The painful obligation to send in our returns by midnight tonight brings out the dawdler in many of us. The Internal Revenue Service reports that 35 percent of Americans wait until the bitter end to file. An additional 6 percent of Tar Heel taxpayers are expected to request six-month extensions.

"Every year at this time I am bombarded with people who are in a panic over their taxes," said Geralin Thomas, who owns Metropolitan Organizing in Cary. "Some haven't kept up with their filings, others can't find their receipts, almost all of them feel so overwhelmed by a situation they've been delaying for so long that they just don't know where to begin."

Tax time may be the Super Bowl of procrastination, but it is not just a seasonal problem. Studies show that 95 percent of us procrastinate once in a while and a whopping 20 percent to 25 percent of Americans are considered chronic procrastinators.

For these hard-core lollygaggers, April 15 is just one more day to dillydally. On April 16 they'll continue to defer projects at work, fail to R.S.V.P. for an upcoming party, ignore their plans to see their doctor or take their car to the shop - often at risk to their health and safety.

"Procrastination is their lifestyle, marked by self-deception, bad faith and legions of excuses," said Timothy A. Pychyl, a procrastination expert who teaches at Carleton University in Ottawa. "They're constantly telling themselves 'I have plenty of time,' 'I'll feel more like it tomorrow,' 'I work better under pressure,' anything that will allow them to put off tasks they know they must complete."

Almost everyone puts off boring or difficult tasks -- few leap at the chance to do their taxes. Such behavior becomes procrastination, Pychyl said, when people know what they need to do, intend to accomplish it, and then do something, anything, else.

Instead of lazy layabouts, they are usually busy bees, cleaning out their refrigerators, scrubbing their bathroom floors, organizing their files, doing everything except meeting their pressing deadlines.

Technology has been a godsend to these deacons of delay, who use the Web, e-mail and BlackBerrys as cutting-edge tools of distraction. "We found that procrastination accounts for about 50 percent of the time people spend online," Pychyl said. "That's why I call it the procrastination superhighway."

Lots of us do it

Procrastination is an equal opportunity affliction, according to one of the field's pioneering researchers, Joseph R. Ferrari of DePaul University. Women are just as likely to exhibit the behavior as men; 20-year-olds are as prone to it as 65-year-olds (much older people, seem to lose the habit). His studies have also found that white collar employees procrastinate more than blue collar workers, salespeople more than middle managers, business executives more than doctors or lawyers.

More broadly, Ferrari said, there are three basic types of procrastinators:

• Arousal procrastinators are thrill-seekers who tackle projects at the last minute, pulling all-nighters at school and work.
• Avoidance procrastinators habitually put off hard or boring tasks
• Decisional procrastinators are paralyzed by indecisiveness.

Their behavior has many roots. Ferrari has found, for example, that many chronic procrastinators started early, as a way to rebel against over-demanding fathers. "Finally," he said, "a problem we can't blame on mothers."

But the bottom-line issue, Ferrari said, is self-esteem. Procrastinators care deeply about how others see them; they live in fear of falling short. So they create circumstances that -- they believe -- will protect their self-image.

When they avoid a task, they can't be evaluated on it. When they refuse to make a decision, they can't be blamed if things go wrong. When their rushed work is subpar, they blame it on a lack of time.

They would rather have people think they didn't try than they can't cut it. They also tend to be charming and personable, Ferrari said, skilled at convincing others to bail them out or let them slide.

It is these psychological benefits that make it so hard to overcome. "To tell the chronic procrastinator 'just do it,' is like telling a depressed person 'just cheer up,'" Ferrari said. "Most of them will need to turn to professional assistance, which most won't seek until they hit rock bottom."

Calling for help

That's exactly where Cindy Winter-Hartley found herself a few month ago. A 46-year-old mother of two who works out of her Cary home, she said her office was so disorganized it became a source "of embarrassment, of shame."

Piled high with work papers she didn't know where to file and personal material -- letters, cards, children's art projects -- she could barely keep track of, she said she didn't want to spend any time in it. Worse still, the clutter spread so that "the office became almost everywhere and I was too overwhelmed to do anything about it."

Winter-Hartley finally took control by admitting she needed help, hiring Geralin Thomas, the organizing expert. "Where I saw shame, she saw potential," Winter-Hartley said. "Where I saw weakness, flaws, she saw the desire to change."

As Thomas offered her helpful hints -- break big projects into small ones, set realistic deadlines, reward yourself for progress -- she helped her understand the unrealistic emotional attachments that prevented her from being organized. "She helped me realize that I'm not a bad mother if I throw away a card my kids gave me."

Now Winter-Hartley is proud of her orderly home and office, which she has painted guacamole green. But she still relies on Thomas. "I'm a work in progress," she said. "This is hard problem to beat, but I'm glad I stopped putting off doing something about it."