Slashdot Mirror
Formula For Procrastination Found
kandela writes "Science Daily reports that a University of Calgary academic has published a paper titled The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure in the Psychological Bulletin. The research reveals that most people's New Year's resolutions are doomed to failure, most self-help books have it completely wrong when they say perfectionism is at the root of procrastination, and procrastination can be explained by a single mathematical equation. The research is apparently the culmination of 10 years work. However, no indication was given of how much time was spent putting it off before it was begun." From the article: "Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task... Perfectionism is not the culprit. In fact, perfectionists actually procrastinate less, but they worry about it more."
I have to remember to read it later.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
I told you so!
I was trying for the first post, but put it off too long.
Want to improve your life? This guy will show you how!
Could it be, that the poster procrastinated in adding his ?
Ryan Fenton
but just didnt get around to doing it.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I wanted to post this in the last story, but I just got around to it now.
Is the poor old man out of his mind or have I forgotten what "funny" is?
Do not. Touch. Down.
I'll deal with it later. :\
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
A law for procrastination was found centuries ago.
Wait, so instead of just wanting to do something else that is not only more fun, but more worth while means I don't have the confidence to pump out a 5 page essay in under 2 hours? Sure it is...
I DON'T do my work because I know that I CAN do the work, so why do it now?
I see a flaw in this book already.
"A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure" - sounds like something out of Calvin and Hobbes. "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes."
"Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task... Perfectionism is not the culprit. In fact, perfectionists actually procrastinate less, but they worry about it more."
I procrastinate because I HAVE confidence that I can finish the task later, not because I'm afraid that I won' actually be able to complete a task. If I'm afraid about finishing a task, I will start it earlier. Fear of not being able to complete a task leads to NOT doing that task for a lot of people, not procrastinating.
These "scientific studies" over analyze simple things such as procrastination. Ever think that maybe it's because of laziness, or just that you really want to watch that football game?
He's published early for April 1
-wb-
Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task... Perfectionism is not the culprit. In fact, perfectionists actually procrastinate less, but they worry about it more.
I procrastinate. Hard-core. I'll put off week-long tasks until the night before. I don't do this because I expect to fail and can blame starting too late - I do it because I know perfecly well that I can do that and still finish the task on time.
If you accuse me of any confidence-related shortfall, you'd have to call me over- confident. Perfectionist, though? In some things, yes. But I don't procrastinate for that reason either. Where do these absurd theories come from?
You want to know why I procrastinate, knowing full-well that, while I may not produce my best results, I also have no doubt that I will succeed in producing an acceptible finished product? Simple - Because I've found that at least half the time, the task's nature changes significantly or the task outright goes away. No joke.
In school, teachers/professors would always extend deadlines because most people whined too loudly that they considered the (perfectly easy and reasonable) assignment too hard or unfair. Professors would scale back the requirements, excuse subpar work, and often never even bother looking at what people turned in.
In the working world, most "urgent problems" that come up, go away without any intervention by the next day. Long term projects have their budgets slashed at the end of the quarter. reports never get read anyway.
So, by putting everything off until the last minute, I find myself with a hell of a lot more time to spend on meaningful (aka "self directed") activities.
That doesn't, however, translate to "lazy". When I say "self-directed", I mean self-directed. I have always impressed my professors or managers not with the quality of my assigned work, but with the quality of what I do for its own sake. But then, I enjoy what I do, so my "personal" projects tend to have value to any endeavor I take on.
And all this because I procrastinate, a habit looked down on by most people.
So this is slashdot.. I'll report my cure for cancer ... sometime soon ... perhaps..
From TFA: It's still unclear why some people may be more prone to developing procrastination behaviour, but some evidence suggests it may be genetic"
If it is genetic, then procrastinator should be protected under discrimination laws, like vets, the blind, etc. "You can't charge me interest or penalties on my unpaid income tax! I'm disabled by GPD." ( Genetic Procrastination Disorder )
Do you think people will take these findings into account when they planning on procrastinating from now on? Will that change the formula?
