Have you ever heard of Parkinson's Law?

Parkinson's Law simply states: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” 

My God, can I relate to this.

In other words, whatever your deadline is to complete a certain task, that it the amount of time it will take to do it. If you set yourself a deadline of 24 hours, you'll work productively and efficiently to complete the task within that time frame. If you set yourself a deadline of one week for the exact same task, you'll dither and get distracted and take a full week to complete it.

This explains why I NEVER make a dent in my epic to-do list, which is full of exciting jobs like "do the filing" (the stack is now about 2 feet high) and "clean out email account" (who can be bothered?). Perhaps I need to adopt the Pomodoro Technique? It sure looks fun!