Procrastination
The Misconception: You procrastinate because you are lazy and can’t manage your time well.
The Truth: Procrastination is fueled by weakness in the face of impulse and a failure to think about thinking.
Netflix reveals something about your own behavior you should have noticed by now, something which keeps getting between you and the things you want to accomplish.
If you have Netflix, especially if you stream it to your TV, you tend to gradually accumulate a cache of hundreds of films you think you’ll watch one day. This is a bigger deal than you think.
Take a look at your queue. Why are there so damn many documentaries and dramatic epics collecting virtual dust in there? By now you could draw the cover art to “Dead Man Walking” from memory. Why do you keep passing over it?
Psychologists actually know the answer to this question, to why you keep adding movies you will never watch to your growing collection of future rentals, and its the same reason you believe you will eventually do what’s best for yourself in all the other parts of your life, but rarely do.
A study conducted in 1999 by Read, Loewenstein and Kalyanaraman had people pick three movies out of a selection of 24. Some were lowbrow like “Sleepless in Seattle” or “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Some were highbrow like “Schindler’s List” or “The Piano.” In other words, it was a choice between movies which promised to be fun and forgettable or would be memorable but require more effort to absorb.
After picking, the subjects had to watch one movie right away. They then had to watch another in two days and a third two days after that.
Most people picked Schindler’s List as one of their three. They knew it was a great movie because all their friends said it was. All the reviews were glowing, and it earned dozens of the highest awards. Most didn’t, however, choose to watch it on the first day.
Instead, people tended to pick lowbrow movies on the first day. Only 44 percent went for the heavier stuff first. The majority tended to pick comedies like “The Mask” or action flicks like “Speed” when they knew they had to watch it forthwith.
Planning ahead, people picked highbrow movies 63 percent of the time for their second movie and 71 percent of the time for their third.
When they ran the experiment again but told subjects they had to watch all three selections back-to-back, “Schindler’s List” was 13 times less likely to be chosen at all.
Yes, this is my queue
The researchers had a hunch people would go for the junk food first, but plan healthy meals in the future.
Many studies over the years have shown you tend to have time-inconsistent preferences. When asked if you would rather have fruit or cake one week from now, you will usually say fruit. A week later when the slice of German chocolate and the apple are offered, you are statistically more likely to go for the cake.
This is why your Netflix queue is full of great films you keep passing over for “Family Guy.” With Netflix, the choice of what to watch right now and what to watch later is like candy bars versus carrot sticks. When you are planning ahead, your better angels point to the nourishing choices, but in the moment you go for what tastes good.
As behavioral economist Katherine Milkman has pointed out, this is why grocery stores put candy right next to the checkout.
This is sometimes called present bias – being unable to grasp what you want will change over time, and what you want now isn’t the same thing you will want later. Present bias explains why you buy lettuce and bananas only to throw them out later when you forget to eat them. This is why when you are a kid you wonder why adults don’t own more toys.
Present bias is why you’ve made the same resolution for the tenth year in a row, but this time you mean it. You are going to lose weight and forge a six-pack of abs so ripped you could deflect arrows.
You weigh yourself. You buy a workout DVD. You order a set of weights.
One day you have the choice between running around the block or watching a movie, and you choose the movie. Another day you are out with friends and can choose a cheeseburger or a salad. You choose the cheeseburger.
The slips become more frequent, but you keep saying you’ll get around to it. You’ll start again on Monday, which becomes a week from Monday. Your will succumbs to a death by a thousand cuts. By the time winter comes it looks like you already know what your resolution will be the next year.
Procrastination manifests itself within every aspect of your life.
Photo by Ron J Anejo
You wait until the last minute to buy Christmas presents. You put off seeing the dentist, or getting that thing checked out by the doctor, or filing your taxes. You forget to register to vote. You need to get an oil change. There is a pile of dishes getting higher in the kitchen. Shouldn’t you wash clothes now so you don’t have to waste a Sunday cleaning every thing you own?
Perhaps the stakes are higher than choosing to play Angry Birds instead of doing sit-ups. You might have a deadline for a grant proposal, or a dissertation, or a book.
You’ll get around to it. You’ll start tomorrow. You’ll take the time to learn a foreign language, to learn how to play an instrument. There’s a growing list of books you will read one day.
Before you do though, maybe you should check your email. You should head over to Facebook too, just to get it out of the way. A cup of coffee would probably get you going, it won’t take long to go grab one. Maybe just a few episodes of that show you like.
You keep promising yourself this will be the year you do all these things. You know your life would improve if you would just buckle down and put forth the effort.
You can try to fight it back. You can buy a daily planner and a to-do list application for your phone. You can write yourself notes and fill out schedules. You can become a productivity junkie surrounded by instruments to make life more efficient, but these tools alone will not help, because the problem isn’t you are a bad manager of your time – you are a bad tactician in the war inside your brain.
Procrastination is such a pervasive element of the human experience there are over 600 books for sale promising to snap you out of your bad habits, and this year alone 120 new books on the topic were published. Obviously this is a problem everyone admits to, so why is it so hard to defeat?
To explain, consider the power of marshmallows.
Walter Mischel conducted experiments at Stanford University throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s in which he and his researchers offered a bargain to children.
The kids sat at a table in front of a bell and some treats. They could pick a pretzel, a cookie or a giant marshmallow. They told the little boys and girls they could either eat the treat right away or wait a few minutes. If they waited, they would double their payoff and get two treats. If they couldn’t wait, they had to ring the bell after which the researcher would end the experiment.
Some made no attempt at self-control and just ate right away. Others stared intensely at the object of their desire until they gave in to temptation. Many writhed in agony, twisting their hands and feet while looking away. Some made silly noises.
In the end, a third couldn’t resist.
What started as an experiment about delayed gratification has now, decades later, yielded a far more interesting set of revelations about metacognition – thinking about thinking.
Mischel has followed the lives of all his subjects through high-school, college and into adulthood where they accumulated children, mortgages and jobs.
The revelation from this research is kids who were able to overcome their desire for short-term reward in favor of a better outcome later weren’t smarter than the other kids, nor were they less gluttonous. They just had a better grasp of how to trick themselves into doing what was best for them.
They watched the wall instead of looking at the food. They tapped their feet instead of smelling the confection. The wait was torture for all, but some knew it was going to be impossible to just sit there and stare at the delicious, gigantic marshmallow without giving in.
The younger the child, the worse they were at metacognition. Any parent can tell you little kids aren’t the best at self-control. Among the older age groups some were better at devising schemes for avoiding their own weak wills, and years later seem to have been able to use that power to squeeze more out of life.
“Once Mischel began analyzing the results, he noticed that low delayers, the children who rang the bell quickly, seemed more likely to have behavioral problems, both in school and at home. They got lower S.A.T. scores. They struggled in stressful situations, often had trouble paying attention, and found it difficult to maintain friendships. The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.”
- Jonah Lehrer from his piece in the New Yorker, “Don’t”
Thinking about thinking, this is the key. In the struggle between should versus want, some people have figured out something crucial – want never goes away.
Procrastination is all about choosing want over should because you don’t have a plan for those times when you can expect to be tempted.
You are really bad at predicting your future mental states. In addition, you are terrible at choosing between now or later. Later is murky place where anything could go wrong.
If I were to offer you $50 now or $100 in a year, which would you take? Clearly, you’ll take the $50 now. After all, who knows what could happen in a year, right?
Ok, so what if I instead offered you $50 in five years or $100 in six years? Nothing has changed other than adding a delay, but now it feels just as natural to wait for the $100. After all, you already have to wait a long time.
A being of pure logic would think, “more is more,” and pick the higher amount every time, but you aren’t a being of pure logic. Faced with two possible rewards, you are more likely to take the one which you can enjoy now over one you will enjoy later – even if the later reward is far greater.
In the moment, rearranging the folders on your computer seems a lot more rewarding than some task due in a month which might cost you your job or your diploma, so you wait until the night before.
If you considered which would be more valuable in a month – continuing to get your paycheck or having an immaculate desktop – you would pick the greater reward.
The tendency to get more rational when you are forced to wait is called hyperbolic discounting because your dismissal of the better payoff later diminishes over time and makes a nice slope on a graph.
Evolutionarily it makes sense to always go for the sure bet now; your ancestors didn’t have to think about retirement or heart disease. Your brain evolved in a world where you probably wouldn’t live to meet your grandchildren. The stupid monkey part of your brain wants to gobble up candy bars and go deeply into debt. Old you, if there even is one, can deal with those things.
Hyperbolic discounting makes later an easy place to throw all the things don’t want to deal with, but you also over-commit to future plans for the same reason. You run out of time to get things done because you think in the future, that mysterious fantastical realm of possibilities, you’ll have more free time than you do now.
“The future is always ideal: The fridge is stocked, the weather clear, the train runs on schedule and meetings end on time. Today, well, stuff happens.”
- Hara Estroff Marano in Psychology Today
One of the best ways to see how bad you are at coping with procrastination is to notice how you deal with deadlines.
Let’s imagine you are in a class where you must complete three research papers in three weeks, and the instructor is willing to allow you to set your own due dates.
You can choose to turn in your papers once a week, or two on the first week and one on the second. You can turn them all in on the last day, or you can spread them out. You could even choose to turn in all three at the end of the first week and be done. It’s up to you, but once you pick you have to stick with your choice. If you miss your deadlines, you get a big fat zero.
How would you pick?
The most rational choice would be the last day for every paper. It gives you plenty of time to work hard on all three and turn in the best possible work. This seems like a wise choice, but you are not so smart.
The same choice was offered to a selection of students in a 2002 study conducted by Klaus Wertenbroch and Dan Ariely.
They set up three classes, and each had three weeks to finish three papers. Class A had to turn in all three papers on the last day of class, Class B had to pick three different deadlines and stick to them, and Class C had to turn in one paper a week.
Which class had the better grades?
Class C, the one with three specific deadlines, did the best. Class B, which had to pick deadlines ahead of time but had complete freedom, did the second best, and the group whose only deadline was the last day, Class A, did the worst.
Students who could pick any three deadlines tended to spread them out at about one week apart on their own. They knew they would procrastinate, so they set up zones in which they would be forced to perform. Still, overly optimistic outliers who either waited until the last minute or chose unrealistic goals pulled down the overall class grade.
Students with no guidelines at all tended to put off their work until the last week for all three papers.
The ones who had no choice and were forced to spread out their procrastination did the best because the outliers were eliminated. Those people who weren’t honest with themselves about their own tendencies to put off their work or who were too confident didn’t have a chance to fool themselves.
Interestingly, these results suggest that although almost everyone has problems with procrastination, those who recognize and admit their weakness are in a better position to utilize available tools for precommitment and by doing so, help themselves overcome it.
- Dan Ariely, from his book “Predictably Irrational”
If you fail to believe you will procrastinate or become idealistic about how awesome you are at working hard and managing your time you never develop a strategy for outmaneuvering your own weakness.
Procrastination is an impulse; it’s buying candy at the checkout. Procrastination is also hyperbolic discounting, taking the sure thing in the present over the caliginous prospect some day far away.
You must be adept at thinking about thinking to defeat yourself at procrastination. You must realize there is the you who sits there now reading this, and there is a you sometime in the future who will be influenced by a different set of ideas and desires, a you in a different setting where an alternate palette of brain functions will be available for painting reality.
The now you may see the costs and rewards at stake when it comes time to choose studying for the test instead of going to the club, eating the salad instead of the cupcake, writing the article instead of playing the video game.
Ulysses and the Sirens by Herbert James Draper
The trick is to accept the now you will not be the person facing those choices, it will be the future you – a person who can’t be trusted. Future-you will give in, and then you’ll go back to being now-you and feel weak and ashamed. Now-you must trick future-you into doing what is right for both parties.
This is why food plans like Nutrisystem work for many people. Now-you commits to spending a lot of money on a giant box of food which future-you will have to deal with. People who get this concept use programs like Freedom, which disables Internet access on a computer for up to eight hours, a tool allowing now-you to make it impossible for future-you to sabotage your work.
Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more will power, more drive, but because they know productivity is a game of cat and mouse versus a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty which can never be excised from the soul. Your effort is better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push ups.
You Are Not So Smart – The Book
If you buy one book this year…well, I suppose you should get something you’ve had your eye on for a while. But, if you buy two or more books this year, might I recommend one of them be a celebration of self delusion? Give the gift of humility (to yourself or someone else you love). Watch the trailer.
Order now: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - iTunes - Books A Million
Links
The Classroom Procrastination Study
Good Procrastination vs. Bad Procrastination
Maps Showing Popular Netflix Rentals by Region
Study on Netflix Renting Habits
Study on Online Grocery Shopping
10 Things to Know About Procrastination
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I missed you.
A new priest at his first mass was so nervous he could hardly speak. After mass he asked the monsignor how he had done. The monsignor replied, “When I am worried about getting nervous on the pulpit, I put a glass of vodka next to the water glass. If I start to get nervous, I take a sip.”
So the next Sunday he took the monsignor’s advice. At the beginning of the sermon, he got nervous and took a drink. He proceeded to talk up a storm. Upon return to his office after mass, he found the following note on his door:
1. Sip the Vodka, don’t gulp.
2. There are 10 commandments, not 12.
3. There are 12 disciples, not 10.
4. Jesus was consecrated, not constipated.
5. Jacob wagered his donkey, he did not bet his ass.
6. We do not refer to Jesus Christ as the late J.C.
7. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not referred to as Daddy, Junior, and Spook.
