Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop

http://www.newsweek.com/id/173335?tid=relatedcl

by vlad • 17 years ago

43 34 17 years ago

tomsaffell• 17 years ago

Interesting theory, but I suspect there is an simpler an equally plausible explanation.

> In this experiment, the task was to complete sentence fragments, either in an abstract or a concrete way. For example, some might complete this fragment: "An example of a bird is ______." Others completed this kind of fragment: "A bird is an example of ______." The first requires a concrete example—an indigo bunting, for example, or scarlet tanager—while the second asks for an abstract category—warm-blooded vertebrates, say

There's another difference between these two tasks: one is easier than the other. The experiment did not control for this. It did ask participants how difficult they thought the task were, and found no significant difference between the two groups. From that they infer that the results are not explainable by difference in difficulty - which seems flawed to me. Since when did perceived / stated difficulty become a barometer of actual difficulty? This is repeated across all three experiments. I suspect they are simply measuring differences in real difficulty, and its divergence from stated difficulty.

Link to paper: http://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/SozWiss/fg-psy/gollwitzer/PUB... (the lack of raw data in this paper is worrying, and makes validation very tough).

arien• 17 years ago

I don't think it's that hard. But I did notice that I could give an almost immediate answer the question "An example of a bird is ______", whereas my first reaction to "A bird is an example of ____" was "uff" and just kept on reading the article.

Then I read your comment and I thought, is it really hard? And then I actually tried to get an answer. It was even easier than the first one (I just said "animal" :P).

So I think the article does have a point. It's not that it's harder, our brain's initial reaction makes it look hard. And maybe it's because it's easier to process and deliver concrete information rather than vague or abstract.

On a side note, I wonder if these two questions asked to little kids instead of students would have different results...

justlearning2• 17 years ago

"Instead, think about putting on your sneakers and tying them, one at a time; entering the front door of the gym and walking to the first treadmill you see; stepping aboard and starting to move your legs, right leg first."

The analogy of going ahead and just doing it has been reiterated many times here - in comments/other articles.

proof of or the lack of - doesn't matter.

For some lazy few like me, these readings come in various flavours. Reading these nudges as a reminder to "just do it" and it works for a while atleast - before some distraction comes by.

badger74• 17 years ago

Indeed, I commented it myself a few days ago.

'Distraction from distraction' is my take - don't worry about everything else in your head, just open notepad and start making notes on whatever it is you're trying to put off. You'll forget the rest soon enough :)

jcl• 17 years ago

I must admit I, too, was expecting another fluffy "just do it" article, but I was surprised to find that this is not one of those.

Rather, they are saying: "If you think about about the concrete, specific steps to doing a task, you will be much more likely to complete it than if you think about the task in general -- and we've done the research to prove it."

This is much better than other procrastination articles, which are generally speculative punditry and attempts to copy well-known successful people.

antirez• 17 years ago

Fortunately I've the definitive answer to the Procrastination problem, and I want to share it with you:

if you procrastinate you are working on things you don't care. And if you are in this condition the procrastination is the minor of your trouble, you are wasting your professional life. So... switch to something you really care, and for you to procrastinate will be to work on your things, because they are really interesting to you.

Ardit20• 17 years ago

Many people really care about stopping smoking, yet they continue saying tomorrow.

badger74• 17 years ago

That's different. They still want the cigarette itself, they just don't want to be someone who wants cigarettes, if you see what I mean. The 'really caring' about stopping applies to a wider scope than the single cigarette you'd have to decline in order to start quitting.

badger74• 17 years ago

This is an oversimplification. I have a project that I care about immensely and still procrastinate on. It's because I want to get it right first time, and spend my time mulling it over instead of just doing it. I'm working on shaking that approach :)

cujo• 17 years ago

That's not procrastination. That's planning.

jnorthrop• 17 years ago

You seem to be dismissing the advice in the article -- take big tasks in small bites. Your advice is good but it doesn't cover all situations. Sometimes the work is just a means to an end.

For example currently I'm working on a side project that I'm procrastinating badly on -- the work is tedious and uninteresting. But I need the project to help pay for home renovations that are important to me. I could do the renovations myself (and I've done it before) but you see I can make 2x or more money per hour than I'd pay a skilled professional to work on my house. In the end, while I appreciate your advice it is only applicable for career decisions.

nop2• 17 years ago

I think that if people followed your advice academia would essentially be deserted and not only by students but by teachers as well. :)

I don't procrastinate because I don't care, I procrastinate because there are multiple things I care about. A few of those happens to be playing games, reading hacker news, having a god awful many feeds in my newsreader, drinking beer and having more then one project at any time. Although I have the personality type that does things at the end of a deadline and I know people who aren't like that think of us as lazy and unstructured but it's not like that at all. I found this to be extremely insightful once: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

