Science has the answer!
Over the years, psychologists have come up with a lot of ideas about what makes people procrastinate. In addition to anxiety and perfectionism, some suggested that procrastinators were self-sabotaging, hostile and rebellious, or depressed.
But for Steel, procrastination can be explained by an insight borrowed from behavioural economics called hyperbolic discounting. This is the tendency to value near-term rewards more than long-term ones. For instance, some people will choose a payoff of $50 today over $100 tomorrow.
Steel combined hyperbolic discounting with a theory of motivation called expectancy theory, and came up with something he calls temporal motivational theory (TMT). It boils down to this:
Utility = E x V / Gamma D
Utility is the desirability of getting something done. E is expectancy, or confidence. V is the value of the job, and includes not only its importance but also its unpleasantness. Gamma stands for how prone a person is to delay doing things. And D means delay, or how far away the consequences of doing, or not doing, the task are.
The bigger the top number compared to the bottom, the less likely a task will be put off. So if you expect to do well at a job (E), and it’s a pleasant thing to do (V), and you’re not prone to being delayed by distractions (Gamma), and it has to be done right away (D), you’re not likely to procrastinate.
If you expect to fail at a difficult task and you’re easily distracted and it doesn’t have to be done for quite awhile, you’re going to procrastinate.
Filed under: 2007 resolutions, writing
