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Beating Procrastination with Self-Imposed Deadlines

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the post-now-or-later-now-or-later dept.

castironwok writes "Procrastination attracts us because of hyperbolic time discounting: the immediate (guilty) rewards are disproportionally more compelling than the greater delayed cost. Procrastination is the reward itself. An MIT professor found that when he allowed his students to give themselves their own homework deadlines, they would artificially restrict themselves to counter procrastination. However, they did not set deadlines for optimal effectiveness. I am personally a huge procrastinator and it's always a pull between rational logic (giving yourself the most time by choosing end dates as the deadline), and your past experience saying you will put it off so force yourself to start early."

6 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. Hey! by SeanMon · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was gonna post this yesterday, but...

    Nevermind.

    --
    "Scud Storm!" -- Jeremy of PurePwnage.com
  2. I live one calendar week ahead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Forces me into finishing up early. I can't watch TV or listen to the radio and sometimes it is a little odd like when I showed up for last week's Christmas celebrations, but I'm making the deadlines.

    P.S. Happy New Year!

  3. Put best... by paintswithcolour · · Score: 5, Funny
    "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by."

    --Douglas Adams

  4. Procrastination by I+don't+want+to+spen · · Score: 5, Funny

    Last post!

    --
    Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
  5. Re:Procrastination makes me more efficient by orangepeel · · Score: 5, Funny

    And now, having long since left Yale, you spend your days reading and posting to Slashdot ... under the name "Breakfast Pants".

    Oh yes, I can see clearly that procrastination hasn't hurt you at all.

    ;-)

    --
    Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
  6. Re:Procrastination makes me more efficient by mattwarden · · Score: 5, Funny

    You laugh, but Breakfast Pants is the first person on Slashdot ever to use a semicolon correctly. If that's why people attend Yale, and I submit that it is, then Yale did its job.