8. David slew Goliath, he did not kick the shit out of him.
9. When David was hit by a rock and knocked off his donkey, don’t say he was stoned off his ass.
10. We do not refer to the cross as the Big T!
11. When Jesus broke the bread at the Last Supper he said, “Take this and eat it, for it is my body”, he did not say, “Eat me.”
12. The Virgin Mary is not referred to as the, “Mary with the Cherry”.
13. The recommended grace before a meal is not: “Rub-A-dub-dub, thanks for the grub, yeah God.”
14. Next Sunday there will be a taffy-pulling contest at St. Peter’s, not a peter-pulling contest at St. Taffy’s.
i hope you all enjoy this entertaining joke.
Good joke
so how many people read this entry while procrastinating? I did.
*raises hand*
*yep*
Haha, add me to the list :)
Me too, but I feel a little bit better. I just started to figure this out on my own, but I have a very severe case of procrastination that is ruining my life, and I’m beginning to seek assistance.
Add one more :-)
Curious if the thread collapses once i post this message?
Whoops.
lolwutisgoingon
Caughtme…
Add me to that list.
Count me in.
Same here
lol… same here
I certainly do…
*smirks sheepishly*
Guilty as charged…
same here… but it definitely does help make sense of many of my actions… hopefully, i will get things on track..
Not only was I procrastinating, but I was putting off a doctoral project, just like the article describes.
I can beat that. I was putting off working on my course on procrastination. (Thought to be fair, I have already done quite a bit on it.)
This is useful stuff.
I not only procrastinated while reading the article – I also procrastinated while procrastinating from reading the article. Now I am truely lost. Great article though!
that’s meta, man.
Yeap, me right here. The marshmallow video was adorable though! Great article!!!
Yep I was putting off the analysis of my current research project.
Yep. :-)
Of course :D
Yepppppp. Crap.
I so hate the now-me right now. And now. And now….. And now.
But I’ll have the future-me deal with it… Oh crap, gotta finish my artwork. :D
I did too. but this article is very helpful
Wow this is a long list of procrastinators. Add me to it.
me too!!! :)
::raises hand::
You better believe it. Ugh, now to get to work. I wish this had had some real magic answer I could utilize.
The “magic answer” between the lines was to just do it, make it impossible for you not to do it, make it into small chunks with multiple deadlines, and be aware of the fact you’re a procrastinator and need to “sober up”.
I think an article about procrastination that only procrastinators would read should be a little more explicit about what to do about it. I felt like I was left hanging.
i did also
Guilty…
Ditto. And I’m continuing to procrastinate by writing this comment.
Same Same
Add me to the list. I am 3 chapters behind in my Calculus 2 studies, but since my test isnt untill next week, I keep procrastinating. :(
Yup I did
I did. Was supposed to prepare for a seminar in the morning, instead I risk making a fool f myself. But at least I have started to take the problem seriously, and is intending to tackle the problem NOW, instead of thinking about maybe be a better student net semester. So I started prepairing, and will DL the book to my Nook tomorrow. ‘Cause if I did it now, future-me five minutes from now, would read the book instead of prepairing, the stupid procrastinator!
not only did i procrastinate reading the article, i also read the comments, and now i am commenting myself. oh god. please. help.
o/ same here.
fore sure
i have an final examination in 10 hours and i decided to do an all nighter…. yet i havent even open my backpack and i been wasting time since 9 pm….. if i dont pass that test i could face terrible outcomes, but yet im here wasting my time surfing the web, its 3am and my time is ending so ill guess i will start working now and do my best. i hope reading all this article helps my future me in changing bad habits and be a better person jeje … so add me to this big list too:(
I did. Read like 1/2 of it and then said would read it later.
After 2 days or so I finished it though.
Haha, last night I told myself I’d study for my midterm from 8-11am this before going to school. This morning, I told myself I’d read an hour of manga first, THEN start studying… Then before I left for school I told myself I’d start sttudying at 12 once I get to campus. Instead, I see an e-mail notification saying there is a new post on this blog and I tell myself I’ll read this blog before studying…
That’s almost 2 hours worth of procrastination already…. now it’s time to study!!! >.>
I’ve been actively fighting my procrastination habits for a while now, and really what it comes down to for me is realizing that if I don’t *really* want to do something now, it’s just as likely that I won’t want to do it later. At the same time, being aware that “your future self” can be a different person altogether that can’t be trusted to sympathize with and carry out your best laid plans is incentive enough to get me to do things quickly.
Luckily, I’ve found that, just like a muscle, self-control can be trained simply by using it, and the more I do it, the easier it becomes. At the same time, if I slip up, I’ll be training my brain in the opposite direction, and will make my procrastination and focus worse. Being aware of this is a great source of motivation.
BUMP! Best comment – thanks for the clarity!!
This was a very enjoyable post, and (once again) makes me think of the ways I should commit my future me to better behavior. Unfortunately I also seem to sympathise with future me and his love of freedom.
I might point out a slight mistake in your take on hyperbolic discounting. In your example:
“If I were to offer you $100 now or $200 in a year and a day, which would you take? Clearly, you’ll take the $100 now. After all, who knows what could happen in a year, right?
Ok, so what if I instead offered you $100 in a year or $200 in a year and a day? Nothing has changed other than adding a delay, but now it feels just as natural to wait for the $200. After all, you already have to wait a long time.”
This is not quite true, and I guess it’s just a careless mistake. A 100 now or 200 in a year and a day are not the same as a 100 in a year and 200 in a year and a day. In the first the amount of extra time one has to wait for the extra 100 is a year and a day. In the second the extra time is only 1 day. A correct (and realistic) example would be: 100 today or 110 tomorrow vs. 100 a year from now or 110 a year and a day from now.
I think that was the point the author was trying to make. We would rather operate and gather the award at the moment than waiting for a greater reward in the future. Therefore, getting $100 now would be more realistic for the average person than waiting one year to get $200. We do not know what will happen in the future. We would rather have the $100.
However, we introducing the $100 after a year or $200 after a year and a day, we would rather wait the extra day since we already have to wait a long amount of time and the benefits of waiting a day is to gain an extra $100 outweigh the costs of waiting a day.
Although, your example makes sense, there is nothing wrong with the example listed. Also, the example used $50 and $100, not $100 and $200.
The $50 vs. $100 example the author uses does not make the point well at all. $50 now versus $100 a year from now means that there is a huge *multiple* of wait time during which things can go wrong in the $100 choice (the offerer dies, massive hyperinflation, etc.) which are exceedingly unlikely to go wrong in the seconds that would elapse in the $50 choice. $50 five years from now versus $100 six years from now is a situation where the multiple is only 1.2. There is only a 20% greater chance, all other things being equal, that things will go wrong in between the fifth and sixth year.
People can make perfectly rational decisions to go for $50 in the first scenario and $100 in the second, without involving any failures of their rational abilities.
I am new! It’s the first time I read an entire post! Well written, well explained, it seems like it required some research. Congratulations!
Made me think about what I am doing here instead of studying, psychology, nice timing. Yesterday happened the same, I wondered myself that I can’t really work with all the immediate pleasure I have around me, the internet, the music, the magazine next to me (…). Only at school, without all the distractions to be tempted to try on I could study decently. I guess that what you say it’s true. I identified myself with the sentence: “(…)because the problem isn’t you are a bad manager of your time – you are a bad tactician in the war inside your brain.” Nice quote you said there!
My english is so, so… cheers. Hope to read more from you and hopefully the other posts fully.
meditate this one every morning : Do what you HAVE to do FIRST, so that you can do whatever you WANT to do LATER
About hyperbolic discounting see Ainslie’s papers, his book BreakDown of Will is also quite informative.
Nice post thanks!
By scheduling my time once a week I at a minimum decide what I am going to do this coming week. Do I do it? My success rate is about 70% in terms of tasks. In terms of time it is about 90% because going to work is compulsory.
So what I find is I don’t procrastinate as much any more. I am learning to play an instrument and after 5 years of scheduling I’m pretty good. Yada, yada, yada.
When people say I am procrastinating I say I am fermenting. I know what I want to do, I just have to let it simmer and ferment in my mind to come up with the best approach!
Thank you for the post. I’ve realized lately that if I take any level of stab at doing something – like I have to wash dishes, so wash one, or just pick one up and put it back down – I am far more likely to start the chore within a reasonable amount of time.
Any bit of momentum can be enough to keep the chore in the present and on my radar. Of course, it’s not enough to do only a bit and nothing more. So long as the task doesn’t register as complete or “good enough,” it’s still there and ready for the next time it can be moved along.
Your example concerning $100 vs $200 ignores the concept of the time value of money. Depending on the interest rate you could earn with your investment, you’d likely be better off taking the $200, since at a 2% interest rate, $200 in 2 years is worth about $124 dollars today, assuming interest is compounded monthly. If you were able to get 2.9% interest or better, however, the $100 would be a better deal, since the $200 in two years would be worth less to you than the $100 now given the interest you could accumulate on that money.
Just sayin’. :)
Another issue I have with it is trust: In any deal, people try to wriggle out of their end of any promise (unilateral or otherwise) or any deal as Far turns more and more into Near. Politics in particular is the biggest deal-breaker of this kind, but it exists everywhere. So $50 now or $100 n a year is a BIG DIFFERENCE between $50 in five years and $100 in six years. In the latter case, both are Far, and trust doesn’t enter into it. In the former case, You might very easily be in a different mindset in one year and call off the whole generous cash-granting thing entirely – I might get nothing. As a thought experiment it seems to work, but that’s because our brains are not good at thought experiments – they’re good at real life. In real life, I want $50 right now because you’re way, way, way, way less likely to move away or change your mind or something.
Perhaps a more proper thing would be: Do you want the $50 to spend now or a CD for $100 that you have to keep in the bank for 12 months?
Perhaps even now, you can’t really trust banks or businesses to give you what you earned. It really is about now, because enjoying yourself now goes higher on our list than doing things that upset or dislike us, like breaking up with a boyfriend or finishing that paper.
The culture of now is what we can trust. It’s why it’s so hard to get people to invest money especially if they don’t have a lot of it, or why arranged marriages are no longer popular–we don’t know if in 16 years that female is still gonna be marriage worthy, just like we can’t assure a business is gonna do well.
I do agree that humans are bad at choosing for themselves, it would be why we have people with severe eating disorders and people with chronic issues from smoking or drug use, but self-control, or the idea of it, is not just evolution, but also conditioning in our current environment–the future is not assured. Why should we take a gamble on it, especially if it could be a lie?
your awesome
!
I could double or triple 50 in one year if I have it now..
I think the most amazing thing about this article is that ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ was available as a choice in 1999. It had more powers than I realized!
This is the best blog on the Internet. Thanks.
Looking forward to your book David. Just please don’t be afraid to use hyphens so that future-me or future-others won’t have to re-read so many times!
@Andrew – I will hyphenate those terms. Thanks for mentioning it. I wondered if that section would read strangely.
@David McRaney – “I wondered if that section would read strangely.”
Wonder no more. That section does indeed read strangely.
When in doubt, hyphenate.
And thanks for the excellent article.
You DO know that, seeing at the lenght of this article, any procrastinator here will just bookmark it with the intention to read it later on…and never read it actually.
You know that, do you ?
By the way, i didn’t read it, I’m -hum- too busy right now, but I’ll do. Soon, as they say.
It’s interesting that you say that, as I have noticed I’m more likely to read a long article if I use the mouse scroll rather than the scroll bar. Using the mouse I don’t have to see how long the article is, I just scroll down until it’s over.
Any procrastinator except those who need another excuse to procrastinate ;)
Wonderful article. Thank you.
I feel like I have already heard of all of those studies. Either on Radiolab, or just browsing around. I still enjoyed the article.
I think I’ll read this later.
same here, I’ll try to get to this tomorrow.
HOLY COW ! I HAVE HAD THIS PAGE ON FOR A WEEK.. I HAVE NOT READ ANYTHING YET! GREAT BLOG!
Someone should do something about apathy
A fitting topic given the long period without posts?
Glad to have you back (I hope).
They had Hot Tub Time Machine in 1999? I stopped reading after this incredible error.
@Silver Surfer – I never said they had “Hot Tub Time Machine” in 1999, only that it was a lowbrow movie like the ones they did have at that time. I’ll change it though, as it seems like this will be confusing to some people. Thanks.
You must have the most pedantic audience I’ve ever seen on a blog. Fantastic content nevertheless.
@Ali, my thoughts exacly ;) Xcellent article
ray: it looks like you applied the entire 2% interest every month – that’s equivalent to a 26.8% annual interest rate – and if that’s typical for you then i’d really like to know who you bank with ;-)
2% annual interest – which would be more usual – would mean that $200 in 2 years equates to about $192 now.
I’ll take your promise (legally binding) of $200 in a year and a day. I will then sell of this “promissory note” to some investor for say $150 as fast as I can. I get $150 and the investor makes a 33% profit for one year. We both win.
@notrelevant and @TM – I changed the wording in the hyperbolic discounting section to make more sense. Thanks for catching that.