Links to the sources:
BTW: A quote I saw on the latter site:
Steel has also come up with the E=mc2 of procrastination, a formula he's dubbed Temporal Motivational Theory, which takes into account factors such as the expectancy a person has of succeeding with a given task (E), the value of completing the task (V), the desirability of the task (Utility), its immediacy or availability (G) and the person's sensitivity to delay (D).
It looks like this and uses the Greek letter G (capital gamma [except I changed the gamma to a G since slashdot wouldn't take the gamma]): Utility = E x V / GD
Here's my problem with psychology types coming up with formulae--the results of the calculation depend heavily on the scale used for measurement of the variables. I don't know of any standard scale for "expectancy of succeeding with a given task" or any of the other variables. Further, it seems that these variables would depend on self-evaluation, which we all know is not particularly useful--particularly in this area.
In other words--why did this guy claim to make a formula? Formulae are for people looking for a result that is reasonably precise; but in this case the extremely imprecise input will result in useless output.
"I have discovered a truly marvellous proof, which I'll jot down in this margin later."
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
These stories are just clever PR gags, they contain nothing of scientific value. Just look at the "equation" for a moment and you start wondering what the actually equate:
"Steel has also come up with the E=mc2 of procrastination, a formula he's dubbed Temporal Motivational Theory, which takes into account factors such as the expectancy a person has of succeeding with a given task (E), the value of completing the task (V), the desirability of the task (Utility), its immediacy or availability () and the person's sensitivity to delay (D). It looks like this and uses the Greek letter (capital gamma): Utility = E x V / D"
See: "expectancy", "value", "desirability" and so on. Perfect scientific quantities, don't you think?
Read more about those jerks atGuardian's Bad Science, they come up regularly
do {
if (job.time_allocated < job.deadline - now()) {
play();
}else{
work();
}
} while (!job.finished)
That's how I do it even though this is clearly more efficient:
while (!job.finished) work();
play();
+0 Meh
I was going to make the first post on this earlier, but I kept putting it off.
This reminds me of a poem that my 4th grade teacher always had on the wall:
Procrastination is my sin
It brings me endless sorrow
I really should stop doing it
I guess I'll stop tomorrow
Love sees no species.
Depression goes together with both procrastination and perfectionism (although I don't profess to know which way (if any) the causality works). Depressed people tend to feel guilty they've procrastinated so much, and, as a result, they avoid the task - in other words, they procrastinate further. Depressed people also tend to be dissatisfied with their work (even or perhaps especially when others praise it). Sometimes, that can be a reason to not take the last step in completion or submission.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
While the Type-A do-gooder hardworkers were busy digging holes in the dirt with their bare hands, the lazy procrastinators decided to invent a hoe to do it twenty times faster (and probably starting the job two days after the hand diggers). All technology serves to implement laziness and procrastination, which in turn drives progress.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Early on, I'd start all the assignments my teachers gave to me the day they handed them out. Then later teachers started cancelling harder assignments because people couldn't do them. So I decided at that point if teachers cancel assignments 5-10% of the time, if I wait for the last day possible to do the assignment. Then that stuck. So I'm a procrastinator on all things boring.
God spoke to me.
I put off stuff when I don't want to do it. End of story. I find that reminding myself of the consequences for not getting things done is only mildly effective. You have to have a balance of work and pleasure. Sometimes, going off and partying really is the answer. When you're "relaxed" or "partied out", then you're more willing to work. If you find yourself fulminating about something you don't want to do, stop. Get a cup of coffee, talk with a friend, play a game, whatever makes you feel good. This will take just as much time, but when you come back you'll be happier about rolling up your sleaves and getting the job done.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
No, but we do get a hint at it:
According to this AP article, the study entailed "10 years of research on a project that was supposed to take only five years."
I hope I didn't wait too long...
I just wanted to say
Here's one for all the procrastinators.... I still haven't got round to ordering one though...
