Cognitively Yours 1.29

Raja R, Author

"Giving-up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification, is procrastination"

Imagine an NFO of a mutual fund is available for sale for two weeks and investors defer investing in it until the last day. The filing of Income tax returns of a financial year are open from 1^st of April of the next year and despite repeated extensions there is a huge rush for filing on the last day. The examination dates are known well in advance and we defer preparing for the exams until the last few days. Cricket teams chasing scores in the limited overs especially T20 tend to take the chase to the last ball and a few teams have perfected the act to such an extent that the winning runs are scored off the last ball, making the spectators frenzy and leaving them on the edges of the seats.

Procrastination is often confused with laziness, but they are very different.

Procrastination is an active process – you choose to do something else instead of the task that you know you should be doing. In contrast, laziness suggests apathy, inactivity and an unwillingness to act. Procrastination usually involves ignoring an unpleasant, but likely more important task, in favour of one that is more enjoyable or easier. But giving into this impulse can have serious consequences. For example, even minor episodes of procrastination can make us feel guilty or ashamed. It can lead to reduced productivity and cause us to miss-out on achieving our goals. If we procrastinate over a long period of time, we can become demotivated and disillusioned with our work, which can lead to depression and even job loss, in extreme cases.

Procrastination (from the Latin pro, meaning for and cras meaning tomorrow) emanates due to the emotions grab a hold on us and make us view the world from a different perspective. When we promise to save our money, we are in a cool state. When we promise to exercise and restrict our diet, again we’re cool. But, then the lava flow of hot emotion comes rushing in: just when we promise to save, we see a new car, a mountain bike, or a new dress that we must have. Just when we plan to exercise regularly, we find a reason to sit in front of TV without exercising. We prefer to take the chocolate cake today and begin to diet in right earnest from tomorrow. Giving-up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification, is procrastination.

Dan Ariely experiment involving his students make interesting reading. 

For the final grade of his students, there would be three main papers over the 12-week semester. He fixed flexible deadlines stating that a student are free to hand over the papers any time before the end of the semester. A perfectly rational student may set the deadlines for all the papers for the last day of class. Why take a chance and set an earlier deadline than needed. Delaying the deadlines to the end was clearly the best decision if students were perfectly rational. If the students are not rational, they could use the deadlines to force themselves to behave better. They could set early deadlines and by doing so force themselves to start working on the projects earlier in the semester.

With the first class choosing their own deadlines, Dan Ariely went to his other two classes with markedly different deals. In the second class he told that the students that they would have no deadlines at all during the semester. They have to submit their papers by the end of their last class. There is neither benefit of submitting early nor penalty for missing any intermediate deadline. The third class received a dictatorial treatment. Ariely dictated three deadlines for the three papers, set at fourth, eighth and twelfth weeks. These were marching orders and they were left with no room for choice or flexibility.

What were the results? 

Ariely found that the class which the three firm deadlines got the best grades, the class which set no deadlines at all except for the final deadline had the worst grades and the class in which the classmates were allowed to choose their own deadlines finished in the middle, in terms of grades for three papers.

What do the results suggest? First, the students do procrastinate and second, that tightly restricting their freedom (equally spaced deadlines, imposed from the top) us the best cure for procrastination. The revelation is that by allowing students to pre-commit to deadlines helped them achieve better grades.

Even among the students of the first class who were allowed to set their own deadlines, the students who did not space their deadlines sufficiently performed badly and pulled the average grades of the class down. Without properly spaced deadlines - deadlines that would have forced the students to start working on their papers earlier in the semester - the final work was generally rushed and poorly written.

The results do suggest that although everyone has problems with procrastination, those who recognise and admit their weakness are in a better position to utilise available tools for pre-commitment and by doing so, help themselves overcome it.

When it comes to anti-procrastination techniques, here are some examples of relevant ones that you can use:

• Prioritise tasks based on how important they are.

• Get started on tasks by committing to only work on them for a few minutes.

• Remove distractions from your work environment.

• Identify when you’re most and least productive, and schedule your tasks accordingly.

• Set intermediate deadlines for yourself on your way to your final goals.

• Create a daily goal and mark streaks of days on which you’ve successfully achieved it.

• Tackle the hardest tasks at your peak times. Do you work better in the morning or the afternoon?

• Identify when you're most effective, and do the tasks that you find most difficult at these times.

• Reward yourself when you successfully implement your plan of action.

• Focus on your goals instead of on the tasks that you have to complete.

• Visualise  your future self experiencing the outcomes of your work.

• Count to ten before you indulge the impulse to procrastinate.

• Avoid a perfectionist mindset by accepting that your work will have some flaws. "The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."

• Develop a belief in your ability to successfully overcome your procrastination.

 Reference: Predictably irrational by Dan Ariely

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