Excellent. Good job! Very interesting. (There are a couple of spelling errors in the article. Let a fresh pair of eyes run through it.)
@Threepwood – Will do.
Cool post…
My mantra is for getting stuff done is: Think it – Do it.
Eat That Frog is a great book to read on the topic of procrastination.
Wow! Really nice article.. Please keep it coming!! Thank you
I couldn’t find a place to mention this in the article, but studies also show you don’t work better under pressure, and waiting for inspiration isn’t realistic. You get motivated after getting started, and you are worse at what you are trying to accomplish when pressed for time.
looks interesting, bookmarked, will read it later
I see what you did there…
I’ve been thinking about this for some time now, and I agree with your article. Thanks for putting it into words.
LOL @ “schindler’s list” as “high brow.” this whole article reads like it is some dreadful product of procrastination.
@momo – The researchers labeled “Schindler’s List” as highbrow.
Isn’t “[it's a] failure to think about thinking” just another to-do list invented by the procrastinating mind? Tell us the truth, it’s not really fixable is it? Just rationalizable.
@Smoketouch – Procrastination can’t be eliminated, only managed.
tl;dr
tl;dr here is well, but I promised to myself that I’ll read it later.
This article is filled with non-sequiturs. Procrastinators don’t necessarily *lack* the metacognition. In fact, many who procrastinate have a high degree of metacognition, but lack the ambition and/or willpower to actually act on what the metacognition tells them is the rational choice.
Big difference.
You missed the point: this article is saying that it is not lack of ambition or willpower that causes procrastinators to procrastinate; it is precisely their lack of knowledge of themselves. Read it again!
Excellent, excellent article. This blog has been added to my bookmarks. Keep up the great work, Sir.
I’ll just read this later.
tl;dr, you had me at procrastination.
Great read, but just a point on the candy at the checkout counter. What else can you put at the checkout counter? It has to be small, there is not going to be much room. You are not going to put frozen stuff there, or toilet paper, or cereal, or cat food, or canned food. There is nothing else you could put there, but candy or magazines. Of course, this does not invalidate your point at all, just something that I thought about.
@Lacks Nuance – I don’t think the article makes the point you are refuting. No average person lacks metacognition. The failure I talk about in the article is a failure to use it to devise a plan of action to lower your chances of engaging in procrastination. Also, I’m arguing against ambition and willpower as factors here.
@cak – Ha. Wal-Mart puts all sorts of liitle trinkets at the checkout like hand sanitizer and lint rollers. What is odd is when a store like Best Buy or Home Depot puts candy at the counter.
There’s already a huge corpus of psychological marketing studies about how grocery stores are arranged.
Stores are absolutely saturated with impulse buy material, but where it’s located is the critical factor. The goal of the store (re: pushing impulse materials) is to expose the consumer to it as much as possible, and this is accomplished by maximizing how much time the consumer spends near this material. Hence, stores try to herd consumers around the store as much as possible.
Dairy is in the back. Produce is also in the back or on the side, but on the /opposite side/ from the dairy. The two are big-ticket groups that nearly every shopper not just looking for their next pie (we’ve all been there) comes to pick up. Anything you /really/ want from an aisle is usually in the middle, and the ends of aisles are stocked with bargains you’ll see in passing.
It’s the grocery store’s job to make you walk through as much of the store as possible to get the most basic things you want, exposing you to as much impulse ‘low-wait, high-reward’ merchandise as they can.
to anyone that doesn’t want to spend 10 bucks on limitless productivity:
http://visitsteve.com/work/selfcontrol/
HOLY CRAP, THAT LOOKS AMAZING. I can’t wait to give it a try, thanks for the link!
I always justified procrastinating in school with this line of reasoning: if I wait until the night before and have less time to work on it, then I will be working much harder & faster, so it will take less time to finish, therefore it will be the most efficient use of my time overall.
Probably not usually true, but fun to believe.
I just saw this article, favourited it so I can come back to it later, and closed the window.
Anyone else do this with stumbleupon? I have about 8 unread tabs open right now.
only 8? I have 137 tabs in 59 windows… on *this* computer. My other computer has another >100 tabs in 30+ windows. :-(
Thanks for feeding my now-you procrastination. Future-you is making me cut this comment short!
tl;dr
The netflix example is inappropriate to the topic – ‘procrastination’. My netflix queue, if I had one, would reflect what I want to watch, not what I think other people want me to want. It is related to expressing the right to self-expression, rather than procrastination.
I feel like I just got raped by a news article
Okay, but how? The pushup example is perfect. I’m trying to do 10 pushups at a time, several times a day, and slowly increase it so that eventually I’m doing 50-100 a day.. How do I outsmart myself to make me do pushups? I honestly have no idea.
Man, I just got around this problem. You have to stop thinking about push-ups as something you have to do. Think about them as something you CAN do while waiting. Also, stop thinking of push-ups as something that has to be done on the ground (it makes it easier trust me).
So next time you are waiting for the shower to heat up put your hands against the back of the toilet, kick your feet out so you are at a 45 degree angle to the toilet and bang out as many push-ups as you can before the water heats up. With my shower I can do about 30 to 40. You can do the same with any wall (not at a 45 degree angle though) and depending on how you place your hands you will work out different muscles. I went from barely able to do ten old school push-ups when I tried to doing 50 no sweat, in only a little more than a month. I use regular push-ups every once in awhile to see how much better I’m getting because they are the hardest.
Seriously. If you have to wait for something to download don’t just sit there. Stand up and put your hands on the edge of the desk put your feet back and see what you can do. Works on counters, side of the bed, chairs, etc. All the different heights will also work on different muscles and you’ll get a more well rounded workout, and you are more likely to do it than you are if you have to get down on the floor to do push-ups. This goes for weights too. I put two jugs of water on a short broom handle in my office. I’ve found myself far more likely to pick those up and do some lifting than I’ve ever been with actual weights. Not enough weight? Add more jugs. Cheap and easy.
Wow! Now that’s a magic answer – love it!
i have no idea how i found this blog, but thank you.
procrastination had ruined my life. its time for me to put an end to that.
thank you for writing this.
A good article. At least your wrote it in your own words. But all of your points are straight out of last week’s NEW YORKER.
All in all this is a nice use of research, but a couple of things left me a bit uneasy.
1) “Only 44 percent went for the heavier stuff first.” 44% is too uncomfortably close to half to justify the “only” in my book. I don’ t know how many subjects there were, but a 44/56 split wouldn’t be too surprising if they were flipping coins. The conclusion might be sound — I’m just harping on the “only” part.
2) No offense, but if you’re the one doing the offering, I’ll take $50 now vs. $100 in a year but $100 in six years over $50 in five years and consider both decisions logical. What you fail to take into consideration is expected value. How am I going to collect from you in year? I’ll forget, you’ll reneg, go bankrupt — so maybe I have 30% chance of seeing that $100 and therefore your promise is only worth $30 ($100 x .30).
The prospect of collecting 5 years from now is even more dismal — say 10%. Collecting 6 years from is even worse, but not that much worse — say 8% (five years, six years…what’s the difference?). So, even for a being of pure logic, this could really be a choice between a promise worth $5 ($50 x .10) vs. one worth $8 ($100 x .08).
Still, there’s enough good stuff here for me to poke around a bit more. FYI, you might be interested in Richard Wiseman’s 59 Seconds. Thanks.
WTF are you talking about? 30% chance of this, 8% chance of that?
You are making up a bunch of BS conditions that are completely out of the scope of the though experiment. Yeesh.
With Netflix’s new streaming menu I deleted almost all of my hundreds of queued movies. Yup, that’s enough work for this month…Fall…Year…ZZZZZZZZZZ
Hi David,
I really enjoyed this article and how it made me think. However, when I got to the end I realized that your emphasis in the argument was on being able to “trick” yourself. Another way to think about this (which perhaps is in contradiction to the name of your blog) is to “make yourself smart.” The type of effort you describe to deal with procrastination takes training not “tricking.” We are very smart and malleable. The best way to not do something is to find something else to do that is better. In the example of the children some found something else to do that was better at that time so that they could get two treats later. It is the realization that doing something now leads to something else which is potentially better. As you point out in today’s world we are bombarded by so much more than ever before in terms of things to do. So you may need to work differently to realize the thing that you will do now so you get something else later. Part of that realization that I think will be more long-lasting is simply being present and making the choice that you want and getting past the feeling of should. If you want to do some thing because it will benefit you later then you will do it because you are present when making that choice. If you trick yourself into doing something won’t you eventually realize that this is just a trick and you really wanted to do something else. It seems a confusing way of teaching humans how to be in the world when we do have the capacity to be present and make choices. I’m not arguing against the primal forces factor that are many thousands of years in the making, but I am arguing for the much less time (but at least a few thousand years) thinking about how the mind works and the power we do have to be present and make choices about what we do. I guess you could call these efforts “tricks” but I think there is a better way of thinking about how we create conditions that allows us to make the best choices for our future.
Cheers,
Samir
i want to leave a comment on Procrastination ….
but i will do it later .
Good post.
my name is cameron…and reading this felt like i was talking to my sub concious…i want to get my stuff back on track…the procrastination is eating away at me.
nice collection from netflix
Fantastic news about the book! I will unashamedly say this here blog has become one of my favourite corners of the internet since I discovered it a scant few months ago. Will definitely be top of my present list for many people I know…
why do I feel like I’ve already read this? Pretty sure I read more or less the same article in nytimes or something, within the last few weeks.
This is some interesting piece of informtion. Keep up the good work and continue providing us more quality information from time to time.
I already knew some of the parts of this article, but regardless, it’s a great one. Love reading them, keep them coming!
Fantastic article! Thanks for sharing
Actually I think it adeptly described my relationship with Steam.
Because someday – someday – I am going to play The Longest Journey instead of another round of Bad Company 2.
Procrastination is like masturbation. It feels good while you are doing it and then you just realize you are fucking yourself.
I don’t have that problem with movies. Due to errr..ahem… prevalent ability to see any movie by obtaining them in-oh whatever, because of pirating for the past 10 years, I have a different problem. I’ve forgotten a half of all the movies I’ve seen.
Great article! Congratulations on your “soon to be published” book! Keep me posted!** I am clicking over toute suite to pdf mode to write, then submit an article. Merci!
I have procrastinated throughout my life, even before I had heard of the word or knew what it meant.
With me procrastinating is easy, since I get easily distracted, and the less I feel like doing something, the harder it is to begin.
Usually things get done at the last minute, when they can be put off no longer. Years ago that would be my homework, but these days it’s things like doing my taxes, or calling someone on the phone.
Every working day is hard, and my wife does at least back me up in believing that I do have ADD, and keep distracting myself. It’s not easy to deal with.
Great article, and I loved seeing the video of the kids with the marshmallows again. It’s brilliant.
Very interesting text – lots of opportunities to think about oneself. :-) Though a little too long…
All the way through this article I had the feeling I have read it before. Malcolm Gladwell? Richard Wiseman?
Not sure. Good read anyway.
Fantastic and very insightful post!! Thanks
This is the article I always planned to write!
Excellent explanations, the ideas are truly gold. This article is the answer to all my past problems. It depicts them in so great detail that it’s scary but in the same time comforting knowing that you are not alone in having these problems.
Thanks!
I think I’ll read it later…
For a bit of light relief, try this take on procrastination:
http://www.euroscript.co.uk/beat_procrastination.html
Great article. I can’t believe I’m procrastinating by reading about procrastination. Anyway, can’t wait for the book! Will it be available for purchase on Amazon?
1) So to wrap up, your saying that because i’m smart, creative + a great problem solver, and because it’s impossible to outwit myself – i’m messing up my life because I can creativley continue to procrastinate and excuse everything I do. Nice.
2)I appreciate the fact that you didn’t use a single outside link in the article, made it a lot more readable for it’s length.
3) if you want people to read your comments, split them out in numbers and in groups of three.
:) – agreed good post
As always, the great Bill Waterson has a perfect Calvin & Hobbes strip about this; it resonated with me even when I was 9:
(If it doesn’t show up, the text is:
Hobbes: Do you have an idea for your story yet?
Calvin: No, I’m waiting for inspiration. You can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbes: What mood is that?
Calvin: Last-minute panic.)
I’ve always been a procrastinator, but I end up OK due to two facts:
One is liking my CS course and job, which means it’s not hard to work on them.
What happens is that I have pretty good grades on all computing related classes, and much lower grades on the others. Luckily they’re few :)
The other is feeling bad when I fail someone. Even if I feel a huge urge to stop doing something, if I know someone is depending on me, I’ll feel bad enough on letting them do all the work that I end up doing it.
Of course, this means that certain tasks that aren’t neither pleasant nor have people depending on their completion never get done :| working out used to be one of them, until I turned it into a pleasant experience by listening to podcasts about programming during those sessions.
@Yaniel:
Same here… back to my paper now.
We missed you heaps! This article came at a perfect time and I completely relate to some parts of it. This past week I’ve been procrastinating and now I have 3 assignments that are 2 days close to the deadline. This is what I needed.
Thanks a million! I appreciate your work.
tl;dr
I consider myself a huge Procrastinator however managed to actually seat down for 25mins and read this entire post. (I am a slow reader;)) I loved the format and research involved in compiling this article. Thank you for the wonderful way of looking at what is procrastination, how to possibly overcome it and most importantly understand where is comes from.