Posting anonymous for obvious reasons...
I procrastinate because, yes, I'm an under-achiever and uncertain of myself. But I think I'm an underachiever because I've intentionally and strategically kept new people out of my life for fear of being found out as a bisexual (including remaining a virgin... I don't know if remaining a virgin throughout college is common or if I'm in an extremely tiny minority).
Instead of succeeding, I purposefully have kept away from doing anything that might even remotely mean people being near or around me for over the last ten years, almost becoming a shut-in hermit except for going to my university (in which I'd talk to nobody). When you're hard-working and successful, and finish your work on time, you have a chance of being in some spotlight, such as the Dean's list or honor roll... remaining anonymous and unknown meant nobody would notice or get hurt if I, oh, just happened to jump off a bridge someday, and I performed accordingly in my work to reflect that. I have nobody to blame but myself for being a coward, having very recently come to terms with how my irrational fears of irrational people have severely jeopardized my well-being; and that if someone has a problem with something so trivial about me, that's THEIR fucking problem, not MINE. But that's another story... I procrastinated on purpose. During these last couple of months I have finally been working on some of the things I wanted to do when in college, at least those things related to computer programming such as teaching myself other programming languages, writing a small game, making a crude graphics rendering engine to learn more OpenGL than I did in college... of course, it's not as fun when you're not working on something like this with fellow students and having fun, but I've graduated and now I'm not sure where or how to meet people in my town.
Anyway, I'm getting distracted from the subject at hand. Long story short, irrational fears not directly related to what you're procrastinating may indirectly cause you to procrastinate what you're procrastinating... (I hope that wasn't grammar-diarrhea)
I already came up with the formula, I was just too lazy to publish it.
am planning on eventually welcoming our new procrastinating overlords.
Nothing would ever get done.
I've always thought Procastinators were people who kept their virginity in exchange for money... or people who cut each other's genitals in exchange for money... either way I think I probably need a shrink :/
It's not even something new. You can head over to "badscience.net and find a few more such examples in their archives, including the formula for the perfect football match, the perfect vacation, the perfect ice cream, the perfect beach, perfect day to book a vacation, most depressing day of the year, etc.
The way at least those invariably happened is: some company, let's call it Moraelin Tobacco Ltd, contacts some PR agency to drum up interest in smoking a bit. Tobacco taxes are up, people have made new year's resolutions to quit smoking, etc, and I could use a bit of reminding them to light one. Remember, PR isn't marketting: marketting tells you "buy Moraelin's cigarettes", PR works in more insidious ways, like telling you "boffins discovered that smoking is actually good for your health." It's marketting's evil stealthy brother. It loves to disguise itself as news.
So the PR agency concocts some stupid formula, say, "the formula for the perfect smoking experience." It's usually a stupid formula: for example the ones at badscience.net routinely do stupid stuff like add numbers that don't even have the same units. (E.g., one adds time to time squared.) They also invariably don't even tell you how to measure any of the factors involved, don't have any studies to prove it (and never a control group), etc. But the purpose of that formula isn't to be scientific, but to get Joe Sixpack's attention to whatever I'm selling, and/or to undermine whatever he had against it. Marketting will take it from there.
Ok, now they have a formula they can disguise as news, but if it comes from a PR agency, noone will take it seriously. Even Joe Sixpack isn't usually _that_ stupid. So the next round there is to find someone with some "Dr", "Prof" or whatever important sounding title, and preferrably from some university (sounds all smart and stuff to Joe Sixpack), who's willing to sell his name for some money. A lot will tell them where to shove it, but eventually they find, say, Prof Jack Conman from the university of East Bumfuckistan, who wasn't doing any research anyway and doesn't give a damn about getting a bad reputation among his peers. Sure, he'll take the PR agency's money and sign his name on their pseudo-science "paper."
And now we have all we need to send that "news" to every major newspaper, disguised as academic research.
