Everyone knows how to procrastinate – including me. I decided about two months ago to write this column. Finally, today I had to force myself to sit down and begin. Why? Why do we humans put off doing what we know we need to do? From what I have observed, the animal kingdom doesn’t do that – just us.

There is no squirrel sighing, “Yeah, the winter’s coming and I know that there won’t be any nuts on the ground that I can scrounge, but I just don’t feel like hunting, carrying and storing those things this week. I’ll get to it … later.” No colony of ants is rebelling against the direct order of t...