Angeles. Hopkins has sometimes turned to procrastibaking — the practice of baking something unnecessary in order to avoid “real” work — as a way to overcome writer’s block.

TONY LUONG / THE NEW YORK TIMES Gardner decorates a peony cake she made at home.

TONY LUONG / THE NEW YORK TIMES Erin Gardner, a professional cake decorator, at home in Barrington, N.H. Gardner “used to beat myself up” for indulging in procrastibaking — but now considers it “part of my creative process, and I just need to submit to it.”

TIMES ORIANA KOREN / THE NEW YORK Romance novelist Mia Hopkins bakes a pie, a dessert she said in particular helps her when she’s stumped because it is more stimulating to the senses than other recipes. “You can bake an entire cake without touching anything,” she said. “With a pie, you squeeze the dough, you slice the fruit, you crimp the crust.”

ORIANA KOREN / THE NEW YORK TIMES Hopkins mixes ingredients for a pie, a part of the procrastibaking process that allows writers like Hopkins to experience a creative state of mind.