Does it start to sound like TFA yet?
Because that's exactly what we have here: a stupid formula where they even admit that they don't even know how to measure the variables involved. Nor have any statistical data to show that that's how it works. Did they take two groups, told them to do the same project, but group A got told it's a critical, while group B was told it's unimportant? Was the time difference really linearly proportional to the value difference in dollars? Well, I don't see any such study, much less the values and error bar that would accompany real research.
And how about the elementary issue that all tasks are ultimately split into smaller sub-tasks. Any program you ever wrote, you didn't deal with it as one monumental indivisible task, but broke it up in packages, modules, functions, etc. Do you become automatically demotivated and likely to procrastinate for weeks, just because next on your list is a sub-task like the file input dialog (low V in his formula) than going after the whole program in one step (high V)? Well, blimey, wonder why we've been doing it then, in all these decades of structured design and project management.
And how about other factors, like morale, stress, or being overworked? Shouldn't they be at least mentioned in a real scientific study? Doing a big "we don't know why, it might possibly be genetic" shrug doesn't strike me as particularly clued.
And does procrastination really work that way? Really? Because the RL cases I've seen weren't as much a case of adding a fixed number of days, as a case of expanding to fill the deadline and then some. I.e., more of a case of "ah, I s
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
closing the 'span' element. <span> is a tag. </span> is a tag. <span>This</span> is a span element.
From The Fina Article: Steel concludes: "Continued research into procrastination should not be delayed, especially because its prevalence seems to be growing."
If the prevalence of procrastination seems to be growing, doesn't this say something about the workload of the average procrastinator? I don't think people have been getting lazier during the past decade or so, so there must be another reason for procrastination getting more in vogue.
-- Cheers!
By the definition in the article, what you're doing isn't procrastination, because you don't believe you SHOULD start sooner. If you think you're fine doing it later, that's not procrastination. Procrastination is when you think you should do it earlier but still do it later anyway.
Yes, that's very insightful. Because your psyche represents the whole human race!
Ted Kennedy is a procrastinator, as evidenced by when Mary Jo Kopechne told him she was pregnant, and he said "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
no comment
Ahh... the ever popular "I'll make outrageous inferences" troll. Either you're doing it on purpose to be difficult, it's an honest mistake, or I have some sort of defecit in my writing. I've been subject to this form of attack, if that's what it is, on more than on occasion. I've gotten to the point where I feel I must refuse to reply to them in terms of what's actually being implied. Instead, I can only offer that if you think I've said something ridiculous, odds are it was not what I intended to say. I wager that for just about any writing beyond one or two sentances, it's not difficult to craft an inference troll, either on purpose or by accident. That's why there's no point in trying to remedy this problem by being careful in my composition. If I did, it would likely read more like a legal document than a casual comment.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
(n/t)
How much do you want to bet that slashdot is one of the variables in the formula? :-)
So ... how about adding the ability to one-click bookmark a slashdot story or individual comment, and have it show up in our personalbookmark section? Seems like it would be a lot easier than storing the interesting urls in text files in my homedir.
Why is it that most of the posts in this sub-thread sound like they are talking about masturbation?
Posted anonymously to avoid Karma Whoring.
Bad science and useless formula
Folk as it has already been psoted earlier this is simply some PR agency which asked some random guy to MAKE UP a formulae. That's it. The formulae is useless , as useless as the pr/marketing around it. Tskkkk. What's it with Slashdot and pseudo science ?
Efficiency is nothing more than being clever about being lazy.
Which is basically what you said.
Also, Larry Walls said a few things on good programmers being lazy. I.e., automating like crazy and taking the easiest path.
See also the 'Agile Programming' mantras, 'do the simplist thing that can possibly work' and 'you aint gonna need it'.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I'm out of mod points, nail this troll please.
...and I can say that because I didn't RTFA (so I must be some kind of an expert at procrastinating)
Being lazy has a direct relationsship to how you feel about the thing you're being lazy about.
