I live in Dublin. If I was a visitor, I would make it my business to visit St Michan’s to see the dead crusaders. I would also go to the Guinness Hop Store and Marsh’s Library and I would take a trip up to the Dublin mountains.

So why has it been 20 years since I went up the mountains? Why have I never seen the crusaders or taken the tour of the Guinness Hop Store or visited Marsh’s Library? Am I unusual? No.

Let’s forget dead crusaders. Do you have a really expensive bottle of wine or champagne that you’ve been saving for a special occasion and never got around to drinking? Have you a book you’ve been meaning to read for years or a DVD you’ve been promising yourself you’ll watch? Have you promised to meet a friend this Christmas and last Christmas and the one before that but didn’t?

Common trait
If so, we are all in the same boat. What we are doing is postponing enjoyable experiences and, for some unknown reason, this appears to be a common human trait.

When it comes to interesting landmarks in my own city, I’m definitely in the majority in failing to get around to seeing them. Researchers at the University of California studied visits to landmarks in seven international cities. They found that, in three weeks, tourists visit more landmarks than people who have lived in these cities for three years or more. It’s when they’re moving to another city that residents dash around visiting the landmarks they’ve been meaning to see for years.

Examples of this human trait abound. Did you get vouchers for Christmas for airline tickets? Watch out, there’s a sporting chance you’ll never use them, especially if you decide to save them for a special trip – or else you’ll wait until the last minute and have to take whatever’s available.

It’s like not opening the expensive wine – you get hung up on a special occasion that is never quite special enough.

Too busy for treats
There is something about how we see time that, as the report on the research puts it, makes “the far future appear more appropriate for completing an enjoyable task than today”. This is often because we think we are too busy today, this week or this month to enjoy our goodies. What people fail to appreciate, the researchers add, “is that they will likely be as busy next month as they are now and the task will need to be postponed again”.

The postponement of pleasure explains why retailers do so well out of gift vouchers: many, many vouchers go unredeemed. Would it help if the vouchers were valid for a longer period of time? No – the more time we get to complete an enjoyable task, the less likely we are to do it.

Just do it
The researchers’ advice is to use those vouchers, drink that wine and visit those landmarks now. If you won’t use them now, at least give yourself a deadline by which you will use them come hell or high water.

If you won’t do that, my own suggestion is that you send them to me and I’ll take care of them for you.

To read more, check out this New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/science/29tier.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss , which has a link to the original report.