I also doubt there are many (if any) that has a job that's interesting all the time. :)

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

False. In fact, just about the opposite is true for some people. I don't know if you're a procrastinator, but I am, and one of the things I've discovered about myself is that my procrastination is closely linked with my perfectionism. The things I really care about are things that I want to be perfect, so I put off doing them. Example, let's say I want to redesign my blog. I start off with a couple simple improvements in my mind. However, I really want this redesign to be perfect. Pretty soon, I've turned a small, simple task into a huge project and the burden of accomplishing it is just too large, so I put it off. Do I really care about this redesign? Yeah, I care way too much about it. If I didn't care, I'd just knock it out in a few minutes.

I've since learned that I have to force myself to accept the "good enough" solution, to work in iterations, and to do timeboxing (I use the pomodoro method) so that I just get started on something, without worrying too much about the big picture. Most of all though, it really does come down to just mental discipline, to recognizing when you're putting something off (which itself can be difficult to a life-long procrastinator) and forcing yourself to just do it now. Sadly, like a recovering drug addict, I'm afraid it's something I'll always have to fight against.

sethg• 17 years ago

Exactly.

Fantasizing about what it would like to have already finished my Great American Novel/Web Site/Open Source App gives me such a warm and comfortable glow that I am reluctant to spoil it by taking two steps into the project and looking around and saying "OMG this is total crap and I have no idea what to do next".

PS: And yeah, the pomodoro method rocks.

sofal• 17 years ago

This is absolutely true for me as well. I'll turn something as simple as writing a blog post into a gigantic project because I'm too strict with what I output. If the open source tool I'm working on doesn't perform quite as well as I'd hoped, I have pessimistic visions of it being wholly useless. If a homework problem stumps me, I simply cannot skip to the next problem or else I feel I've been defeated. Pessimism, combined with really caring, is strongly connected to procrastination.

Tamerlin• 17 years ago

I personally think that you're both right.

I find myself procrastinating at work because what I do for work isn't intellectually engaging, and with tasks that I want to work on for myself (like building my web site) I get hung up on details and make no progress.

Learning to set smaller milestones has helped with the latter, but the former is something I'm stuck with for the moment. My web site is a step to escaping from that grind, but it's going to take time... so I'm taking advantage of the fact that my job isn't sufficiently challenging to require much thought, and therefore saving my energy for things that actually matter, which is everything else. :)

rgoddard• 17 years ago

A better way to think of it, is that procrastination is a symptom of another problem. You are referring to one potential problem i.e. not actually liking what you are doing. Some of the others responded with the problem being perfectionism, and wanting to do something that they cared about correctly. Right now I am procrastinating from fixing a bug because I cannot think of how to test it adequately and I do not want to just give it to the customer and hope that it works. Procrastination may not be the optimal solution, but it may be much better then just ignoring the problem and pushing ahead with what you think you should be doing.

mseebach• 17 years ago

In most cases, the path to success contains patches of work that's hard to get really excited about.

Of course, this argument is invalid if you're able to focus on the ultimate reward, rather than the task at hand, but I just find that leads to more procrastination.

One personal trait I admire (and don't have) is the ability to just pull yourself together and get an unpleasant task done. This wins many friends and much social capital.

asciilifeform• 17 years ago

> switch to something you really care

Just who is going to pay me to work on a Free and non-Unixlike operating system? You?

J3nnings• 17 years ago

Bookmarked, I'll get around to reading this later...

nop2• 17 years ago

To the people who voted parent up: You do realize you are encouraging comments like this that doesn't add anything to the discussion or the article, right? It's only mildly better than "first".

To the commenter: There's an easy way of saying you found something interesting; vote it up.

EDIT: Oh, I completely failed to consider that it was sarcasm, thanks for pointing that out. I did notice the commenter only had 5 karma and figured he was just new but yeah sarcasm seems more likely.

justlearning2• 17 years ago

I think the commenter meant his post in a sarcastic way - related to procrastination itself. (i didn't vote it up)

anyhow...you stand right in your assertion - comments like these don't add to the discussion.

randallsquared• 17 years ago

It's mildly funny. I don't think they were going for more than that, nor do I think it's a good idea to vote into oblivion all people who want to be mildly funny.

mtoledo• 17 years ago

I used to have a hard time trying to concentrate at work. I would work for 9 hours a day but not get so much work done as I expect. So I kept looking for ways to fix it: stay away from the internet, track time working vs resting in minutes (like 50min work/10min rest), etc.

It ends up it wasn't that much my fault. I worked on a pretty crowded office with lots of noise and where people would interrupt you multiple times. I'd get multiple emails in a day (multiple like 15, I've worked in places where you get 100s), and we'd have numerous meetings which weren't important.