Anything with negative feelings will be put off, and anything with neutral or positive feelings will be done on time.
So the formula slims down to : Amount of negative feelings towards task X (V) > persons threshhold for amount of V = job not done (L).
So the only thing which makes or breaks a task, is how we feel about it, and that's why our own moods can help or hurt a task's amount of V
Then there's the resistance factor.. the more times a task gets a positive amount of V, the more V it actually gets, and the harder it is to change it from a L to a non-L.. making it more likely a non-L task becomes a L task.
If you hate going to the gym from day one, but still go because you know you'll die from something or other if you don't, then you'll always hate going to the gym, and so V increases until it meets your threshold for V, and going to the gym becomes a L-positive task, and each time you don't go means more V in and of itself.
Also some tasks get an automatic amount of V because they are categorised similarly in our brains.. for instance.. doing the dishes might get a high amount of V, and thus get a L-task... but some people would categorize doing the dishes as "any work in the kitchen" and thus any_work_in_the_kitchen gets a L-mark.. however, another might categorize doing the dishes with any work in the house.. and yet another might just categorize doing the dishes as just doing the dishes and have no problems doing other things in the kitchen or house.
So if you're procrastinating about things that really do matter in your life, or about things that would make your life alot better, then it's because of the negativity you've put onto the task (whether rational negativity, or irrational.. and face it, most of our negativity is irrational).
so L = V > a persons threshhold for V... I cooked this up while writing it.. didn't take me 10 years.. Can I get a doctorate?
K.
Sorry, I blew my mod points yesterday.
My friend, we're in the same boat. I'm supposed to be moving right now, but I happened to stop into work because I promised someone I would check something online (being that I don't have an internet connection since I'm moving), and as I stopped in I realized that I forgot to check one of the machines, and carry over a backup that I bzipped friday before leaving. Speaking of which...I need to start that transfer... And this is me with my adderall!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
There are a thousand ways to procrastinate. I know, I've done most of them. I have also treated quite a few procrastinators professionally.
The article looks pretty useless to me so I thought I'd offer my 10 years of clinical experience in hope of satisfying those looking for some real insight.
We make decisions based on how we feel about the options at the time we think about them. Let's think about when you're next going to the dentist. Unless it's pre-booked, you probably think about going to the dentist and decide based on how you feel about that. If going feels better than not going, you'll go.
Now different people will take into account cost, discomfort, current state of teeth, desired state of teeth etc. But the basic strategy remains the same.
Think about going on holiday. Again, if going feels better than not going, you'll start to make plans. Note that feelings you might not have been conscious of eg responsibility come into the decision.
A final example: doing your taxes. For the last 5 years at least, I've hand-delivered my tax return in the early hours of the morning after the deadline but before the tax office opens. Why do some people hand them in 6+ months ahead of the deadline? They focus on the satisfaction and relief of having done their taxes. If they think about slacking off, only then do they start to feel bad.
Of course, perfectionism can lead to procrastination. So can 100 other things - they just have to feel (slightly) bad at the time you're thinking about doing the task. Here's a list of the top of my head:
1. Unpleasant task, naturally.
;)
2. No immediate consequences for procrastinating.
3. Bad habits.
4. Distractions.
5. Doubts about success.
6. Doubts about worthiness of the task.
7. Feeling the task is somehow beneath you.
8. Addiction to comfort.
Since procrastination is a natural result of your main decision strategy, which you have used and thus further conditioned 100+ times a day, the only real way to change it is through persistent reconditioning, probably by some kind of slave driver...
From my experience of slacking off and watching others slack off. It's a combination of the fear of discomfort and complacency that causes us to procrastinate. Fear of discomfort is simply laziness while the lack of confidence is simply the fear of failure and is just one form of discomfort that causes the procrastinator to remain in his comfort zone persistently.
