ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book began to take shape from a collection of blog postings for Psychology Today. In fact, it was in writing my"Don't Delay"blog that I discovered how much I enjoyed writing to communicate ideas outside of formal scholarly journal articles. I discovered that instead of"writing to earn"in my"publish or perish"academy, I was"writing to learn"and learning to write in a whole new way. Given this beginning to the book, I want to preface my acknowledgements by giving special thanks to Lybi Ma (deputy editor of Psychology Today and author) , who invited me to be part of the Psychology Today bloggers in 2008 and who has nurtured my sense of self as a writer. As well, I want to thank Hara Estrof Marano (editor at Large, Psychology Today and author) who, like Lybi, has'always been encouraging and supportive. They are part of a truly wonderful team of people.

Writing is not a solitary activity, even though we may struggle with concepts and the words to express these ideas in our own"dark night of the soul"at times. Writing is a very social act, from the inception of ideas through to revising a final manuscript. So, I have quite a few people I want to thank for helping me with my writing. Of course, as my father always told me, you can delegate the activity but not the responsibility; you can share the praise but not the blame. This means that any of the shortcomings in my writing are my own. The things that you like best about this book are most probably due to the kind input of these others who deserve my words of appreciation.

As a scholar, I have drawn on a wide body of research in my writing. Yet, unlike my scholarly publications, I have not cited this work in an academic fashion, so I want to give credit to some key individuals who have developed ideas that I have distilled in this book. In terms of the procrastination research literature specifically, my colleagues Drs. Joseph Ferrari (DePaul University, Chicago) , Clarry Lay (retired, York University, Toronto) , He