If there was a Degree in procrastination, I would have a First Class with Honours!  I know that the best way to deal with this somewhat negative trait is to write a list of all those things I need to do and work my way through them until they are completed.  Saying it is easy – doing it is another matter!

Take the kitchen unit I ordered to give me more workspace.  Having eventually found something I thought would work, I ordered it and the company duly delivered it a few days later – in a flat box!  Of course I hadn’t read the small print and didn’t realise it was self-assembly.  Well I opened the box and looked at the instructions, found there were 27 different parts and hurriedly put the instructions back in the box and walked away. 

Seeing the box in my hall ever day made me feel extremely guilty – but not guilty enough to get it out and get on with it.  I made excuses – I didn’t have the time, it would be too difficult, my electric screwdriver needed charging – anything that meant I didn’t have to actually do it!

Now I realised that this piece of furniture could not put itself together but I also knew that I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to do battle with the screwdriver.  So it was several weeks before I took the plunge and set about building the thing.  An hour and a half later I had finished and sat back, pleased with the results.  So why couldn’t I have done this when it first arrived?  Simple, it was easier to put it off until another day.

It is comforting to know I’m not alone.  Here are just two examples that I found on the BBC website today that I can totally identify with and which made me laugh out loud:

A friend of mine, who I’ll call “Dave” (because that was his name) said he would do anything to avoid A-level revision. At one point he infamously found himself weighing the cat, convinced that he would only be able to settle down to work if he had that data to hand. As a result, some 25 years later, the act of procrastination is referred to by my family as “weighing the cat”. I Whitten, Sittingbourne, Kent

I started up the Stirling University Procrastination Society in 1980. It was a resounding success. Not one person bothered to return their registration form on time and we never got round to holding any meetings. Well done us. Yay! JohnB, Berkshire

But wait a minute!  I am even procrastinating now!  I should be working but instead I am writing this post.  It is perhaps true then that the work you do whilst procrastinating is the work that you should do for the rest of your life ….. 

…. I’ll let you know tomorrow!!!