You say fighting procrastination is a war between now-you and future-you. And now-you should use restrictive, punishing tools against future-you.
But future-you has a conscious layer above “childish primal human predilection for pleasure”. You can communicate with this layer. You leave a message that will “get through” to future-you and make him same realization as you and make the right choice between “should and want” when the time comes.
Sadly, not every “realization” that is important to you now can “get through” to future-you. He will just ignore it as unimportant.
That’s why you have to sink this realization into something existential. So it always matters, scares the shit out of you.
Mine is that only way you can fight future nothingness (be creative, in other words) is to make plans and stick to them. So mere sticking to plans is already fighting (fleeng from, actually) nothingness. You should have gone through appropriate set and setting to be really afraid of nothingness.
But on the other hand there is Lennon with his “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”.
Too long didn’t read
I’ve always felt (though I agree with the thrust of the article) that the $50/$100 experiment was a little flawed – it’s not measuring forward-thinking so much as trust in the offer to actually come true. I’d certainly accept $50 today over a promise of $100 in a year – in fact, I’d choose a $20 bill over that, especially given that I’ll have to think and worry about it over the year, keep track of the scientists’ contact details in case they didn’t pay up, etc. On the other hand, if the offer is to instead put money into my pension fund, I’ll happily accept even $55, even though I won’t be able to access the money for more than thirty years. In the case of the 5/6 year choice, this doesn’t apply so much – either the scientists are basically trustworthy, and the department moderately organized – in which case you’re getting the money and might as well pick the max, or they aren’t, in which you’re never seeing any of it.
Not trying to be “I’m a unique snowflake to whom science doesn’t apply” here – more that in the context of the very studies generally cited here, this one stands out as a bit duff.
I think after i read the article. A sudden epiphany struck me. Awesome article!
Thank you so much for posting this, it hit so close to home it hurt. I´m going to print this out on fine paper and hang it on my walls, and now I´m going to open Photoshop and start drawing. Thanks again!
Wow. Every symptom here is true with me. So sad, but I will try my best to win that war inside my brain. Does practice make perfect? Oh well, better try than not try at all.
The marshmallow test was awesome.
I remember an episode from How I Met Your Mother where Marshall and Ted had to make a decision, but instead they played Playstation , and said something like, “Well, I’ll let Future Ted decide.”/”It’s Future Ted’s problem”. Then comes the time for Future Ted, then he suddenly realizes what a mistake it was to put aside that task, then says, “Damn you Past Ted”
Just sharing. It was fun to read this article because I can related to this procrastination.
This was a very insightful article and gave me some new thoughts on dealing with my procrastination problem. Thank you for writing it.
Superb Article Mate. its like you know me better than I know myself. I especially liked the part about understanding that the future you wont be the same guy as You are right now.
Thanks for the insight again.
Ash
I’ll read this later.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/101011crbo_books_surowiecki?currentPage=1
This New Yorker article from October 11 is a very good analysis of procrastination. It also uses Netflix queues as an example.
Great article. However, in RE the Netflix aspect, I often stick to lowbrow movies because i’m only watching TV right before bed, I assume this is common amongst most professionals…watching something that is intense or highbrow makes going to bed more difficult.
Yep, I’m a terrible one for procrastinating. There’s some useful insights in this post as to how to outsmart myself and stop putting things off for my untrustworthy future self to deal with. Simply, do it! And do it NOW!
Cheers =D
I watch everything that I put on my Netflix instant stream queue. It’s also because I work from home, eagerly complete my work for the day then look for something to watch then watch it. My DVD queue goes watched at one at a time (but I never put stuff I won’t watch on there). I receive a DVD every 2 days, watch it the afternoon I get it, prepare it to be mailed off and put it in the mail box by the end of the night. I guess everyone else just procrastinates?
This stuff is dead-on as long as you assume that procrastinators give a shit about the eventual outcome. If you’re OK being fat and fired, then it’s less about that “now you vs. future you” battle, and more about simply not giving a fuck. I don’t know about most people, but I know for me there’s a healthy dose of fuck-it involved in my persistent procrastination. Embracing mediocrity can be liberating in an existentialist sort of way.
For me it’s all about efficiency; when you wait till the last minute, it only takes a minute.
Read this instead of writing on my own blog this morning. Damn it!
bookmarking this post, so i can read it later…
I read half of the article…
…I’ll read the next half tomorrow sometime.
Great post! More food for thought: how about the well-documented link between perfectionism and procrastination? Or the negative consequences for people who are efficient solely because having something hanging over their heads is highly stressful? Not surprisingly, I am both of these things, and it’s often a battle more to set realistic goals (as briefly mentioned in the piece) than one of discipline or thinking about my future self, because I know future self will be even more miserable than present self, which only causes present self to be more guilty, but doesn’t necessarily lead to action! Or, as you put it, it’s important to think about how you think.
I had trouble parsing some of the sentences with the phrase ‘the now you’ and ‘the future you’ until I realized they were phrases. Perhaps using single-quotes or hyphens to offset the phrases would be easier on the reader.
Thanks for the post and get out of my head. ;)
To much stuff to read. I´ll try again tomorrow or next week.
Great post! I am actually reading The Now Habit at the moment. Which I’ve been doing for the last two months of moments… hm…
This is awfully similar in structure and argument to the recent New Yorker article…
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/101011crbo_books_surowiecki?currentPage=all
Didn’t the New Yorker just write this article?
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/101011crbo_books_surowiecki?currentPage=all
Copy cat.
Well done. I cannot even begin to imagine how many people can relate to your post. Thank you.
>>Yaniel permalink
October 27, 2010 11:38 am
so how many people read this entry while procrastinating? I did.
I did too! Lol
Great article though!! And great concepts to apply within it! :)
I procrastinated finishing this. I got most of the way through, got distracted, considered finishing multiple times, and never did. :(
Awesome article, well written.
This should be placed in the notebooks they give freshman in college.
I canceled my Netflix a while ago, I realized it was a waste of time. I realized
that an episode of My Name is Earl, wasn’t worth achieving inferior results.
If you look on Netflix.com the amount of time has been spent on “Watch Instantly” you’d be
amazed.
I started procrastinating when I was 8 because if felt good!! My mom said your dead relatives can see you procrastinating…even if nobody else is watching…
Note to self: keep in mind, future-me cannot be trusted. This includes you.
Signed, your past self.
P.S.: That’s why I spent all your money.
Very well written, well researched. To me, procrastinating is deciding not to decide. I hope you get a chance to read my stab at prying past procrastination written sometime this month. http://tinyurl.com/2fox3q3
interesting article. my only issue is that it seems to be almost accusatory towards procrastinators. when starting i assumed that it would be informational about the topic, but there were whole sections bashing those that do procrastinate. it also does not address the other side of the argument. there are people who have whole psychologies of life that accept their procrastination and still lead happy lives till the day they die. just because something isn’t as efficient doesn’t mean it can’t be inherently good.
That’s what has happened to my Netflix queue.. Thanks for the info.
There are a number of grammatical errors and missing words in this article, making it difficult to understand. I’m guessing the author wrote it half-asleep after putting it off til the last minute.
I was too tired to read the whole thing…I’ll come back and read it later, I promise
I have experienced it the whole years. Now it is time to wake up. Thanks for posting this article
I have been experienced it all whole years. It is time to wake up. Thank for posting this article.
yes. i read this too while procrastinating. very good article. thank you. i will think more about thinking about my research now. yesyes. thank you.
There is another view to the problem of procrastination.
Consider two extremes: first – no planning and no sticking to plans at all; second – overplanning so that e.g right now you should be working your ass off in a gym and then work 12h shift so that you are prosperous enough to enjoy your 123th day of your 73rd year on Earth, “here, i have this day all planned out”.
Procrastination is somewhere in between these extremes. Procrastination is your own unique heuristic to achieve maximum pleasure to planning ratio.
So stop worrying, there is nothing wrong about procrastination.
This is a lame rip-off of James Surowiecki’s recent piece in the New Yorker. You’re shameless.
Relevant: http://my.ilstu.edu/~dfgrayb/Personal/Procrastination.pdf
I tend to trick myself into thinking that by procrastinating now, Ill get things done quicker in the long run! I just get trapped in my procrastinating though!
Erm…by any chance had you read this article in the New Yorker, your sounds awful similar.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/101011crbo_books_surowiecki
Thanks for this compilation of fascinating studies! Too bad “future me” tends to forget all this.
My blog posts about procrastination, priorities and godly time management tend to be much shorter (because of my attention span???). But I find collecting quotes about procrastination can be fun as well. Here are some from “Author Unknown”:
•“You know you are getting old when it takes too much effort to procrastinate.”
•“I do my work at the same time each day—the last minute.”
•“Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday.”
Whilst procrastinating I came upon this article and believe it or not, I did read it through. Or tried to. My addled brain will have to return to it another time to get a little bit more meaning out of it, but that’s a complaint about my own abilities not yours!
It seems like you’ve taken a lot of time to do your research so thanks for making the effort and not putting it off.
:)
Did procrastination cause you to essentially re-write the same article that was in the New Yorker last week?
Please visit my site at http://www.projectretard.wordpress.com and leave a comment thanks.
Most procrastinators ARE future ‘doers.’ I put some things off only because I prioritize, not because I don’t want to get it done NOW! Those who put if off and never get it done are the lazy ones. I don’t think procrastinating certain things in your life is necessary a bad thing. But if you put if off when your life or career or future depends on it, then you are a procrastinator!
Hey man,
Just wanted to take a second to thank you. This is one of the best posts I’ve ever read in my entire life. It totally changed my perspective.
MANY THANKS!
Mrs. Doubtfire is lowbrow?
Eponysterical, ‘lacks nuance.’ The metacognitive leap required isn’t “I’m not making the rational choice” — rather, its that “my future self will be a different person, with an entirely new set of circumstances upon which decision-making hinges, and therefore can’t be trusted to follow through on my ‘just this last time’ rationalization.”
That’s actually a big difference, and not something that most folks think about, at least not whilst in the midst of mulling over their habitual procrastination.
I make to-do lists all the time and it’s amazing to look at them at the end of the day and see all the stuff that didn’t get checked off. What was I doing all day?? If I just had a camera on me all the time so I could see all the things I’m not doing…well, no, on second thought I really don’t want to know….
I read this instead of putting gas in my truck. But now I’m off to the gas station.
Procrastination is something that can be cured or at least substantially mollified in my opinion. You just need some encouragement and positive affirmation from others around you. If you don’t have anybody in your life to deliver that, find a friend or just hire somebody at something like http://happycalls.tagmyphone.com to do it for you. By the way, I should be going out tonight, but I’m procrastinating by browsing on the internet. EEEEEK!
You have a problem in the paragraphs that you used below.
In the first you say Class B had to pick specific deadlines and Class C had to turn in the papers in one week.
In the next paragraph you switch it around.
“They set up three classes, and each had three weeks to finish three papers. Class A had to turn in all three papers on the last day of class, Class B had to pick three different deadlines and stick to them, and Class C had to turn in one paper a week.
Which class had the better grades?
Class C, the one with three specific deadlines, did the best. Class B, which had to pick deadlines ahead of time but had complete freedom, did the second best, and the group whose only deadline was the last day, Class A, did the worst.”
Wow! I mean WOW! I really, really loved this article. David good job. You just told the truth and it’s as if you knew what I was thinking all along. The NOW me will plan better from NOW on.
Thanks,
Sepi.
http://journalbysepi.wordpress.com
What do we want? Procrastination!! When do we want it? Next Week!!!
I want to procrastinate for another month !
Too long. meh, may get too it later. May not. Thus is the amazing thing about procrastination – everything that is so so gets weeded out and only the truely fucking amazing things are left for our attention. Back to the episode of hak5 i was watching … and my point is moot, lol!
“A failure to think about thinking.”
Sigh, so very true.
I have been a victim of procrastination for years. I just cannot get rid of it.
a failure to think about thinking? So, we’re all thinking about thinking now, right? Now, what?
Just like the New Yorker article!
Different words, but same ideas = plagiarism. You should be ashamed of yourself.
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The Importance of Self Esteem – why it matters
BY WISDOM JOHN
I think self esteem is central to everything you do. It affects your behaviour and thoughts. It changes how you feel about and value yourself.
Can you imagine anything else so important?
Why should self esteem matter to you?
• Self esteem can be the difference between success and failure
• Esteem can affect your thinking, causing your outlook to be positive or negative
• Esteem affects your confidence
• It affects your self image
• If you do not value yourself how will you be able to value others?
• Self esteem enables you to have the right attitude to succeed at work
• It affects your happiness
Let’s take a moment or two to look a bit more closely at what I’ve said above – and then I hope that you will appreciate just how important self esteem is to you.
Your potential to achieve what you most desire is directly related to your self esteem. On the other hand, failure is much more likely when you suffer from low self esteem because you will believe others when they tell you why you cannot succeed. Work on building your self esteem and success can be that much easier.
I’m sure you realise the importance of positive thinking. Increase your esteem and you will become more positive. This will benefit you in every area of your life. Read more about optimism here.
TYPES OF SELF-ESTEEM
1. Low and High Self-esteem
What is Low Self Esteem?