It all changed when I changed jobs. I've been working from home now: its all silent, I dont get any emails, only work 7 hours/day, and no meetings except the morning scrum, which hardly takes 5 minutes.

When I spend time on the internet it hardly takes more than 10 minutes. I never have any issues going back to work, and get a lot done each day.

So instead of focusing on self discipline, turning of internet, etc, I'd say focus on your working environment and project. That was the game changer for me, not internet, not self discipline, not 'get it done already'.

ecaron• 17 years ago

I think a better resource on the topic is Dan Ariely, his 4 minute video on the topic at http://bigthink.com/ideas/dan-ariely-how-can-people-overcome..., and his book Predictably Irrational (http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-D... - specifically chapter 6). If you're able to take the time to watch the brief video, you'll more than likely buy the book - its amazingly insightful * incredibly useful even to coders.

obligatory joke about procrastination, mild chuckles all around

msluyter2• 17 years ago

One thing I've wondered about procrastination: we view it as a problem, and in modern task oriented work environments, it probably is. (I'm doing it right now!) But what if procrastination is actually a positive evolutionary adaptation? Perhaps by not investing precious resources in certain tasks procrastinators actually did better in certain prehistoric contexts? I'm hard pressed to think of good examples[1], but I find the idea intriguing.

[1] Ug the procrastinating caveman takes a nap in the cave, while Og the go-getter decides to go hunting. Og freezes to death. Ug waits until it's warmer and survives. This only seems convincing if Og's chances of dying were rather significant, in which case it seems other psychological factors would be at work, like increased social status by bringing in food, etc...

TheSOB88• 17 years ago

I think it's more likely that procrastination is a result of our internal reward system. Things considered work are not considered fun, and therefore not done. I mean, have you ever heard of a person putting off masturbation? The only things that people procrastinate on are things that don't seem fun.

electromagnetic2• 17 years ago

Procrastination does appear to have evolutionary benefits. If you only hunt when you're hungry, not only are you determined but you're not wasting resources. If I go out every day and kill a deer because I feel like it, and not because I'm hungry (I'd assume a fully grown deer would probably last me more than a week) I'm going to cause myself major problems. Either A) the deer will get wise to me and any deer anywhere will run at the instant sight/smell of a human; or B) I'll kill all the deer and then I'm stuck trying to kill rats for food.

Collecting firewood would likely have a similar problem as option B). When humans get it in their minds to cut down trees for anything other than necessity, historically very bad things have happened to us: the prime example of this is Easter Island. A lesser known example is the Old Kingdom deforestation, which is probably why none of Khufu's descendent's beat his pyramid. The scary thing about both of these incidents, especially Easter Island, is that people would have noticed a rapid increase in wind speeds as the trees disappears, they'd have noticed their crops failing (due to the wind) and yet the island is so small that the person who cut down the very last tree could clearly have seen it was the only tree on the island.

I'd say in your example Og the go-getter would likely have killed off all the major wildlife around him such that he had a multi-mile trek every day to gather food. Instead of Ug the procrastinator, who could probably walk outside and find a deer foraging on the berries he'd been too lazy to pick.

jacobolus• 17 years ago

Your implication that Easter Island would have been fine if people just procrastinated more is pretty thin on evidence and reasoning.

tekhneek• 17 years ago

Just enjoy your life, stop worrying about it. If you do it you do it, if you don't you don't. No matter how many blogs you read no matter how many comments you post the bottom line will come down to done/not done.

It's 50% vs 100% Don't be the guy that runs 2.5k in a 5k marathon.

Procrastinating is probably better for you than everyone makes it out to be. If you never procrastinated you would look at sleep as some sort of slavery, you would look at relaxation as a disease and eventually it would spiral out of control.

msluyter2• 17 years ago

Side note: I've been able to harness my natural tendency to procrastinate to be more frugal and avoid impulse buys. Whenever I'm at a store and see something that I don't really need but am tempted to buy, I just deflect the intent by thinking "ok, I'll just buy it later." It's fairly easy to put buying stuff off, because it's sort of a pain (standing in line at the register, etc...)

Typically, I generally just forget about whatever it was I wanted and so I avoid the purchase altogether. If I do find myself obsessing over it later (rare) then it's probably something I really wanted and I'll eventually go back and get it. This mainly works with stuff that's in the "I don't really want it but would be tempted to buy it" category.

electromagnetic2• 17 years ago

Agreed, I've been doing that my entire life. I remember at 16 I'd saved up around $1000 by simply never buying anything with my allowance. I don't think my parents were too pleased when I had enough money saved up at 18 to fly to a different continent.

Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop

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