A friend of mine asked me if I could take a look at his Drupal installation - apparently whenever he enabled a particular module his entire site would crash. "Sure, no problem. I'll take a look this weekend and we'll get it sorted out for you" was my response. But something came up that weekend and I put it off. I figured that it wouldn't take me long to figure out, so I could do it Monday. Of course, when Monday came around, something else took precedence and I put my friend's problem on the backburner.
 
That was three weeks ago. Each time I pushed the task back it seemed to grow in size. Suddenly it wasn't a small favour I was doing my friend, it was some giant task that was bordering on a project ... at least, that's how I viewed it.
 
Last night I found myself with a free evening, so I sent him a quick note saying I would take a look and that it would probably take me a day or so to figure out. I logged in, and within 5 minutes I found and fixed the problem. So simple! My friend was ecstatic that I had solved the problem which had plagued him for weeks... while I felt more than a little guilty for dragging things out as long as I had.
 
One of the golden rules in the Getting Things Done system is to do a small task immediately, rather than postponing it. It's a good rule to live by and I guess I needed a reminder.