Low self esteem comes from a poor self image. Your self image is based on how you see yourself. Do you think you are a good, reliable, hardworking, honest or friendly person? Do you like what you see when you look in the mirror or do you believe others look better and dress better than you?
Low self esteem also depends on other factors like your job. For example, do you value the job you do? Does the job you have help you be happy with who you are? Do the others in your office respect you?
Low self esteem feeds your negative thinking and causes you to believe the critcism others make of you. Do you take what others say and not speak up? This can cause you to lose confidence so it is vital to end negative thoughts if you want to build your self esteem.
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What is High Self Esteem?
High self esteem is the opposite of the above! If you have a high level of self esteem you will be confident, happy, highly motivated and have the right attitude to succeed.
Do you Have a Problem with Self Confidence?
Self esteem affects your confidence, how important is that? If you want to rise to any challenge you must believe in yourself. Without confidence in what you can do and in who you are what chance do you have of happiness or success?
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Self image is another important part of how you feel about yourself. Low self esteem means that you will have a poor image of yourself and this will result in a loss of confidence. Your social skills will also suffer and you will find it harder to socialize because others will respond negatively to your lack of confidence.
To learn more read this page about feeling good about yourself.
Self esteem will also help you at work. Your confidence and positive attitude will enable you to look and feel your best. You will have no trouble presenting yourself in a favourable light because you will be full of self respect and comfortable with who you are.
Do you Value yourself?
Value yourself, your ability and your contribution in the world because you are unique. Do you understand this? You cannot value and respect others unless you first value and respect yourself.
Finally, one last reason why your self esteem is so important. It will help you be a happier person. To find out why read this page about moods and how they affect your thoughts and behaviour.
I hope that this short article has been helpful to you. Take a look around at the rest of the site which is filled with information about different aspects of self esteem. I suggest the following pages:
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Classmates and teachers have made all the learning fun. As you leave school to join the work force, bring all the memories and forget none, for they will always remind you that in school these good things began. Happy graduation!
Here is wishing that you turn what you have learned from school into golden opportunities for further learning and education. For tomorrow is another school day for all humanity. Happy graduation!
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Dude, you’re delusional.
Please, wake up! We’re killing our ecomoay by being lazy!
Wake up!
I just think it is so much more complex than this, than any of these psychologists conclude through their experiments. It seems my procrastination changes based a lot on the social context i’m in and the meaning i am giving to what i am doing (which also has to do with the interactions of multiple influences)…my feelings about things and whether i eat the marshmallow now or later would differ each day depending on what I have just read, who i am with, what i dreamed about last night…i think these experiments isolate the individual too much and eliminate too many variables in their need to come to a neat conclusion.
Had to take a break in the middle of reading and go for that run I’ve been putting off for a couple days . . . you inspired me.
As always, a lot to think about here. I hadn’t really thought about procrastination as a “tactical” failure, but I can see how that’s an important factor. Another factor is baseline impulsivity, a trait with a large genetic component whose impact can be seen across many domains. There’s a lot about this in the medical literature, because it can be important clinically to identify risk-seeking/impulsive patients. For example, tattoos correlate with high-risk sexual behavior (Your mother was right!)
This impulsivity can to some extent be manipulated with medications, which can in turn affect our ability to resist procrastination.
Other factors that are important anecdotally but which I’ve never seen quantified are guilt and rationalization. It seems like some people are more pained by failing to do what they think they should do than others. These people seem, in my experience (no data) to be more effective at resisting procrastination. Contrawise, some people seem more gifted than others at making excuses for impulse gratification. That may make delaying gratification harder.
Amazing article, thank you … my 18 year old son and I were talking about this very topic recently … I procrastinate and then panic when a deadline suddenly appears seemingly out of nowhere.
One of the ways I deal with this now, is by going self-employed and not accepting big projects or ones with deadlines way in the future. Maybe not ideal, but it sure has reduced my stress dramatically.
Brian
This is a most excellent blog, and one that I needed to read right now. I’m definitely going to do something about my procrastinating ways, and become more focused.
Starting tomorrow.
Great article, but a bit too long… I’ll be finishing it tomorrow, for sure.
Joke appart, exceptional article, thank you. Reading the story of my life such nicely written is a mix of pleasure, fear and hope. Great stuff, and definitely food for thoughts there.
I’ve read half the post and am intrigued. Plan to find time to read the balance sometime later today. Soon. I’m putting it on my list.
This was a great article when the new yorker published it two weeks ago.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/james_surowiecki/search?contributorName=james%20surowiecki
Maybe you are not so smart either?
This was a great article when the new yorker published it two weeks ago.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/101011crbo_books_surowiecki?currentPage=1
Maybe you are not so smart either?
You lost me at Schindler’s List. His list is too serious. Also, I do tend to get around to stuff rated around 4 stars.
I am a procrastinator, and have purchased all the “tools” and books out there over the years to help myself snap out of this self defeating behavior.
Your blog posting is absolutely the best thing I have ever read on this subject.
Thanks for sharing it!
My mother once told me that if I kept procrastinating that I would go blind and grow hair on my palms.
I wish there was a procrastinators anonymous! For now, I’ll just have to turn to my weekly planner and outlook for help.
Great article!!
My girlfriend told me to read this article last week. I started, but it was too long to finish, so I put off the rest until today. She even suggested I finish it on the train last night on our way home. Turns out I was actually almost done, just that the ridiculous number of comments made the scrollbar look like I was only 5% done reading it and I went into TL;DR mode.
A Wonderful Indepth Article on human mind. Glad you wrote it.
thinking about thinking:
don’t check FaceBook after halloween because is going to be a huge waste of time!,
yeah, I got it.
Excellent, well written article.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about procrastination lately. I’ve learned that it can be an inner voice of reason as much as guilt. It can be a clue that reveals the parts of your life and workflows that you should focus on the most.
“All of the animals except man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it.” -Samuel Butle
As a result of this article I decided to make headway on some of the heavier movies in my Netflix queue. Because of you, I watched Prince of Tides and saw my first Barbra Streisand love scene.
I may never forgive you for this.
procrastination truely a deadly disease.
Alright Alright. So procrastination is there coming, and I have to move now. Thanks then for this motivating and pushy article. And upon reading all through out, and scanning the responses above, I’ve been moved too. Thanks then. Great article!
Excellent, excellent post. Interesting that people pass over the deeper movies if given instant choice…
I’m confused. I know I procrastinate, but I’m not exactlty sure how to ‘cure’ it? This article explains what procrastination is and how it happens, but I don’t get how to solve the problem?
But what is the solution for procrastination? How do you (I) stop?
Please subscribe me…I love this blog!
Great post. I have always loved the concept of the Future You as motivator against procrastination:
http://daytimer.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/stop-harming-the-future-you/?preview=true&preview_id=2412&preview_nonce=ebfdbef52e
/One of us owes a Coke!
I’m one of the few people who has actually benefited from procrastination: I procrastinated going back to school…waited a lot longer than I should have. But I know exactly what I want to do, now, so I won’t wast any more time trying to figure that out. :D
Didn’t the New Yorker have a piece on Procrastination a couple weeks ago?
…Lots of this sounded familiar.
I chose to procratinate on a tribute speech that was due two weeks from the time I was told about it. I chose to wait until the day before my presentaion to upload the pictures and put them on the slides and to make the picture slide show and set it in sequence with music. By doing this my speech wasnt as good as it could have been. I didnt have time to practice presenting it in front of someone, practice what I was going to say and I also felt like I didnt make it as meaningful to the person that I could have when they were sitting there watching it.
I procrastinated a lot in high school untill one time I gotto go with the basketball players when they went to sate in Bosie Idaho. I was on the cheer team and the entire time that I was down in Bosie I didn’t do any homework. Well I was there for a week so by the time I got back I hada weeks worth of homwork for seven classes due inless then six hours. I was just barlyale to get it all done but at the cost of no sleep and haveing a horrible day at school. The biggest down side was the boys were able to win a trophy down at state so the day that the whole school is happy and excited and I am waling around school looking and feeling not only tied but sck ro the lack of sleep. I was able to learn my lesson.
Great !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A time I decided to procrastinate in a college course resulted in me receiving an F in the course. After already being on academic probation I did not meet the required GPA to get off probation instead I was put on academic disqual. Which required me to miss an academic semester of school. Having to do this really sucked. All of my friends were going to college and I was forced to sit out. I felt so humiliated and like I let friends, and my family down. Everyday I woke up knowing I should be going to school. It was a long 8 months. Although this really sucked it was a life lesson and I won’t make this same mistake again.
For a while in middle school, I would always wait until the last minute to get an assignment done, or finish a project. This went on for about a semester, but when my grades began to drop and I realized that I had to actually work for my good grades, I started to make a plan to do better in school.
I have always been a hard worker, in every aspect of my life. However, during this time in middle school when procrastination was the leading part of my life, I began to fall apart. I tend to over work myself, and the consequence of too much work is a break down. I began to either wait until the last minute to get things done, or not to do them at all. I went from being an over achiever, to achieving nothing but F’s. Poor grades were a huge consequence of this under achievement, however there were more consequences that affected me even more than not doing well in school.
I began to be less proud of myself overall as a person, and was not as happy as I used to be. I realized that even though homework took up the majority of my free time, it made me happy when I was able to get it done and do it well. I took pride in my achievements. These were the consequences that really hit home with me. I was done being the student who constantly turned homework assignments in late or didn’t even try to finish them at all. I knew I was better than that, and I decided to make a change. From then on I have worked hard and gotten tasks done on time. I love the way it feels to be able to cross off a task from my “to do list”. It’s worth it to work hard instead of procrastinating, and I know it will pay off in the end.
Future-me enjoyed ****ing Now-me off by reading this at work.
In high school, my senior year i was assigned a ten page paper and the teacher gave the class three weeks to finish the project. like any procrastinator I waited for the last week to get started on my research paper. The out come was a failing grade on the assignment.
I am a master in procrastination.
I wonder how fear is involved. I mean I would presume that those children who failed in waiting and had lower SAT scores are also ones who live in very unstable conditions. If you live in family where a threat of violence or neglect is present wise thing to do is to enjoy now. Later may never come. If you live in stable conditions it is easy to plan ahead and you can trust that your waiting will be fruitful.
At least this is how it works for me. I have plenty of fobias and those times I have managed to work hard are also the times that I have somehow overcame my fears.
I also wonder if this economical crisis was actually caused by 911 attacks.
Sorry about my English. I am not native English speaker.
Duncan McCoy
INTR
Sara Stout
11/3/10
Procrastination is something that everyone does, and it is always by choice. It is a terrible habit that can really have a negative impact on your school, work, and possibly affect your whole life. Whenever there is a huge project due there is always one kid who you hear from who stayed up all night doing the project. And almost every kid has been that kid at least once in their life.
I remember the first time I experienced this in high school. I was a freshman in my physical science class. I remember it vividly, the class was taught by Mrs. Coluccio and we were learning about the physical structures of elements from the periodic table. The project was to crate a three sided 3-D triangle that could stand by itself using construction paper. We were then to have a title page on one side, information on the element we chose on another, and finally a physical example of the element. We were given a fair amount of time to work on this project, so naturally I kept putting it off. We were even given quite a bit of time to work on this project on class, but being a freshman at a new school where I didn’t know to many people I decided that it would be better to spend my time socializing rather than working.
Eventually the night before the project was due came and I realized that I hadn’t even picked an element to do my project on yet. I was in panic mode. I quickly looked up the periodic table and chose Bromine. I quickly typed up the title page, then I used wikipedia to find the most basic of information on Bromine and typed up a couple bullet points. I then found some spare change that I would use for the physical representation. Everything seemed to becoming together fine, sure my information was the best or most in depth, but I could still probably squeak out a solid “C”.
However, when it came time to creating the actual triangle to hold up the project, I realized I had no construction paper. I searched everywhere in the house but my efforts were futile. By this time all craft stores were definitely closed so, I had no choice but to use printer paper. I finished gluing all the sides on and it looked terrible. The coins were far to heavy to be supported by the flimsy paper so the whole project was lopsided, droopy, and overall a disgrace.
The next day was embarrassing placing my project on my desk, it was blatantly obvious that mine was the worst n the class. I ended up receiving a “D-” on the project and spent the rest of the semester climbing out of the hole that I had dug for myself by not spending more time on that project.
Have you ever thought why am I so lazy and is constantly procrastinating? Have you ever thought that procrastination is perhaps a disease? Well the truth is that procrastination isn’t. Procrastination is an impulse that makes you react involuntary. You don’t think about what you should be doing or what will benefit you in the long run. Like you may plan a whole schedule on what you should do throughout the week and you plan on following it till the day comes around and you just decide to put it off and you’ll just keep on pushing it off till the last minute. For instance like writing this essay. The way to be able to limit procrastination is that you have to develop a strong will power to be able to say no because you have priorities to do.
I’ve always procrastinated my whole life and I don’t understand why I do because the whole time I am I subconsciously thinking I should be doing the proper thing and get my work done, so I’m not able to enjoy myself as best I could be. I remember procrastinating splitting and stacking firewood before going to college. We got the firewood during the spring and I kept on pushing it off saying that I didn’t have enough time to relax due to school and baseball. Then when summer came around I was never around the house because I was working and then afterwards I just felt like hanging out with my friends instead of doing the proper thing. This went on till the very last day when I was supposed to leave. So instead of being able to say goodbye to everyone and have fun on my last night in town, I had to split and stack firewood.
