If the test of a good book is how much you find yourself talking about it, this new offering from the philosopher Simon May passes with flying colours. It starts with the claim that a lot of people, if asked whether they know what they want to do with their lives, would say yes. Yet if they were then asked whether they are working their way systematically towards achieving it, they would feel forced to say no. This is the essence, according to May, of procrastination – not merely postponing until tomorrow that which you know you should do today, but putting off repeatedly the one thing that you believe would be most likely to bring you happiness.

There is an argument, which the author makes, that this is a modern plague. I don’t know about that. You could equally call it the Elsinore vacillation. When Shakespeare wrote about a dazzlingly gifted, frustratingly ineffectual prince of Denmark who knew exactly what it was he needed to do but couldn’t bring himself to do it, he must have sensed that there was something peculiarly human about the predicament. The question, though, is why? Why don’t more people just get on with it? For our modern age, at least, May has two answers.

The first cause of procrastination, he argues, is what he calls the cult of work. From the time of Martin Luther and John Calvin, who believed working yourself to the bone was a sign you were going to heaven, up until today’s always-on culture, when a boss will WhatsApp workers