This column will change your life: precrastination

Finally, after years of thinking I was merely odd, I have a diagnosis: I'm a "precrastinator".

We precrastinators don't put things off until the last minute (well, actually, in other moods, we do that, too, but never mind). Instead, we do things sooner than they really need to be done, even if it costs us more time and energy that way, simply for the feeling of having them over with. I sometimes worry that that'll be my epitaph: "He crossed a lot of items off his to-do list."

In the experiment that inspired the term, US researchers gave participants the choice of carrying one of two heavy buckets to the end of an alleyway. One bucket was positioned closer to the finish line, but most people chose the other bucket – the one nearer to them – even though they had to carry it farther, which meant expending more effort. The reason, according to the study's authors, was that the task they'd been given weighed on their minds; they wanted rid of it. "By picking up the near bucket, they could check that task off their mental to-do lists more quickly than if they picked up