I do not recommend procrastinating because it will always affect you in the long run and will ruin anything you truly want to do. Procrastinating happens to everyone and not a single person hasn’t done it in their life.
Thank you for this article, it gave me a great deal of perspective on a lot of my unachieved goals!
I hope you ignore the people who have nothing better to do than criticize an article that hundreds have obviously found very informative and helpful :)
I procrastinated reading this article :-D
Is procrastination why it took you so damn long to update this blog?
THE UPLIFTING OF CHILDREN IN A CHRISTIAN HOME
BY WISDOM JOHN SUNDAY
In many homes in the world today, unusual quality traits are seen in children. This quality traits exhibited by them are manipulated by their parents. But in the Christian home for instance, such elements as love, humility, devotion, loyalty, unity, simplicity, purity, hospitality, courtesy, respect for elderly one, etc, are seen; whereas, in a non-Christianity world its vis-à-vis or (opposite).
What makes a good Christian? What have they seen in thin house? As a follower of Christ, what good have they feature in thin house that claim them worthy of emulation? However, this article shall deem five elements among the ten that have been listed above. Thus, the ten elements or features mentioned above are significant in every Christian home. But, if these are present, visitors and neighbours will have the ideology that Jesus Christ is Lord of our home. Merely in this way can the home serve as a prove screen of Christianity.
ELEMENTS OF A GOOD CHRISTIAN:
(1) LOVE: In this perspective, love is the affection or emotion one has for the other. These rudiments called love, is mostly needed at home. If the home should be peaceful, there should be found in the home the bond of charity. But in the absence of charity there’s bond to be portray that the home is a battle pasture. Now, according to John Gospel Chapter 3:16, saying, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life”. Therefore, we should invite Jesus Christ who is love into our homes so that, our home will be fill with peaceful act. Also, according to Colossians 3:4, Paul reproved that, “above all,… put charity which is the union of perfectness”, and from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, we have learned that, “Charity suffered long, and is kind… endureth all things”. The devil knows well that if he can extinguish love in the home, overwhelm is sure, so do not give him a chance to overwhelm you. For its have been writing or saying, we can do all thing through Christ who strengthen us (Philippians 4:13). So, if Christ is there with you, then definitely, you are an overcomer.
(2) DEVOTION: Day by day, family devotion produces an awareness of God presence in the home. This variety of devotion will encourage and kindle the fear of God in our heart and offer important opportunities for parents to explain the scriptures or references of God words to their children. Furthermore, children should be encouraged to read the Bible, sing and participate in any discussion base on God word and its application. Moreso, worshiping and praying together will strengthen the family bond more than anything else. Because, Life without God acknowledgement is meaningless or hopeless. Life long impressions will be formed when children realize that their parents depend on God in everything. According to the poem writer which says, “Happy is the home when God is there; and love fills every breast; when one their wish is there, and their prayer, and one their heavenly rest is there”. (Henry Ware, Jnr.)
(3) PURITY: In this phenomenon, every parent has a role to play here. Now if I may ask, what is purity? And how can it be describe to God word? Then, you find out that the solution is quite obvious? Because if God Himself is not a purify Man, we wouldn’t have live today with a sincere and pure heart. According to Psalm written by David saying, “I will walk within my house with a perfect heart, I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes; I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me”. This phenomenon, occur in homes that are pure with moral filth such as watching corrupt film, reading bad magazines, etc. however, literature, and films in the home are powerful influences for good or evil. So therefore, parents should abet with the ideology of providing adequate and proficient selection of healthy books for their family and books brought into the family or homes should be carefully examined. Moreover, purity should be seen in all angle or areas of specialization. Such as, interaction, dressing, play-time, etc. Habits of purity and modesty must be encouraged when children are quite young. Because, delaying causes destruction, stubborn and disrespectful to their parents. Also, according to Proverbs 22:6 which says, “Train up a child in a way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it”. (Solomon from Proverbs 22:6).
(4) HOSPITALITY: According to Authors, the doors of a godly home are always open. So therefore, true hospitality knows no limitations within the wrinkle, regardless of race or financial standing. Children should see hospitality as a priority in the home and should also be trained to have zeal or potent of hospitality. According to Paul cited from Hebrews 13:2 and 1 Peter 4:9, he obviously spoken or written that, we should not be forgetful to entertain our strangers; for thereby some have entertain angels unawares”. Therefore, in everything with do, we must bring hospitality into consideration for without hospitality, the is bond to limited accredition at home and across the home. So, we should at all ramifications be of great help to other, though others might turn it downwardly, but since you make it an enthusiastic way, have the confident and stability that their wills can and will never overwhelm you.
(5) RESPECT FOR ELDERS: According to the Bible which says, we should respect our elderly for our days shall be long. So therefore, anyone who is older than our age should be accorded his or her due respect. (Proverbs 16:31; Job 12:12 and Ephesians 6:1-4) which say parents should be able to hunour and respect. Therefore, children should abide by these principles for it shall be of great help to them tomorrow and forever.
In above all, as youth we must at all endeavour, abide and work relentlessly to the growth of our nation and ourself esteem.
Get this Christian shit out of here. Stop trying to infiltrate and deposit your sick rhetoric.
Wow this looks great, if a little long and highbrow, I know I will bookmark it and read it later.
Wow. Great post. I will reference this in my own blog posts.
It’s great to know the science behind procrastination! Helps us combat it better!
Rasheed
Hi David,
Fascinating article. I want to know one thing: Is it possible to elevate the importance on the ‘future reward’ (the completed project) enough to make the short term reward trivial in comparison?
Your piece reminded me of an effective motivational message that a heavy person was using while trying to lose weight. The message was taped to the refrigerator in her home and it said “There is nothing in this fridge that tastes as good as thin feels.”
Your article makes procrastination seem like an addiction akin to smoking – a known self deprecating activity prone to indulgence by way of poor impulse control.
Mike
I’ll stop the guilt and workload on the outsmarting part now. Excellent article. Great writing. Thank you.
“It’s a failure to think about thinking” – that’s not true!
Some years ago I was like the children who had taken the (as you think) better way. I was doing the things that was needed to do long before the schedules and so on… but I had a change in my way doing the things, because my life was too strict and I tried out how does it feel to choose the wants and not the should’s. It’s just horribly better and it happens in the present, not in the uncalculatable future. That sounds like I’m just defending my opinion, but think about it yourself on the 50$/100$ example:
-If I choose 50$ right now, it is pretty sure that I can get that before I die.
-If I choose 100$ 1 years later, who knows maybe I will die before that by an accidentally crash with my car(or other things may happen).
So even if the gain is much more, you must have a really optimistic world-view to choose the latter.. So it is advisable to get the 50$…
And about the offset-thing:
-If I have to choose that I will get 50$ 5 years later or 100$ 6years later. It is advisable to get the 100$ because(basic math) you get 2x (twice) as much money, for (6/5)x as much trouble. Supposing that you have the same chances to survive 1 year after another(that’s not true, the older you becomes the more the reaper looks after you…
Even if you think like that, you wouldn’t do too much procastination, but the situation for me is quite harder: I always liked to think about how things work, how our world works and so on and while I was at the university I’ve found out, that you as an individual can’t prove anything and you don’t have any knowledge about things that are not happening right now!(Yes, you read it right. I’m _SURE_ that you even can’t have any 100% sure knowlegde about the past, not just the future…) So everything is uncertain!
With this information, we should choose like the small children who ate the marshmallow first, or we can act as the child who ate the marshmallow last, because of the uncertainity principle you can’t choose which child acts better!
Some years before my toughts developed I would agree with this post, but now I just see another uncertain thing that smartass people wants to classify as a bad behavior without seeing that they _MIGHT_ be doing things wrong, not the hedonist children :)
(Keep in mind the uncertainity, and sometimes think about the world more. Man! In the worst case only the present minute exists at all! Would you choose the marshmallow then?)
Prenex
“It’s a failure to think about thinking” – that’s not true!
Some years ago I was like the children who had taken the (as you think) better way. I was doing the things that was needed to do long before the schedules and so on… but I had a change in my way doing the things, because my life was too strict and I tried out how does it feel to choose the wants and not the should’s. It’s just horribly better and it happens in the present, not in the uncalculatable future. That sounds like I’m just defending my opinion, but think about it yourself on the 50$/100$ example:
-If I choose 50$ right now, it is pretty sure that I can get that before I die.
-If I choose 100$ 1 years later, who knows maybe I will die before that by an accidentally crash with my car(or other things may happen).
So even if the gain is much more, you must have a really optimistic world-view to choose the latter.. So it is advisable to get the 50$…
And about the offset-thing:
-If I have to choose that I will get 50$ 5 years later or 100$ 6years later. It is advisable to get the 100$ because(basic math) you get 2x (twice) as much money, for (6/5)x as much trouble. Supposing that you have the same chances to survive 1 year after another(that’s not true, the older you becomes the more the reaper looks after you…
Even if you think like that, you wouldn’t do too much procastination, but the situation for me is quite harder: I always liked to think about how things work, how our world works and so on and while I was at the university I’ve found out, that you as an individual can’t prove anything and you don’t have any knowledge about things that are not happening right now!(Yes, you read it right. I’m _SURE_ that you even can’t have any 100% sure knowlegde about the past, not just the future…) So everything is uncertain!
With this information, we should choose like the small children who ate the marshmallow first, or we can act as the child who ate the marshmallow last, because of the uncertainity principle you can’t choose which child acts better!
Some years before my toughts developed I would agree with this post, but now I just see another uncertain thing that smartass people wants to classify as a bad behavior without seeing that they _MIGHT_ be doing things wrong, not the hedonist children :)
(Keep in mind the uncertainity, and sometimes think about the world more. Man! In the worst case only the present minute exists at all! Would you choose the marshmallow then?)
Prenex
PS.: Sorry for reposting this, first time I made a reply instead of a new comment…
I stopped reading halfway through this article to post this, and then go study.
Brilliant and so true. I’ll start to counter the procrastination in my lifestyle…. from tomorrow.
Kidding. From right now and for ever.
As they say, life happens when you’re making plans for your life……
…….which might indicate that putting off doing things (procrastinating) doesn’t affect outcomes all that drastically.
Or perhaps it does.
I’ll think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day.
Ah! A brilliant but merciless analysis of the procrastinator’s mind. I’m sure that many of your readers are procrastinators. In fact, your blog may well be our favorite way to procrastinate. Have pity on us!
This is quite long, so I will read it later.
Isn’t this a repost? Now what am I going to procrastinate with?!
My father used to have a 5-minute rule. “Okay, Dunton,” he’d say to himself, “set the timer for 5 lousy minutes and work on your taxes. When the timer goes off, you can play golf. How hard is that?” He wasn’t fooling himself, of course. He knew that the hardest thing about getting started with any task is OVERCOMING INERTIA. Chances were that once he’d gotten 5 minutes into any project, he’d be ready to spend another 5, then another 5, then pretty soon the taxes were done and there was still time for golf. But if 5 minutes was all he could handle, he’d made a deal with himself. Soon as that timer went off, he could walk out the door. Worked for him to the extent that he published a dozen books and founded the financial planning profession – all in 5- minute increments.
Hey, good article, but I have another view on things.
First let me point out, like other commentors, that the example with the 50/100$ is not flawless. Even if we sign a contract that legally binds you to give me 100 in a year’s time, I’d have to be a good economist to calculate inflation that could seriously affect the buying power of those money. Still, the risk remains so the value decreases. that’s why popular wisdom says “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”.
Secondly, what people choose to watch is not only a matter of procastination but more important variables (not mentioned in the Netflix “experiment”) are personal taste and education. Maybe some choose “speed” over “the piano” simply because they are insensitive to drama and keen on action movies.
Last but not least, if we’d all do what we have to do instead of doing what we really want, would we really be happier with ourselves? I’m not sure the pride of eating healthy food would give me the satisfaction of eating chocolate, for example. what kind of life would we have without “guilty” pleasures? After all, a lot of these “good choices” seem to be nothing else but following a mainstream vision about what is right and what is wrong. The real problem is we procrastinate because you arent’t motivated to follow these rules that have no true meaning for us.
It’s relative what you call smart and stupid, but acording to my definition and observations, a lot of smart people procrastinate and a lot of less smart don’t. If you can do something quicker than others but you need to be under time pressure, you just need to find the right balance and spend that extra time with things you like, be it sleeping. Otherwise, you might not do that thing well and/or the reward you get out of doing it on time may not be enough.
Great Article.
I’ll stop procrastination tomorrow.
One, am I so glad this is not peculiar to me alone! ho ho ho! it runs thruogh the human race!
ok off the celebration…am a world champion procrastinator! Now I get to c hw to get a hold of it & win…tnx!
…ok…boy am I so glad it runs in all of us- so it was not just a personal problem! 2nd- I now have some means to take hold of n control this tendency- rather – trait! tnx
Great article! I’m not going to procrastinate any more that is for sure. I didn’t even know what it meant before i read your artlcle. WoW
Excellent, article. I selected this to read now a) because I am procrastinating, and b) I thought I understood why I put things off, so I wanted to see if I was right :)
Also, your queue? Brilliant. Not a huge fan of Philly, liked Imaginarium a ton, love the variety!
