I don’t mean to brag or nothin’, but when it comes to procrastinating, I’m something of an expert. If there had been a contest last year to determine the world’s best procrastinator, I wouldn’t have even filled out the entry form yet. But it looks like I’ve got fierce competition — on July 20, the UK’s Observer reported that wasting time isn’t simply a bad habit born of laziness and lack of discipline; more alarmingly, it’s “an affliction that ruins millions of lives and often requires therapy and other treatment for sufferers, psychologists have warned.” Do you know what this means? It means I’m off the hook for being lazy and lacking discipline! Now all I need to do is find a doctor who’ll write a note that I can give to Jeff Giles, my parents, my boss, and my long-suffering girlfriend, Aimiee, who thinks I’m too much of a coward to propose, when my real excuse is that I keep putting off the phone call to buy tickets for Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, where I plan to propose during the fake ceremony and provide everyone with some actual entertainment.

According to Michael Day’s article for the Observer, one out of every five people now procrastinates to the point that his or her career, health, and relationships suffer as a result. And what are the main culprits that are aiding and abetting people in their quest to eternally neglect their ever-growing to-do lists? Computers and cell phones, of course. I personally blame my iPod for the entire month of productivity I lost last fall after I bought a new one to replace the ancient 22-month-old iPod I’d previously owned. Curse you, thief of time and cruel manipulator of obsessive information organizers like myself! “The subject is seen as joke,” said Professor Joseph Ferrari of DePaul University in Chicago, who was apparently too distracted by the awesomeness of his last name to add an “a” before the last word in his statement. “But the social and economic implications are huge. These people need therapy. They need to change the way they act and think.” But according to the article, procrastination has a negative effect on health by encouraging procrastinators to put off visits to the doctor, and if I’m not going to bother finding out which physicians within a one-block radius of my couch are “in-network,” why would I waste time finding a therapist when I’m already busy wasting time on … you know … stuff.

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