A few years ago a friend gave me a t-shirt containing a slogan that accurately sums up the state of my life: "God placed us on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I'm so far behind, I will never die."

I don't have the t-shirt anymore, but I still haven't caught up on the "things" (whatever it may be) that I need to accomplish.

Legend has it that I was born two weeks early, thus robbing my parents of precious personal time (despite the presence of my three older sisters, but according to them, they were fiercely independent from the second they gasped their first breaths).

In retrospect, I'm sure that is where things started going awry. I'm adamant that those fourteen days extra of resting cozily in the womb would have been crucial to my development. The result of my premature arrival was the delivery of a very lethargic child who, right off the bat, decided to compensate for lost snooze time by postponing all activities that would be remotely strenuous - which pretty much includes everything that involves being awake.

It turned me into a masterful procrastinator. In fact, I even have the ability to procrastinate procrastination itself!

If I get around to it, I will tell you how I manage to do that. See you next week!

Just kidding…

Seriously though, how do I get anything done, ever?

Last minute. In the nick of time. And the completion of a task is always nothing short of miraculous.

Procrastinators thrive on deadline. Which is our main excuse for putting things off. We love the adrenaline rush that comes with the territory. And just because it's a tad safer than bungee jumping or skydiving doesn't mean that we are lesser adrenaline junkies than those who literally put their lives on a line!

During my days as a reporter (yes, alas: long ago, during the more productive time of my mostly misspent youth, I was actually a Professional. I'm not quite sure what kind of Professional I was, exactly, but I was a Professional!), I used to love that panic-stricken look - which almost borders on raw madness - in the eyes of a desperate editor, mere minutes before a due deadline. And then there was the admiration of colleagues and the astonishment and relief of the same editor moments later when the completed copy was delivered.

According to an unidentified source, procrastination has quite a lengthy history of which a large part remains unrecorded. Well, that's a shocker! Of COURSE it remained unrecorded! The fact that someone back in the 17th Century never got around to sitting down to wax lyrical about procrastination is enough proof that it existed.

Anyway, it's been around long enough for Samuel Johnson to write an entire essay about it. Ironically enough, the inspiration came to him along with a messenger boy who had arrived to pick up a piece of writing due for publication. Rumour has it that our good Mr. Johnson, who had nothing to give the boy, shut himself in his study where he momentarily came up with his famous procrastination essay. Whenever I read it, I love to imagine ink flying from the inkwell as he frantically dipped his quill into it. I'd hate to think that he eased through it without even breaking a sweat.

I have also read somewhere that perfectionists tend to procrastinate because they can't bear doing something half-heartedly, therefore they'd rather not do it at all. That is by far my favourite (and perfectly valid) excuse.

But trust Americans to not merely let us procrastinators be. Here they have support groups (complete with a twelve-step program and bad coffee) to help you break the off-putting habit of putting things off. I think it's rather ambitious of them, because I can't imagine anyone showing up on time for the meetings!

In my ideal world, I would have a PRO-Castinator (as opposed to ANTI-) support group where the motto will be: "Why do those things today that you can put off until tomorrow?"

Besides, as a born and bred South African, I also have the unique (but valid!) excuse of still operating on "African Time", that mysterious but fabulous time zone where tomorrow is always another day. As PRO-Castinators, our only aspiration has to be to live up to the following wisdom from Don Marquis: "Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday."

So if anyone's looking for me, I'll be on the couch, pondering yesterday, when I was also on the couch.