Stephen McGinty: Tomorrow is indeed another day

The reason for dismissing the dinner for two and the festival of films is that we don't postpone fun or pleasure, we don't feel that electrical charge, that psychological static that builds up between us and a task of work. We don't feel the resistance.

There are certain people who can be excused the chore of reading this column. Those regimented, dedicated individuals who pay a bill on the day of receipt, who begin an essay immediately after it has been set, who have an idea, prepare a plan and execute it in rigorous disciplined steps. Feel free to browse on to the books pages, no need to tarry here.

For the rest of us, a major problem that stands between us and the realisation of not only our dreams, but also the mundane completion of work in an atmosphere uninfected by creeping anxiety is the simple, daily act of procrastination.

We are not lazy. We do not say: "I can't be bothered doing it." We fully intend to do it, but not today. Tomorrow suits us better. The question is why? In our hearts we know that we could start today, that it would be better for us in the long term to start today, but we do not. We will fully act against our own best interest.

Now you may think that procrastination, from the Latin for "to put off for tomorrow", is a minor irritant but there is an argument that it is at the core of so many of our problems from health issues, to saving plans, to achieving our full potential. How many people want to write a novel, learn to play an instrument, set up their own business but think: 'I'll start tomorrow?"

A few years ago I picked up a book entitled The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield. In the book he writes, in a distinctly American way, about resistance as the force that prevents us settling down to a job of work: "It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within." He goes on to write: "Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it's the easiest to rationalise. We don't tell ourselves, 'I'm never going to write my symphony'.Instead we say, 'I'm going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow.'

The issue of procrastination has been investigated by philosophers, psychologists and economists in a new book, Thief of Time, edited by Chrisoula Andreou and Mark D White. What is interesting is that while procrastination appears to be a default human setting, our anxiety about it is growing.

But frankly, it's been around a long time. In the 18th century Samuel Johnson was quoted on procrastination: "I could not forbear to reproach myself for having so long neglected what was unavoidably to be done, and of which every moment's idleness increased the difficulty."

If we accept that we regularly do things against our better judgment, what the Greeks called akrasia, from which the word 'crazy' is derived, we have to figure out why. We know we don't want to do it. A recent study of American students said 65 per cent said they would like to avoid procrastinating on the grounds that they wouldn't do the work on time and the delay would make them unhappy.

So why do we do it? According to one argument it is all tied up with our relationship with time. What appears to happen is that we know what the right thing to do in the long term is: begin our essay or work report promptly and continue steadily until completion. However because the reward is distant, we are distracted by the sparkly rewards of the present, for instance watching Mad Men. Short term considerations overwhelm our long term goals.

John Rae, the 19th century Scots economist said it best: "The prospect of future good, which future years may hold on us, seem at such a moment dull and dubious, and are apt to be slighted, for objects on which the daylight is falling strongly, and showing us in all their freshness, just within our grasp."

We also appear to be entirely blind to the simple fact that if we postpone a task until tomorrow, tomorrow quickly becomes today and the deep desire to postpone will, once again, be just as strong.

Then there is what the social scientist Jon Elster called "the planning fallacy". We justify the decision to procrastinate on the grounds that if we start tomorrow it will only take x weeks or y days to complete. Yet we consistently fail to take into account how long similar tasks have taken in the past and base our decision on a swift, smooth period of work where problems never arise and procrastination does not raise its head again and again.

Another reason, which I hadn't thought of before, is a lack of confidence. We have a little voice in our head which says, just as we are about to pick up a pen, raise hands to typewriter, or wield a hammer: 'What if it's no good?'. And according to some philosophers the reason we procrastinate is that each and everyone of us is divided.

I make a plan to write all weekend. I then decided not to write on Saturday, but to write on Sunday. The same person made the plans then changed them.Why? Well, Thomas Schelling, a game theorist, argues that we are not one unified self, but different figures constantly duelling for domination - the angels and demons of our nature fighting for control of the now - the only moment that counts.

So how do we trump procrastination? Joseph Heath and Joel Anderson, in their essay, argue that we have to access our "extended will" - this is an external force or factor that will prop up and support our better, hard, working diligent half against Mr Sloth.

Odysseus had his men bind him to the mast so as to prevent him falling under the charm of the sirens and dashing the ship on the rocks. Victor Hugo had his valet hide his clothes and wrote naked, lest the desire to swan off into town proved too strong. Today the distractions are legion. There is now a computer programme that will automatically shut off your internet access for eight hours, it's called Freedom and 75,000 people have signed up.

Steven Pressfield, however, has other ideas. Our will, he argues, is a muscle and the more it is exercised the stronger it will grow. Simply put, we have to grit our teeth, haul out that report or tax return, hack through the resistance and begin. Today. The only trouble is we then have to do exactly the same thing tomorrow.