This article seems not just too long, but also penny-wise, pound-stupid. People are falling prey to the rat race mentality and assorted problems by following recommendations such as those expressed by the author. Regularly denying yourself “procrastination” (immediate pleasure), or worse, as suggested, making it impossible to enjoy it in the future by “cleverly” planning ahead surely looks like a road to burnout and failure in the long term. What seems clever at the tactical level (e.g. superb time management, meeting plans and expectations) may turn out as stupid on the strategic level (e.g. missed opportunities, sickness, denying yourself time to think creatively in a relaxed state of mind, doing 200% fine at some job whereas you really should have chosen another one). Before committing to any “eliminate procrastination” and “fight your inner monkey” program, you should at least consider the relative merits of being a monkey versus being a robot. Unless you want to study “how to avoid sleep” next.
So, basically, the harder the task, the more you tend to postpone it? Hence, procrastination?… Uh… Duh? Nice article indeed but you could’ve made the same point in a dozen words instead of 2770. How’s that for productivity?
I put this on my ‘to read’ list!
Hey! this is one of my favorite articles that I’ve read on your blog so far. But I was reminded of it when I was watching Hulu and before Family Guy started it asked me if I preferred to watch a 1 minute commercial now or watch 30 second commercials intermittently throughout the episode. Having read your article my thoughts immediately jumped to present bias and I chose to watch the one minute commercial. However, it did make me think of the unfortunates who had not read it and what they would have chosen. Most likely, i figured, they would end up opting for the 30 second commercials, and as soon as the show stopped at a suspenseful moment to go to a commercial break, they would regret not toughing it out for the easy one minute commercial… they are not so smart.
Thanks!
Love the blog!
-Nico
Eho0- this is a bunch of bull shit. People watch tv because they want to watch tv. People procrastinate because they WANT to procrastinate
Whats it to you, to write a huge blog about other people procrastinating when YOU could get off of YOUR FAT ass to do something more productive that scratching your balls in front of your mac?
Yes, this article is 90% correct.
We fail to think about thinking. We are easily distracted and fail to refocus our attention back to the task at hand. That is the cause of procrastination. If you refocus your attention on your task once you are distracted, or better, refuse to be distracted in the first place, then you can complete the work that you are doing, no matter how long it is.
The trick to the marshmellow problem is to simply refuse to be distracted by the marshmellow. If you think about eating the marshmellow, then you are not focusing on the task at hand, which is NOT eating the marshmellow.
And this is true for all tasks. As soon as your attention is distracted, you MUST bring it back otherwise you cannot complete any task.
Hello, Lolz, word could not express my delight for honouring and appreciating my little word. But, my prayer is that, God Almighty should inspire, motivate and articulate u throughout ur future way…… AMEN!!!
Thanks for writing this! I am an underachiever and reading this caused a crazy need to finish a school project, and I’ve now finally written the first full page which is a good start.
You just kinda made me so fed up with my problem that I had to release that sudden energy somewhere.
Most. Useful. Article. EVER.
Thank you!
good stuff
That’s me nail on the head, does it count if I really try not? no because I’m doing it now!
*sigh* it’s like a smack of truth in the face. every word of it.
funny thing is, i’m pretty sure i wouldn’t be here procrasinating now if i had actually been home yesterday. i know i actually wanted to do this english assignment yesterday, but now, since i only had today, i’m sick of it(i procrasinate when i’m tired of something).
ahh well, let’s see if i procrasinate next time (probably, but hopefully not).
Soooo true!
And this explains why, despite the fact I have this blog saved in Google Reader, I have only just now gotten around to reading this.
Thanks for this great article. The study on essay deadlines and the grades based on those deadlines really blew me away.
I just read this article instead of studying for my final that I have in 3 hours…
Best article I’ve read in 3 months.
44% chose the ‘heavier stuff’ first. Who decides on what is the ‘heavier stuff’? At what time of day are subjects presented with these choices? How many titles are they presented with? What environment are they in? Are they in a lab or their own home? Have they eaten? Is there a hypothesis on the nature of entertainment? Are drama films in this study intrinsically privileged over comedy ones? What are the age groups/marital states/social backgrounds of the watchers? And can I ask again, who decides on what is the ‘heavier stuff’?
Hurry, You only have 15 days left to watch Dead Man Walking on Instant!
I’ve been thinking on the topic of procrastination lately, and this article really hit home with me. I came across your site on stumbleupon and I love all your posts! Keep up the good work!
Thanks dear, 4 hunouring and appreciating my my little word my the God Almighty replenish, adorn, purify, above all, establish good judgment upon ur life…….. AMEN!!!
send to my email or face book.
i enjoy the text and looking forward to read from you
I meant to read this for several weeks before I got around to it.
Perhaps I’m missing the point here, but, whilst it is an very interesting article, it doesn’t lay out clearly what one is supposed to do about overcoming the procrastination habit. It’s all very well to say what is happening, but come clues on ways to change the habit, or ways to trick yourself. Perhaps I’ll save this and read it again, see if I can glean more the second time around.
This article raises interesting points. Being someone who procrastinates chronically it would be of great help if you could provide some examples of how to ‘trick yourself’ into completing tasks early and avoiding procrastination.
Reading this article while avoiding my next task, it got me thinking, should I continue to the next task and tick yet another thing off my to do list or should I consider how my next task completed will contribute to my future happeness?
Great post!
Made me think of an interview with Umberto Eco some 10 – 15 years ago. He definid ‘Concentration’ as ‘the ability to stay put in your chair’. It was before Internet became really big, and Eco explained that there was always an interesting magazine to read or something on the TV, of some dishes left to do,… instead of staying put on your chair and get on with writing/studying/doing what you’re supposed to do. So he said that in order to get on with it, you had to sit down and not start looking for other things.
Times have changed and we procrastinate a lot staying put on our chairs, but the idea is the same.
Stefvanef
Happy I read this. I procrastinated (like many of you) while I read this, but I’m happy I did.
Signed,
Future me.
I did too!! Suppose to do my readings for uni, but i saw this and thought ‘ hey this seems so interesting’. It did help me channel thoughts though !
I think you get motivated after getting started, and you are worse at what you are trying to accomplish when pressed for time.
Procrastination is a five syllable for sloth
Dear Sir Judge-a-lot, aka, Dave Vance,
You didn’t read the post, did you?
A new priest at his first mass was so nervous he could hardly speak. After mass he asked the monsignor how he had done. The monsignor replied, “When I am worried about getting nervous on the pulpit, I put a glass of vodka next to the water glass. If I start to get nervous, I take a sip.”
So the next Sunday he took the monsignor’s advice. At the beginning of the sermon, he got nervous and took a drink. He proceeded to talk up a storm. Upon return to his office after mass, he found the following note on his door:
1. Sip the Vodka, don’t gulp.
2. There are 10 commandments, not 12.
3. There are 12 disciples, not 10.
4. Jesus was consecrated, not constipated.
5. Jacob wagered his donkey, he did not bet his ass.
6. We do not refer to Jesus Christ as the late J.C.
7. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not referred to as Daddy, Junior, and Spook.
8. David slew Goliath, he did not kick the shit out of him.
9. When David was hit by a rock and knocked off his donkey, don’t say he was stoned off his ass.
10. We do not refer to the cross as the Big T!
11. When Jesus broke the bread at the Last Supper he said, “Take this and eat it, for it is my body”, he did not say, “Eat me.”
12. The Virgin Mary is not referred to as the, “Mary with the Cherry”.
13. The recommended grace before a meal is not: “Rub-A-dub-dub, thanks for the grub, yeah God.”
14. Next Sunday there will be a taffy-pulling contest at St. Peter’s, not a peter-pulling contest at St. Taffy’s.
Hahaha, a good one!
MOAR!!1
Lot’s of great info in here thanks! Here’s a website that I found helpful about getting an alternative to getting a GED online.
Thank you SO MUCH for telling me about Freedom (OSX/PC). I’ve been looking for a software like that all my life, I used to try and yank the net-cable off at work to get any work done, same at home to get some music started (or even finished) and it just never worked. I’ve been looking for something like this for years and years and years. I think you just saved my life.
instant queue should have rendered this experiment useless – how is Netflix’s buying power is still too low to maintain a quality menu???
<–procrastinated
This page is now my fourth start-up tab.
Hi, using the program Freedom sounds like a great idea to me.
Does anyone know if there is a free software like this around? thank you!
No. 52 White House Street,
Calabar,
Cross River State.
22nd March, 2011.
The Honourable,
Commissioner for Education,
Ministry of Education,
Calabar.
Dear Sir/Madam,
EFFECTS OF EXAMINATION MALPRACTICE IN THE WORLD.
With due respect Sir, I wish to draw kind attention towards the effects of examination malpractice in Nigeria. Sir, it’s so alarming that, it cannot be over-emphasized. I term the problems that lead to these issues and their solutions, as laziness; seriousness is thrown to the wind by many students as most of them have little time for their studies, but do not make use of the opportunity given them, rather they spend their hour attending parties and forming bad gangs that result in untoward behaviour.
Corruption in the society act in so many ways and in this case, the school and society cannot be separated and since the school reflects the prevailing culture and bad culture is bound to result to cheating in examination. Some students indulge in giving themselves to either teachers to be promoted.
However, some parents think or believe that, it is by cheating in examinations that their children could excel and compete honourably with other students instead of hardwork and determination.
Also, syllabus in many subjects such as physics, chemistry, etc are wide and difficult because, in some homes most especially poor homes were parents struggle to give for their children school fees, you find it that, it so difficult for he/she to afford money for such expenses so due to this critical issue, their children end up achieving poor degree or none at all. Meanwhile, their mates are actualizing or fulfilling their dreams through sorting.
Lack of basic necessities and inadequate preparation for examination is one of the most factors for malpractice, because shortage of facilities such as classrooms, educational materials as well as, lack of libraries, adequate manpower, has been identified as part of the root of this problem. Even though, students who are poorly taught resort to examination malpractice, some of the teachers, they are not academically sound or qualified to teach.
Moreover Sir, in order to eradicate this problem, the following must be put in place.
The society at large should try to make sure it eliminates this fraudulent act, because it is only when there is a collective approach, that we can make a better nation and attain development.
In the same vein, parents should endeavour to set a good example for their children. The home should be a centre for moral growth and development as some parents instill negative attitude in their children. Some are so corrupt that, they overlook and encourage their wards to engages in examination malpractice. I term this as enemy of progress because, they do not inculcate the spirit of hardworking in their children. Furthermore, they have vital rules to play in inculcating positive value to their wards. As a role models, they must be responsible to instill the spirit of sound education in their children.
Sir, to be more realistic, most of our schools are confronted with inadequacy of teaching and learning facilities. The non-availability of teaching and learning facilities does not arouse the students desire to learn therefore, students need a conducive learning environment for effective learning purposes.
Finally Sir, counseling unit should be established in all schools and as a matter of fact, ministry of education should make it mandatory for schools to have a counseling service to students, for this shall bring positive impact, self-confidence as well as articulate the potentials of being successful in their fields of studies.
Furthermore, if the students are properly counseled in school, then, they will be taste for excellence and challenge to shun examination malpractice.
Sir, it is pertinent that, government should provide the basic necessities of the students.
Sir, I will be grateful, if my request is favourably granted.
Thanks in anticipation.
Yours faithfully,
Wisdom John Sunday. Phone No: 08160980403/08028019290
Email:wisdomjohn17@yahoo.com
Same here :)
me too, got my med school admission test in a week. here I am procrastinating by reading about procrastination.
But what about the societal aspect of the problem? We are all constantly trying to fit in to our socially-constructed roles, but those roles typically are not based on our own desires or needs. Our tendency to procrastinate is a manifestation of our constant need to have real control over our own time and actions in a society that is hyper-demanding of our constant effort and attention. It is not the way humans are meant to live.
yeh procrastinate! i think everybody has this attribute. i do so much about blog making that it just deosnt get done!
Procrastination is all about choosing want over should because you don’t have a plan for those times when you can expect to be tempted.Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and learning more on this topic. If possible, as you gain expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more information? It is extremely helpful for me.
I never thought about it that way ,very insightful. I tell the marshmallow story all the time paints a very good picture of delayed gratification.
So I read this article in one sitting, but spent most of it feeling like I was procrastinating from necessary work. I’m about to go for a glass of water before, supposedly, getting down to work. What does this say about me?
We would get along.
Very good article. We all do this sometimes in our lives. Sometimes putting off stuff can be a good thing.
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Most of the people I work with suffer from procrastination on creative or business projects that they actually want to do. Their procrastination seems most often to stem from issues of perfectionism, fear and overwhelm, not just impulse control, as your piece would appear to suggest.
On the other hand, when the light comedy in your Netflix queue promise a respite from those painful feelings, it may well be hard to resist.
Great post.
Lisa Rothstein
The DaVinci Dilemma (TM)
I’m sick and tried of these studies and the whole logic your trying to push. Its complete BS. Were all bombarded with distractions in almost every single interaction of our life’s. We put boring shit off because its boring! and most of the time we don’t even want to do the “important shit” were just taught that that’s what successful people would do, so we should stop having fun and start working HARD to create a better society for everyone else while making money for the man, the hierarchy. Climbing the ladder just to create more ladders for others so they too can feel inferior and inadiquet.
