Is a publishing professional with more than twenty years of

reSULTS OF TUrning The WaiT inTO a reST
You’ll be better rested and more relaxed (and better read).
You’ll be more efficient and effective.
Who knows? You might write some great haiku.
And  you’ll  get  to  where  you  were  going  at  exactly  the  same 
time you would have anyway.

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149
Chapter 16
procrastination

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151
N
o  time  management  technique  will  do  you  any  good  if 
you  still  allow  yourself  to  postpone  the  difficult  or  the 
unpleasant. The job doesn’t get any less unpleasant while 
you wait. Quite the contrary, your sense of dread will build, mak-
ing it increasingly difficult to bring yourself to the task.
And  it  won’t  get  any  easier,  either.  Rather,  your  delay  will 
merely complicate matters. You’ll have to deal with the complica-
tions, often before you can even get at the original job.
Thus, procrastination costs time while creating unnecessary stress.
Procrastination is the thief of time.
—Edward Young (1683–1765)
So, if it’s so awful, why do so many of us procrastinate? Why 
are there some jobs we just never seem to “get around to,” despite 
the consequences of our evasion?