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service. The results would be exactly the same. In that case, the optimal time to act is when this invariant result may be obtained for the least cost in time, energy, and resources. If the cost is the same throughout a period of time, then any time during that period is as good as another for getting the job done. But it often happens that some moments are more opportune for action than others. If we expect to pass a mailbox on our way to work on Monday, for example, it would be anticipatory to make a special trip to the mailbox on Sunday. There’s nothing to be gained from the earlier start that might offset the extra work. Similarly, there would ordinarily be no advantage to composing a reply—or even to thinking about a reply—to an expected letter before receiving it rather than afterward. Therefore we should wait until the job simplifies itself.

This analysis doesn’t apply to work that’s valued for its own sake. If we mail our letter on Sunday because we want to take a walk on a beautiful day, our time has not been wasted, even if we pass by the same spot again on Monday morning. We’re glad to have this little excuse to go out. And doing what we like is never a trap.

Generally speaking, work simplifies itself with the passage of time. Delay permits new information to arrive that may save us trouble. Before we commit ourselves to a certain approach, a better one may come into view. Dead ends may be revealed before we butt our heads against them. We may receive a new tool that facilitates the work. Above all, as families of possibilities coalesce into single realities, there’s a steady diminution in the number of contingencies that need to be taken into account. In the place of two possible letters to respond to, we have only one real letter. Instead of ten vocational options that are compatible with what we know of our interests and abilities when we’re in the sixth grade, there are only two to choose from when we finish high school. Work streamlines itself over time.

This doesn’t mean that we should leave everything to the last minute. If we want to travel to the Orient, we can’t delay our preparations until the day of departure. There’s simply too much to be done. We have to obtain our passports, visas, vaccination certificates, and traveler’s checks; our employers have to be forewarned; the cat must be assisted in finding temporary accommodations. It’s true that we may later discover easier ways in which some of these tasks might have been accomplished. Unless we take this risk, however, we have no chance of going at all. But if a piece of work can be delayed without endangering the chance of its timely completion, then it should be delayed. For we lose nothing and gain the advantage of basing our actions on the latest and best information.

Anticipatory overworking is closely related to the phenomenon of amplification. The difference lies in the temporal arrangement of certain events. When we overwork because of anticipation, the same job can be done with less effort if only we wait for a more propitious moment. When we amplify, the same job can be done more easily right now.

Anticipation may lead to preworking if there’s a chance that our work will be undone by changing circumstances. After we prematurely compose replies to both an acceptance and a rejection, an unforeseen third option materializes: a request for more information. Now we have not merely worked harder than necessary. In this case, our work has come to nothing. We have to begin again from scratch. We might as well have watched TV. What we’ve done is no more than a useless preliminary to the real job. It was prework.

To be sure, we can never make ourselves entirely safe from the undoing of our work by changing circumstances. We engage in exhaustive investigations into the relative merits of Florida and Arizona as retirement homes, and the character of these places changes so drastically in a few years’ time that all our calculations are rendered obsolete. No matter how late we act, the Universe may still pull the rug out from under our feet at