There’s a paper I need to continue working on today, but I’ve been writing papers all week and I’m exhausted. Nevertheless, I decided at this point that it was unwise to delay any further.

As soon as I resolved to begin it, I felt like all of the energy left me.

This was somewhat surprising, as I had expected that the fatigue associated with the activity (a feeling I always associated with about 2:00 PM on a 9-5 schedule of a boring job, probably because I tended to finish my work around 1 PM) would have an onset after work began. That does not seem to be the case, and may explain the root cause of procrastination – if one feels fatigued or otherwise unwell prior to beginning a task, he may never actually get around to doing it.