Procastinating

I read a very interesting article this morning, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19389707 about the dreaded procrastination. Now, either by ignorance or stupidity, I always thought that this meant the opposite to what it does mean. I thought that I procrastinator was someone who did their work a week before the deadline – so whenever I was asked “Are you a procrastinator?” I would nod and say “Oh yes, definitely, I’m usually quite good” to which people would always give me a strange look and just move on. Up until recently, I never understood why.
Now that I do know what it does mean, I have changed my mind and now believe that I am half and half. I am half a procrastinator. I never open bank statements or phone bills; I avoid checking my banks balance if I can (although this is something that I do now because of important direct debits and saving). I bought a new car end of June and I have the customer survey still sitting on my desk waiting to be completed and sent back to Toyota. They even sent me another one last week, probably thinking that I didn’t receive the first one. But when it comes to deadlines at work, I do my upmost best to meet them or beat them. I can’t sleep at night if I don’t complete a piece of work before the deadline. So in terms of work – I’m very good, I am the opposite of a procrastinator, but when it comes to my personal life, I’m not so great.

So reading this article was very interesting to me. It also made me think about last night’s conversation my two best friends and I had about our other halves always putting things off! Car insurance renewal, picking up a bloody certificate or making dentist appointments – our men just always seem to adopt either the “I’ll do it tomorrow” (which actually means I’ll do it in two weeks time) or the “I’ll never do it” approach. We can’t understand why. This response inevitably ends up with us girls nagging our guys to - call them, pick it up, make the appointment - every day, which pisses them off telling us to shut up and stop nagging. For a gender that’s allegedly more logical than women, I would have thought that these men would have the premise “I will do this thing straight away” leading to the conclusion “She will stop nagging”. Textbook logic. And yet, they continue to put things off!
It makes me wonder, is there a gender difference? Do men procrastinate more than women? I wish I had done this for my dissertation at uni. It would have made such an interesting project; far more conversation provoking than “Does personality type have an effect on how much stress is felt?”
I’ll have to research and try and look for a published research article on this. I assume there is a lot.

So, anyone out there who are annoyed by their other half nagging them, think about why they are nagging. If it’s about a simple task that needs doing, then just do it. That way you can both breathe a happy sigh of relief that the nagging has stopped and you can move on and live happily.