It took a while to start writing this column. Procrastination is a big topic a little overwhelming, frankly. There was email to check. A Lost recap to read (talk about procrastination just tell us what the hell The Island is, already, please). And, well, now that it occurs to me, a closet to be reorganized. Be right back

Where were we? Ah, yes, procrastination. Terrible thing.

A comprehensive history of procrastination has yet to be written. In fact, the first purported history, a book dating back to 1971 by Paul Ringenbach called Procrastination Through the Ages: A Definitive History, doesn t exist it was an elaborate hoax played by the author and his publisher to see how long it would take Books in Print to realize that no publication date was ever set. But we know that procrastination has been with humans for quite some time, and it will quite likely be with us for the rest of time.

In the wake of Tax Day (did you need an extension?), one might be wondering: Why do we procrastinate? Why do some people have more trouble with procrastination than others? And how can we do a better job of not procrastinating right now?

The basic mechanism of procrastination, as Piers Steel laid it out in a 2007 review of the literature, is simple enough: We like to do pleasurable things now; we like to do unpleasant things later. While it would be impossible to say there s one cause of procrastination, it seems to be linked to lack of impulse control, distractibility, low self-confidence, and even depression. Younger people are more prone to be procrastinators than older people (seemingly because older people learn to avoid procrastination). Men are slightly more likely to be procrastinators than women.

So, what to do if you re a young, depressed male with bad impulse control and the attention span of a kitten in a string store? Most of the research points to two keys: deadlines and breaking things down into small, concrete tasks.

Deadlines, of course, are the procrastinator s natural enemy. But if one can successfully impose a deadline on one s self, or have a deadline imposed upon one s self, a mutually beneficial peace can be achieved. An experiment by behavioral economist Dan Ariely found that students with three papers due over the course of a semester did better when they gave themselves evenly spaced, self-imposed deadlines as opposed to trusting themselves not to procrastinate and handing in all three papers on the last day of class.

Of course, most procrastination isn t about spacing out multiple tasks. Rather, it s about forcing yourself to tackle one daunting task. Say, doing your taxes. (Full disclosure: I threw together my receipts and tax forms into an envelope, duct taping it all into a football shape and tossing it into a mailbox a la Homer Simpson, and prayed an accountant could figure it out on April 12.)

So, how can you make that easier? Experiments have shown that manipulating our construal level the scale at which we perceive a problem can affect how quickly we complete a task. If you focus on the little pieces on the way to the way to the big goal, you ll get started more quickly. In one particularly striking experiment, published in the journal Psychological Science in 2008, a group of researchers found that exposing participants to a color print of the pointillist painting La Parade by Seurat in the lab and emphasizing either its harmony and emotion or its contrasting points of color influenced how quickly the participants sent back post-experiment questionnaires. The participants told to focus on the detail sent their questionnaires back an average of eight days earlier than those primed to think about the big picture.

So, how does that apply to your taxes next year? Well, don t wait to get up the courage to tackle the whole thing all at once. First, set a goal one Saturday of getting all your receipts in, say, the same room. Then, maybe the following weekend, fill out your name and address. Each small task will be relatively easy and will build your confidence about the next task. And perhaps one weekend, once you re already sitting down at your desk, it will start to seem easier to just plow through the whole thing.

Procrastination isn t cheap. A survey by H&R Block a few years back estimated that people lose an average of $400 a year on errors introduced into their taxes because of procrastination. Procrastination about enrolling in employer-sponsored savings programs is even more costly. Procrastinating about things like getting in shape or going to the doctor well, that can be deadly.

It turns out we even procrastinate about positive experiences, like using a gift certificate or visiting the tourist attractions in our home cities or going to Disney World, because even pleasant things have their small costs getting in the car, getting a babysitter, booking the tickets.

It ll always be easier in the future, our brains tell us. Now, maybe you should get back to whatever you were supposed to be doing before you decided to read this.

Ryan Sager writes the blog Neuroworld at TrueSlant.com.