Before you start

This is a short book. You can read it in two or three sittings, and you don't have to finish it before acting on it. If something is due and you feel like working on it at any point, put the book down and go. It will keep.

It's about one pattern. There's a piece of work that matters to you. It might be a report, an application, a dissertation chapter, a talk or a portfolio. You have time to do it properly, and you don't start. Days go by. Then the deadline gets close enough to frighten you, and you do the whole thing in a rush. It turns out fine, or nearly fine, and you promise yourself that next time will be different.

I'm going to argue three things. The first is that the delay isn't laziness or bad time management. It's a way of getting relief from an uncomfortable feeling, and the feeling usually has to do with being judged, by other people or by yourself. The second is that the deadline does more than make you work. It makes decisions for you, about how good the work will be, what gets left out and who pays for the rush. They're decisions you'd make differently if anyone asked you. The third is that the most useful thing you can do is small and a bit undignified. Start early, and start badly, on purpose.

The title is an instruction and I mean it literally. Chapter 8 explains what a bad start is and why I think it works. The chapters before it explain why you need one.

A few things this book isn't. It isn't a time management system, and you've probably tried a couple of those already. It isn't about housework, bills or the dentist, where the feelings involved are different. And it isn't about laziness, because I don't think you're lazy. People who put off important work are often busy all day. They're busy with everything else.

Two cautions.

Putting things off can be part of something that deserves proper help. If you've lost interest and motivation across most of your life, and it has gone on for weeks, that's among the signs of depression the NHS lists, and a GP should hear about it. If you've had trouble since childhood with organising your time, finishing tasks and being easily distracted, in every part of life and not only with work you dread, it's worth asking a GP about ADHD. If worry is running your days, that's treatable too. Chapter 13 says more. A book like this can sit alongside that help. It can't replace it.

The second caution is about workload. If you're late with things because you've been given more than one person can do, the problem is the amount of work, and no change in your habits will fix it. This book is about the case where the time was there and you didn't use it.

The notes at the back give the studies I've relied on and their limits. Where I'm giving my own reasoning and not a finding, I'll say so.