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Beating Procrastination with Self-Imposed Deadlines
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."
Of course it's also inefficient to start late, but one should not try to start earlier than necessary. The task will occupy your mind longer and especially if you don't like to do the work, it will stress you longer. The task does not become more difficult if you put it off until you need to do it. It just gets longer, because you will allow interruptions (there's still time, so...).
I find that deadlines I set for myself don't help - unless it's a real deadline with definite consequences beyond my own limitations, I tend to ignore it. And even if it is a 'real' deadline, at the last moment I'll weigh the consequences of not having the job done against Yet Another All-Nighter... and sleep generally wins - or another game. Or movie. Or anything else...
... what else am I going to do at work all day?
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
I've had a lot of issues with procrastination and anxiety, and recently I realized that procrastination is actually due to anxiety-you feel anxious about a task, so you choose to ignore it for the time being. Thus, doing things that help with anxiety often help with procrastination. I think exercise is the best answer for this, but I imagine things like meditation, yoga, etc. help as well.
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It's a big problem for me, and one that I've only had limited success in dealing with. So I don't want to claim to have found the answer or anything.
But I think the key is to formalize the process of deciding what to do *now*. Another way of saying that is that procrastination is a problem with deciding what to do in the moment -- that if you procrastinate, you have to recognize that your ability to do that is broken.
The easiest way to manage this is with a to-do list -- you just go through the things on your list, and try not to think about what else you could be doing, or what you should be doing. Just work the list.
The more robust way is to try to embrace the "Getting Things Done" system (it's described in a book of the same name). The book describes a system that's good enough to keep track of pretty much everything you have going on, and an algorithm that will let you pop off tasks and do them effectively. If you do the system, presumably (it's a big jump, and I haven't made it), you won't drop the ball on tasks, and you'll always know what to do right now.
I find that when properly applied, procrastination results in increased efficiency.
By delaying my work significantly (but not to the point where I'll have to reduce my delivered quality) I find that I do not wind up coding stuff against docs and specs that will be changed.
I learned this in college. We'd bust our butts trying to code something early, and the next class the prof would alter the spec because the problem contained unexpected (by him) challenges that he had not intended. If you waited a bit, the prof would code up his solution as an answer key to diff ours against, and he'd hit the challenges and recast the problem.
So by putting off stuff to some extent, I wind up not coding stuff that I'll just wind up throwing out anyway.
I've had a lot of issues with procrastination and anxiety, and recently I realized that procrastination is actually due to anxiety-you feel anxious about a task, so you choose to ignore it for the time being. Thus, doing things that help with anxiety often help with procrastination. I think exercise is the best answer for this, but I imagine things like meditation, yoga, etc. help as well.
Another reason people procrastinate is perfectionism. Some put off doing or finishing something because they want it to be perfect but knowing whatever it is won't be perfect they delay doing it. I was kind of disappointed the article didn't mention this at all. If you know why you procrastinate you may be able to work on it easier than if you don't know why.
FalconShould there be a Law?
That's what works for me. Need to implement a large piece of code and don't know where to start? Pick the easiest part of the project, and implement that. Repeat. Before you know it, you're all done. This works particularly well with an object-oriented language like C++, since there are usually lots of little methods you can work on.
Another thing I find that helps: At the end of the day, try to leave something trivial for the start of the next day. That way, if you're not a morning person, you have something to warm up with until the coffee kicks in.
The above also works for writing. Tell yourself that you're going to write a 200-page novel, and you'll probably never get started. Instead, think of how a story might begin, and just write a couple pages. The next day, you'll think about what might happen next, and you add another page or two.
one nice thing about deadlines, if you put them off long enough
you don't have to worry about them any more.
I've always hated this argument. It's based on the notion that obscene overwork will somehow make you forget why you're procrastinating in the first place. Most people procrastinate because the task is so mind nubmingly boring that they'd rather take time off work to clean their house (which they'll procrastinate doing once they're home).
Assign me tasks that are actually interesting. A task I'm interested and excited to be working on I almost never have trouble completing on or even before time.
Taking on extra tasks doesn't work. Sure you're busy and working like a dog just to keep up, but you're still going to be bored. Only now you won't have the wiggle room to procrastinate and prioritize tasks, making you a bundle of nervous energy on it's way to burning out quickly.
You know there's one factor left out that could apply to some people who procrastinate. Medical reasons.
DRM = Digitally Restricted Media. This is a viral sig, pass it on.
If you look at the "Procedure" section of page 220 of the pdf of the actual paper (because I know all of you of course have now read the paper) it talks about the apparent incentives for the subjects involved in the study by stating "In fact, the external incentives for the students in the free-choice section encouraged submission of all three papers on the last possible day."
In the paragraph prior the writer states "second, students had to announce the [self-chosen] deadlines for submission prior to the second lecture;"
and then on the next page "in fact, only 12 student (27%) chose to submit all three papers on the last day of class."
The study was conducted at MIT. The paper never acknowledges the role peer pressure and the desire to be perceived as a non-procrastinator by the rest of the class might play in an individual's choice of paper submission date, particularly if that "announcement" was public, and instead focuses on how the submission deadlines would best be gamed; Yet peer pressure and performance pressure at MIT is an acknowledged problem very much part of the culture of MIT.
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It's really ironic that this gets posted on /.
I mean, who reading this now has done all their dishes, their work for the day, called their grand-parents to thank them for their Christmas gift, paid all their bills, sent that inquiry to the insurance company, called in for that dentist appointment that is 3 months overdue, etc... I mean who?
> An MIT professor
Hint #1
> found that when he allowed his students
His MIT students. Hint #2.
> to give themselves their > own homework deadlines, they would
> artificially restrict themselves to counter procrastination.
Leaving aside the begged question as to what is normal/natural restriction
as opposed to "artificial" restriction, the observation is from a situation
that is not representative of the general college student population, and so
no generalization can or should be drawn from it.
I've taught at two different state level colleges which aren't much above
community college level as far as academic rigor among the students. I didn't
require attendance and rarely set a deadline other than the required planned
exams. I rarely got anything until near the end of the semester, and even after.
I finally had to start giving graded quizzes before the lecture to (a) force
attendance and (b) force them to read the material before the lecture (a
requirement of mine because I don't read the book to them, I add to it), or
(c) accumulate evidence in the form of missed quizzes/homework/classes to drop them.
Nothing motivates students to show up and to do their work in a timely manner
like seeing one of their (ex-)classmates being told he doesn't need to be there
ever again because he was dropped because he missed too much.
And it's a damn shame I had to do that. Both places had a large proportion of
"non-traditional", that is, not right out of high school, usually older, have
families, jobs and all the problems that come with these and other normal adult
life. I'd set things up so those students could take the course, and never come
to class at all, if they could learn enough on their own from the book to make the
grades they needed on the exams. And I didn't want to make those changes -- I was
ordered to because too many of my students were failing. Yeah, like I made them
not do their work.
Online courses were the worst. Most (not some, not just the majority, but most)
students would do absolutely nothing* until the day before the exam, and then
spend 1 to 3 hours reading through the material. One third dropped out after
the second of 4 exams because they couldn't possibly pass. One third were urged
to do the same for the same reason, but neglected to even do that, and so failed.
Of the one third that remained, 90% got A's because they had the necessary sense
of responsibility and motivation to do the necessary work on their own.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B