"Schneider's glasses"

What you can get today

Procrastination outpatient clinics are doing research on the subject.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/Lorenzo Antonucci)

Author Robert Schneider has learned a new word and will soon be showing it off in the men's round. Let's see if he won't take his time with it after all.  

I've learned a new word. I'm still practising pronouncing it fluently and naturally. It's not easy because it reminds me of another word that has absolutely nothing to do with this one. I can already imagine the faces of the men in my group when I say the word for the first time. "Castration what?" someone is bound to ask me. Perhaps no one will say anything because they don't want to appear uneducated.

The word is PROKRASTINATION. I picked it up in ZEIT+. It's a great thing. There are even procrastination outpatient clinics in Germany. A working group in Münster is researching the topic, as is a facility in Berlin. As if they didn't have any other problems at the moment.

But what are we talking about? We're talking about procrastination. The Latin word procrastinare means to postpone. I still sometimes find myself saying procrastinate instead of procrastinate. I have to build myself a mnemonic bridge.

In the article in question, the authors address the problem of putting off everyday tasks with deep German seriousness and without a trace of irony. "A phenomenon that often leads to the accumulation of difficult tasks and permanent psychological stress," they find out. It is not yet clear whether procrastination is a serious illness, says ZEIT+. "The reason for this is that procrastination has not yet been researched well enough."

Still to come. In the meantime, I'm postponing my big performance with the word in the men's round. I want to practise a bit more. Just need to be more fluent.