Are you a person who works well under pressure, or does pressure paralyze you? Procrastinators, a strange group of people I resemble, seem to thrive under pressure and so create it for themselves even when it isn’t necessary by waiting until the last moment to start a project. Of course, the danger is that something will go wrong along the way, and rather than finishing just under the deadline we will miss it completely. But that kind of pressure seems to be exactly what we want, and might even need, to be at peak productivity. I’ve also heard it said that people develop a tendency to procrastinate when they feel as if there is very little in their lives that they can control, and so at least they can control when they start a project. Of course, it’s no fun to start the project at the same time that most reasonable people would, and so we wait. You might think that sooner or later we would decide that it wasn’t worth the stress and simply start our projects when any reasonable person would. I have found, however, that over time we adapt to our procrastinating habits, and so our peak efficiency really does get reached when we are under the gun. If we start when any sensible person would, we are terribly inefficient. Of course, this isn’t a scientific study and so I could be wrong. It’s just the product of my own experience, but I think it does point to the truth that the choices we make it eventually get written into our very selves and become a part of our identity. If I’m right, we would probably do well to make those choices very carefully