That sounds like a rationalization to me.
It’s almost as if you’re trying to justify that being a poor loser with no friends, money or achievement in anything is a GOOD thing.
so… what happens if,over the years you’ve come to recognize that you are indeed a procrastinator, but use your procrastinatory tendencies to get other things done? i.e. procrasti-cleaning. You are still procrastinating, but it is actually productive procrastination…
“Now-you must trick future-you into doing what is right for both parties.”
This is why I always set myself up to exercise the night before. Want to go running? Have your running shoes next to the bed and breakfast already set up in pans. Want to go to the gym? Have it all bagged up in advance. Want to eat healthful food tomorrow? The celery is peeled, sliced and boxed up= in the fridge, so I’m guilted into eating it even if I don’t feel like it.
I didn’t consciously realise I was emotionally blackmailing my future self into doing good until just now, but suddenly it makes a lot more sense.
We all know we procrastinate .. nothing particularly revealing in this article. It’s disappointing, however, that it doesn’t address why it is important to procrastinate. After all, if we do it, there must be some benefit to it.
I can only guess … if we did not have this “desire” to procrastinate, we would otherwise act hastily. Or at the very least, history has shown our ancestors that waiting a while lets us strike better when the iron is hot. Or simply, the immediate problem “goes away” (i.e. the problem seems larger at the beginning than the end). Another explanation is that waiting allows us to gather more data and thus make better informed decisions.
At the end of the day, instead of “shaking our heads” at the disbelief in our proclivity to procrastinate …we should embrace it and realise that (at least in the past) it probably pays dividends to delay action … in general.
This is just like reading about my own mind, it’s amazing how much the person here understands it. One of the best essays I’ve ever read about procrastination.
I would also have to add that for me, I feel like I am almost physically “battling my mind” to try and resist the impulse to not eat the cupcake, and then also “battling a strong will” or battling the chemicals my brain have suddenly been washed with when I get a strong feeling of “I don’t want to do it” when I have an essay/washing due. You have to put in a effort to not do the thing your brain has taken a sudden yen for and I have to say I usually give in instanteously. Of course that reinforces the behaviour and my “weakness” to resist. But it’s like I have little training/experience in “resisting”
(sorry if this is a bit bloggy but)
Can you believe that I came off my diet when my gym membership ended in FEBRUARY 2011 (six months ago) and I have been having “today will be my last day eating well before I go back on my diet” moments for the entire six months since.
And that my cravings for fullness and saitety has not gone away *at all* through those full six months. I know it’s now psychological as I have also regained a few pounds which would return my leptin level (hunger hormones) back to normal, and I’ve had 6 months of eating all the junk food I like! Since I’ve failed to handle my weight loss with my own free will in the 6 months since leaving the gym I decided to rejoin.
Because even though the gym actually increases my hunger, it has a crucial benefit by keeping me focused by constantly reminding me while I’m there that I am on a diet and of my goals. It “restarts” your diet daily by reminding you “oh yes I’m on a diet” by the very act of being in the gym room. So you are less likely to forget you are dieting and “just start tomorrow” (which never comes). It makes it more difficult to “cheat” and overeat because of how strenuous it was when you do 45 minutes of cardio and burn off 500 calories. Also it was very helpful for me to tot up the calories that I had burned off through exercise and dieting daily on a calendar, until it added up to -3500 calories or a pound of fat, to see the results of my struggles, and again constantly remind myself that I was dieting and of my goals.
You could get weight loss results without using the gym as your motivating force in this way if you used a diary to remind yourself/motivate yourself everyday that you are dieting, or by walking everyday outside, but I find this harder as I haven’t “built up the habit” to do either yet, and would have to do that. But I have already built up the habit of going to the gym for every two days and daily tracking my progress by calendar already. It required mental effort and girding my loins until I got used to it (about 3-4 weeks) doing it everyday in my case. Also, I made myself go to the gym twice when it was snowing badly and a few times when I wasn’t feeling my best/in the mood for it and this in itself really makes you “better” at sticking at it. But I have been unable to control myself while dieted “free style” in these 6 months so I have the choice to go back to the gym, or to try and create a brand new habit to focus myself on my dieting. I’m also still unable to “not eat something” in the face of hunger cravings. I give in immediately, unable to “bear it” but I have a strategy where I save 300 calories and use them to eat 6 apples whenever I get a sudden craving)
The results are in, and in the 6 months since I left the gym, I have not managed to create the new habit of journaling everyday, or of going out for exercise everyday as an alternative, and have not managed to lose a single pound since then!!
When I went to the gym every two days, between September and February I lost *14 lbs* of fat. So it’s back to the gym for me. I’m A 160lb 29 year old woman btw, trying to get back to 140lbs.
This article is very motivating for me, and it’s very interesting for me that it’s not how motivated and amped up I feel now, but my ability in the future when I don’t feel this shiny new motivation to continue as planned. So when I don’t feel like it, when I don’t want to clean, when I do want to eat that junk food. It’s your ability to act in face of that craving or that desire not to that chore. You have to “form a habit for” doing what you don’t want to do in face of not wanting to do it, and at that time when you are *really, really, really* not feeling like it.
It might take as little as the classic 30 days repetition, so once a day, for 30 days, pushing yourself to act in the face of that resistance (I don’t want to do it!!)-ness and do just one chore a day (picking up, hoovering, ironing, watching a film that you’ve been meaning to get round to, beginning an artistic project that you’ve been putting off, homework, in face of hunger cravings painting your nails once for momentary disruption of your craving, then you continue if your craving persists and eat whatever your craving directed you to eat, repeated once a day for 30 days, to see if the distraction works and you are beginning to get a handle on not immediately satisfying your cravings.
30 days repetition worked for me in ingraining my “going to the gym 3 times a week even when I don’t feel like it habit”. Which is why I’m going to try this to for my uncleaned house/ inability to control my cravings. Already though I’m wondering what I’m going to do tomorrow when this mood of optimism has passed though haha. I know I’m going to write a plan of the habits I’d like to change, and the projects I’d like to achieve but have been putting off for years (beginning to draw again, learning how to watercolour and paint convincingly, going and buying a new clothes for autumn, starting and completing knitting and cross stitch projects I’m “too scared to start” redecorating my bedroom. You could make a book and write in a list of tasks and things you’ve always wanted to do but are procrastinating/putting off beginning, and tackle and work through them weekly!
*SORRY FOR THE BLOG*, I hope it helped some people with ideas of how to overcome their procrastination though!! ~
Also I’d like to add that I am a believer in *repetition* of habits physically changing the brain and building new synapses. I didn’t know this was a gimmick, but I proved it to myself by running a test where I picked up my dishes and washed them straight after dinner for 30 days. I couldn’t bear to at first and it felt like such a drag, but soon (after 2 weeks??) you find yourself halfway to the sink before you are even aware you’re doing it. And there is no effort and “gearing yourslef up” to do it. That’s why I think that the act of “not procrastinating, doing it when you don’t feel like it” is a habit you have to *learn*, and can learned, by repetition, and that your brain will get smoother at doing in each time.
And It might be something you have to “see for yourself” though. Like I would have to “see for myself” that a distraction technique (painting my nails/manicure) would *really* result in my craving subsiding to really think that it is worth it to put in concerted effort to practice that. So definitely run a 30 days trial in something simple to prove to yourself that your brain is alive and well, and open to learning new habits till it becomes effortless/stressless. Otherwise you might not think that you can do it/ that it will be helpful.
However I must add that even though *do* I pick up my dishes now, I *still* don’t hoover the carpet, hang up my clothes right away, study, stop myself from eating, etc etc. So you may have to pick and choose what new habits you want to invest the time in to learn and work on. And of course there’s the old, “will I have forgotten about all this and be back to my old self in 3 months”. So you may want to keep a journal to write a list of new habits you are interested in cultivating, and to refer to it regulary (once a month?) to remind yourself of your goals and to “keep beginning” a brand new 30 day trial on a trying out a new habit. This is what I am going to try. O_O We have a whole year right, we could be trying out a brand new habit maybe 3 times a year. Happy self-helping~~~
What a great article. The research is quite interesting–seems that people react differently inn different situations. But we all agree–procrastination is a bad thing!
Great a procrastination article! What I find is that too many experts are overlooking the critical role that structured “positive-reinforcement” plays in any real anti-procrastination strategy, particularly for the 15-20% of the population who are self described clinical or “serious procrastinators.”
Just like in the best depression and autism treatments, overcoming serious life interfering procrastination is all about strategically harnessing and transferring motivation. There’s a major difference between explaining procrastination and overcoming it, clinically speaking.
Thought provoking piece!
Procrastinate now! Don’t put it off!
Hahahahah! Wow, you’re funny! And original!
That seems to have some kind of link with our lack of capacity to save money.
Excelent Post, by the way.
Great article! Can you expand more on how exactly one “tricks” future-you? Is it simply forcing oneself to do something (for example, by turning off the internet with Freedom)?
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Very interesting and informative article indeed. I have to admit that I always follow all news about this, so it was quite interesting to read this your post about this subject.
Frnds ‘ and co-wishers thanks so much indeed, am so grateful, for ur significant comments and contributions towards this great article of mine….
I know I’m coming late to this party but I really like the idea of the now you and future you. I see the trick is really about telling the future you that you don’t believe him – so the now you better get and start now. Because the future you has plans the now you doesn’t know about.
Procrastination may often be self-limiting – but is it possibly, sometimes, a matter of careful consideration? It can be one of those easy to apply labels we use to criticize or self-criticize for not “seizing the moment” as quickly as many “high achievers” do.
Somestimes, we can get help from some digital time manager or online to do list softwares.
I have always attributed my problems with procrastination to fear of failure. This point of view the author has presented is a little tough to understand. Maybe i’m just the odd duck.
I am bookmarking your site..Klaus Wertenbroch and Dan Ariely are very famous I just google it…nice article on procrastination
An excelent and smashing article
I told myself to read this blog for my own benefit, by 4pm today, and I did it. Ftw. Now… I’m going to get the book.
Very good ……
I’ve had what you could call Chronic Procrastination for years. And let me tell you it can be hell….
I recommend doing a Google search for “Fearless Productivity.”
It’s the only thing I’ve found that’s worked for me, and I’ve tried everything. That system, Fearless Productivity, and finding a good therapist has been the biggest help for me.
I’m not sure I understand your point about Netflix… isn’t Netflix set up and designed so it keeps showing you movie recommendations on each movie you add to your queue, so you keep adding movies on an impulse-buy mode, and end up with the… 123 in mine :X Whether they are fruit and vegetable movies or junk food movies, they all end up there the same way. At least in my queue.
BTW: I already watched Schindler’s List, because it was in my DVD queue, and those keep getting sent to me soon as I finish the previous one :X
I also don’t understand the point about not relying on future-me. I thought it was future-me who was planning to eat all that healty food… and now-me who was buying junk?
For those doing the “I’ll just do XYZ for ### minutes, THEN do my homework/work/chores…” What you need to do is this: “I’ll just do my homework/work/chores for 30 minutes, then I can stop and do XYZ.” The “trick” is, you don’t *have* to stop after those 30 minutes. And, once you get started, it’s easy to keep working.
Or… if things just really suck, you CAN stop, but at least you did those 30 minutes :X
Stumbled upon this blog from the article about your book.. amazing that it has happened and congratulations!
I join the choir of procrastinators who have commented above: while writing some articles for my blog “gently absurd” I was distracted by yours.
This blog post alone has inspired me to go out and get your book. I’ll go buy it tomorrow.
http://mafalda.dreamers.com/Tiras%20Felipe/f14.gif
Great post! I read it while looking for information for a paper about procrastinating because I couldn’t think of anything else to write about because I’ve uh…procrastinated.
Wish me luck!
The “movie experiment” seems methodologically unsound, since it seems to ignore the films’ durations as an influencing factor.
The article states that “when they ran the experiment again but told subjects they had to watch all three selections back-to-back, ‘Schindler’s List’ was 13 times less likely to be chosen at all.”
“Schindler’s List” is 3 hours and 15 minutes long. That’s almost twice as long as the average movie. Since these subjects were asked to view three movies in a row, they may have been thinking about it more from a time-expenditure perspective than a “highbrow vs. lowbrow” perspective.
Also, the article doesn’t mention whether the experimenters ensured that the subjects hadn’t already seen the movies in the selection set. This too would be a big factor in their decision-making process.
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No doubt ,This article is very helpful to me and it seems like this is exactly what i am ,this is my worst problem that is ruining my life . .any one help me and tell about avoiding procrastination . .
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I stumbled upon this post just now from Google with the help of a few rather embarrassing keywords (shhh, don’t tell). I’ve been trying to find ways to unlearn some deeply formed habits and though I’ve made progress, it has been really difficult. I tell myself that I work well under stress but to be honest, I’m just a highly functional procrastinator. I still get things done but at the expense of my poor nervous system.
… it’s the same reason you believe you will eventually do what’s best for yourself in all the other parts of your life, but rarely do.
This feels like slap but it makes me realize just how much I do want to make my life better and how much I don’t want it to stay the same. Your post is really enlightening. I’ll try the future-me now-me tactic. I don’t want now-me to let down future-me. Future-me deserves better than what now-me can give.
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