Chapter One

We all have obligations of various types. Bills need to be paid, bank statements need to be reconciled against checkbooks, and even making time to watch television programs can be a balancing act. No matter how simple our tasks may initially appear, many, if not all of our tasks require thoughtful action; and it’s for that reason many people find procrastination to be a never-ending burden.

I usually had a variety of tasks that I simultaneously procrastinated on. Typically, it wasn’t that I procrastinated about certain things; rather, it was more that I procrastinated over just about everything. For example:

• I put off visits to doctors and/or medical tests for months—all the while worrying about the condition of my health.
• Before leaving home for work I would do a mad scramble searching high and low for my wallet, house keys, cell phone, and pen. I sometimes wondered if there was some special medical classification for persons like myself, who were unable to leave home because they couldn’t find their house keys? Was this actually agoraphobia, the fear of leaving home, in disguise? No, I thought. I was trying to leave home, not to remain in it.
• Bank statements sat in their unopened envelopes on the kitchen table until I had accumulated several months of them. Supposedly, this prevented me from losing valuable free time to a mundane chore like balancing my checkbook. Unfortunately, while putting it off, I had to rely on the bank balances that I obtained from ATM receipts. Usually, it was the fear that the bank might have made an accounting error that would finally prompt me into action and it was then that I faced with the enormous job of having to deal with reconciling six months or more of bank statements and ATM receipts.
• Utility bills awaited payment because of the drudgery involved in having to sit down, write checks, and deal with my unbalanced checkbook.
• Clothing of all types was draped around my apartment in various and often-inventive places, while several days’ worth of socks lay scattered across the floor.
• Like many habitual procrastinators, being a perpetual latecomer was virtually a lifestyle for me.