And the chancellor has already put off one set of price rises: in March, he cut duty by a penny a litre, and delayed the next inflation-linked rise until January.
She put off one operation she needed, she said, when she came to believe that the local doctor wanted to remove the main steel pin in her leg only because it was high-quality metal, which he could resell.
And in Maryland, where high school exams have been under discussion since 1992, state officials have put off five new exams -- in English, algebra, geometry, government and biology -- from the class of 2005 to the class of 2007.
One of them, a youth worker in Birmingham, who doesn't want to be named, told me that this is the bit that put off three teenagers who had been making plans to go and fight.
Gates, put off one last time by Arnold's tone, dismissed him, saying, "You have no business here".
A planned comeback was put off five weeks later, before he sought the advice of a specialist in Denmark.
If you're stuck, make sure you aren't trying to put off one of the difficult puzzles as this may be the key to unlocking other clues to pursue.
But Morris actually struck a sometimes decent tone at CPAC, telling a meeting on the sidelines of the main event that Republicans need to face two big issues (immigration and abortion) that were putting off two vital voting blocs (Hispanics and young women).
On the Iranian front, the president has kept out of the public fray, letting John Kerry, his secretary of state, urge congressmen not to heed Mr Netanyahu, while putting off one of his latest scheduled visits to Israel.
You can tell yourself that putting off one step in a long process is merely a deviation, and "each deviation in itself seems negligible," but eventually this behavior becomes the rule rather than the exception and the work is never finished, she said.
