I am infamous for being the last one in the family to complete his Christmas shopping each year. Many times, I have made last-minute trips to shopping malls, bookstores, and other retail establishments in order to give things to everyone on my list. And you can forget about pretty wrapping paper. I never mastered that art anyway—bags and crumpled tissue paper are good enough for me. Based on a conversation I had with my brother over the weekend, this year will be no different as he had purchased nearly all of his gifts and I have still not purchased a single one. No one who has celebrated a Christmas with me will be surprised by that.

I am not a serial procrastinator in other areas of my life. I always got my homework done on time in school and hit my work deadlines now. There is just something about Christmas shopping. Maybe it’s having to be around all the people at shopping malls (which is no longer an excuse given the rise of eCommerce and has always been self-defeating as the crowds get larger as Christmas approaches) or maybe it’s little excitement I get from the creeping anxiety that this might finally be the year I don’t have anything to give anyone on time. I cannot be the only person who feels that way.

I would be much more effective if I set an internal deadline some time before Christmas Eve to complete my Christmas shopping. There is an idea referred to as Parkinson’s Law that holds that work will expand to fill the time allotted to a task. The idea also applies to monetary budgets and many other things. If I had to complete my Christmas shopping today, then I would. Mind you I won’t be doing that, but I might set aside Friday afternoon for the task. It may be irrational to both understand why I delay my Christmas shopping until the last minute and yet not do anything to change that reality, but alas. Take my own experience and use it as an opportunity to reflect on how you complete your own tasks. A task will take as long as you allow for it, so impose tight deadlines on yourself and watch your productivity increase as your mind calibrates to those tight deadlines. It will take a bit of experimentation to figure out how tight you can set internal deadlines as lying to yourself will defeat the purpose, but as you start to think about New Year’s resolutions it may be more effective to think about New Month’s or even New Week’s resolutions instead.