The best way to deal with procrastination is to simply start what needs to be done ON THE SPOT IMMEDIATELY. From my experience whenever I delayed the first step in any task, I would automatically be coming out with all kinds of excuses and twists of logic that would eventually convince me that work can be delayed because something else is necessary before things can commerce. And before I know it, I'm already stuck.
The trick in doing that is to simply not think, the more you think the more you are likely to stray, let the logical part of your mind comes in only when necessary. And don't bother thinking and reminding yourself about how this should work. At one point in my life, I actually found myself thinking excessively into how not to procrastinate without knowing that I am doing literally it. (and subconsciously enjoying it too!!) The logical mind is not there to help you to get your work done, it's there to lead you to conclusions that are compatible with what your instincts says. And of course, most of us are too comfortable and complacent to truly and deeply feel that we have to better ourself. So let's just do it.
Seriously, this guy was my professor for "intro to Human Resources and Organizational Dynamics". What's funny about his paper, which "distills and synthesizes the evidence on procrastination from 691 other research sources", is that like the rest of us, he's basically writing about himself. It took 3 frickin weeks to get our midterms marked.
That being said, I'll have to go needle him on his "Temporal Motivational Theory". Trying to make Procrastination seem scientific...
I'm procrastinating by reading this comment thread.
I'll also echo that I procrastinate things because I'm accustomed to being able to wing them and do well.
Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task...
I call bullshit. As an expert procrastinator, the real reason is this: Procrastinators are lazy. Since they took 10 years and it took me about a minute to write this, I'm apparently ~5000000 times more efficient at figuring these things out, but I bet I won't get a grant or anything.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
E=TBD
"Procrastination" assumes that the time delay "wasted" is greater than the available recreation period.
However, our media friends have made a real point to control us with fixed scheduling. So, suppose there are 10 hours left to complete a 7 hour project, leaving 2.75 (back out the fatigue factor break) hours of true recreation time.
Suppose you start at 1PM with the idea to finish by 11PM. It's a complete mistake to "work hard" from 1-8PM, and miss your favorite TV show at 5PM.
The better way is to pre-allocate that block of time as one of the recreational hours. "Oh look. It's 5PM. I still feel like I could work, but I shall watch my show now."
The trick is to have the determination to map the total hours out properly. Let's say you drift off the deep end at 6PM at the end of the show. Fine.
But then no later than 8PM it's time to drill out the rest of the project.
The mistake made in the article is "all delays are bad".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This is interesting to me as a procrastinator. The old "perfectionist" chestnut has stuck with me over the years, despite all the evidence to the contrary (eg. the current state of my living room ;). OTOH, the insecurity angle is certainly part of it as well. Personally I think that both explanations are correct as contributing factors, as is the simple fact that humans tend to naturally undervalue future outcomes. By that last I mean that you'd rather maintain a current relaxed/happy state at the probable expense of a little extra stress at (just before) the end of the week (or whenever the work is due).
The simple fact is that a bus might hit you before then (or eg. "tiger attack" as a prehistoric equivalent) so evolutionarily it made sense to make the best of the current moment. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die" is pretty much the state our ancestors evolved in, so it's no surprise that we are slow to adapt to the modern (middle-class) near-certainty of survival over longer periods...
From TFA: ...a formula he's dubbed Temporal Motivational Theory, which takes into account factors such as the expectancy a person has of succeeding with a given task (E), the value of completing the task (V), the desirability of the task (Utility), its immediacy or availability (L) and the person's sensitivity to delay (D). It looks like this and uses the Greek letter L (capital gamma): Utility = E x V / LD
Hmmmm - so precisely what units are these variables given in? Because if you don't know - the equation has no predictive value whatever. All you can say is that utility gets bigger if expectancy or value goes up or if immediacy/availability or sensitivity to delay goes dowm.
In other words, when it's important and valuable and you can't delay and it's "available immediately" - then the task is more likely to get done. Wow! Who'da guessed! But how does he know it's not E+V/LD or E+V-L-D....if you don't know what units you are using or even how these things are to be measuresd - it's just bullshit.
