Excuse the impertinent question, but why are you reading this column? Is it because you’ve made a considered decision to spend time with the Financial Times today, or are you looking for a way not to have to do the thing — you know, that thing — that you’re meant to be doing? If it’s the latter then it is possible that you, like me — and about 20 per cent of the population, according to the American Psychological Association — are a procrastinator.

Because of the fact that everyone procrastinates at least to some extent, you will find many people who claim this label: inglorious though it may be, it appears to have some kind of humble-braggy social capital. But it is only a select group of us for whom the condition is chronic, who are tormented sufficiently by the malady to have really earned the badge.

So are we incorrigible or can we do something about it? Should we? Or is it an important “part of the creative process”, as a friend put it to me recently as he tried to reassure me that it was acceptable — admirable, even, I fancied — that I had spent the entire day avoiding what I was meant to be doing?