Time can be your friend or your enemy. For many academics, it is a merciless tyrant. Academia can provide the luxury of not having to punch a clock. Unfortunately, this luxury makes it easy to allow that all-important project (usually writing, hereafter referred to as the Project) to slide, as you fill in your day with the humdrum and the emergencies. The Enemy You Don't Know CAN Hurt You In Procrastination: Why You Do It; What to Do About It by Jane Burka and Lenor Yuen, the authors suggest that procrastinators (which I'm convinced means most of us) have a strange relationship with time. They engage in "wishful thinking" -- they believe that they can magically pull and stretch time to meet their needs. They act as if time is not finite and limited. So if time perpetually controls you, it may be because you don't understand it. You either think that: Small tasks will be endless (so you put off doing them) Big tasks will just take an hour or two (so you don't