This kind of pseudo scientific claptrap really needs to go away.
www.sjbaker.org
I hope I'm not the only one who noticed that it took 10 years to complete the study.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
First post.
Search for all the comments referencing "badscience" or "Goldacre" for the scoop on this nonsense. In summary - a PR firm paid some greedy shill to spout this nonsense as part of an advertising campaign. It's pseudoscience, unrelated to real psychology.
Xenu loves you!
I didn't have the patience to read to the bottom, but I thought a quote from Walt Kelly's Churchy LaFemme would be a propos: There's nothing in life so urgent that it won't get MORE urgent if you put it off 'till tomorrow.
forty two
and I planned to make such a study really soon now, it was in my TODO list for quite a few weeks^Wmonths^Wyears.
However, the idea that they've "proven" that procrastination is caused by low self-esteem sounds like even more bullshit. For years, everything wrong with the world has been caused by the West's most insidious disease, low self-esteem. It causes people to become wife beaters, kids to not do well in school, drug use, short attention span, poor performance, etc. etc. Not that being suicidally depressed might make you procrastinate, but I think the real problem is lack of discipline.
People do things all the time that they don't consider important. We pay our bills, we cut our grass, we go to work every day, we go to the gas station and the grocery. None of these tasks are "inspiring", or "fun". We do them because we have to. We do them even if we feel worthless or unimportant. If the article is right, the "low self-esteemed" types should be sitting home and watching Regis rather than doing any of those things. Yet we do them all the time. It isn't low self esteem or lack of inspiration that makes a person skip math homework to watch TV or play Halo, it's the lack of willpower to buckle down and do the work.
I'm tired of "self-esteem" and its cult mucking up worthwhile activities. We can't compete in sports, lest the losers feel bad. We can't grade papers in red ink, because it will hurt the fragile self-esteem of kids who think 2+2=22. We shouldn't correct a kid's spelling, better that he graduate illiterate than have his self-esteem damaged by having to learn the proper spelling of words in the English language.
If we're really so fragile that low self esteem can make you nonfunctional, how the hell did humanity survive to this point?
Oh yes, let's reduce any kind of debate to "if you disaggree, you're criticizing science as a whole" and for that matter "anyone disaggreeing is just a habitual malcontent."
Heh. Science doesn't work that way. Science is actually based on _skepticism_ and in actually showing the experimental data. I _still_ haven't seen any post of yours actually addressing the question of how do you put a number on those variables, or what are the groups (including control group) on which they and the formula were validated, and what was the error bar. It's not some outrageous malcontent act, it's just normal scientific norm.
Science is _not_ religion, it's _not_ about authority figures telling you "if you dare disaggree with me, you're attacking science as a whole", etc. Those are the domain of the religion and of pseudo-science snake-oil peddler. Even the biggest authority figures you can think of, still have to show their reproductible data. And still were occasionally wrong.
And frankly, if you have the time to post that much about how anyone disaggreeing with you is just a habitual malcontent, you'd have time to actually address the questions too. Is it really a maths formula? As in, you feed actual numeric values, and get a hard numeric output? Yes or no. It takes just a sentence to address that. What are the units for the variables and how do you measure them? It's at most a paragraph to give the basic idea. Was the formula actually validated statistically on enough people? How and how many? It doesn't take a novel to give that basic idea. "Yes, we validated it in a study on X people, this is what the setup was like, it would be a 1 in 20 chance of it being coincidence." (Which is really the minimum in science.) It's at most another paragraph.
So it's not even asking anything impossible, nevermind unreasonable. It's actually less effort to, yes, follow the accepted intellectual standards in science, than to handwave and do "don't dare attack science as a whole" tricks.
So, yes, the GP post had high enough intellectual standards. Doubting anything until proven _is_ the proper scientific standard.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Appropriately, Slashdot hasn't gotten around to rejecting the (now-duplicate) version of this story I submitted last Thursday....