The start of a new month is rolling around. April Fools Day for some, for me it is time to compile and review the lab statistics for the previous month. How many cases did we see, how many biopsies were benign, how many biopsies were malignant, and how many times were we just not sure. There is turn-around-time data to analyze and comparison studies to dissect. So do I jump right in, or put it off for another day? Am I a doer or a delayer?

The New York Times ran two short features in the last week. “Precrastinators” jump out in front, doing assignments before they are due, checking things off their to-do list, well before they need to be to-done. Surprisingly, the process is not always beneficial. Ignoring a late data point can lead to drawing the wrong conclusion. And psychologically, precrastination is “a perversion of diligence,” that “stems from the concern that you won’t have enough time to do something well.” Sheesh. I never knew the psyche could be so deep.

On the other hand, “Procrastinators,” according to the other Times article, don’t make much sense, either, as they “know (their procrastination) is going to have negative consequences.” A researcher calls it “an emotion regulation problem.”

So pre or pro, either way, we are a little bit crazy at best or perverted at worst. But why be binary?  I like to think of myself as “crastination-fluid.” Which way I lean depends on the task.

If I am planning to get somewhere I am very much a precrastinator. I want to be on time, and being on time means being ten minutes early. Does that have negative consequences? Besides being aggravating to my co-travelers, it also means leaving something else ten minutes early. Who know’s what I’m missing?

In school I was always one step ahead, warning fellow students and unobservant graduate assistants about errors in text books and poorly designed review questions. The biggest precrastination drawback on that one? Let us count the different ways one can be labeled a nerd.

When does my “fluidity ” show up as procrastination? When do I put things off? Whether it is rotary dial or touch tone, landline or mobile, I delay making telephone calls. I put off reaching out to make that contact, for minutes, hours, and sometimes days. It is inexplicable and doesn’t extend to emails, snail mail, texts, or other means of communication. Somewhere in my youth or childhood, AT&T must have terrorized me. Maybe it was the light-up dial on our Princess phone. In any case, please call me, I might not call you.

Blog writing is peculiar. I can procrastinate for days (this post was first conceptualized three days ago,) but on the other hand I can see a headline or a trashy article in the paper and know that I have to write something that minute. A result? Some weeks with four posts, some with none. So much for the rule that the best way to build an audience is to be consistent.

About all those end of month statistics. The ones I am most interested in will get done in a snap. Some others may take a while longer to be computed. And I will feel OK either way. Sometimes it helps to be fluid.

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photo credit: wuestenigel Toy model of traffic light with the image of the road in the background via photopin (license)