Procrastination

Thirteen years ago Piers Steel published The procrastination equation, but it was only three months ago that I bought it. A clear case of procrastination? No, for only recently I heard about the book and then I bought it soon, for I thought that procrastination would be a good subject for a blog. However, it took me two months before I started to read it. Is this then a clear case of procrastination? Again the answer is no: I have always a couple of books, often more than ten, waiting to be read, and my rule is to read them more or less in the order I bought them. You know, once a book stood there fourteen years in the waiting row, and that must not happen again. Therefore I made this rule. But there are exceptions and sometimes a book gets priority, like Steel’s book. So this case is rather one of jumping the queue than a case of procrastination.
What then is procrastination? Procrastination is postponing tasks that should be done or that you like to be done by doing instead things that are less important or less urgent, or by letting distract yourself, from what you should do. You are not procrastinating when you have good reasons for postponing what you had to do or wanted to do. If you postpone writing an article, because you received an e-mail that a book you need for it will arrive later this week, this makes sense. It may save you the need to make corrections, in case the book contains important stuff. When you skip your daily run, because the rain is pouring down, it’s also okay, if you seldom cancel a workout. But when you stay at home, because you first want to check your Facebook and then it has become too dark to go out, you are procrastinating, for you could also have done it after your run.
Why do we procrastinate? In chapter two Steel mentions three main factors, based on an analysis of hundreds of cases of procrastination. They are expectancy, value and time. These factors constitute your motivation to do something (or not). Expectancy is your view whether or not you can bring your planned task to a good end or whether or not you can achieve your goal. Value means whether or not you find your task important or valuable. High scores on both – you think you can do your task and reach your goal and it is important for you – make that you’ll almost certainly do what you must or want to do. Low scores make that you tend to postpone it. So, according to Steel, using the Expected Utility Theory , we can say that

a) Motivation = Expectancy x Value

High scores on expectancy and value give high motivation and low scores give low motivation, as this formula shows.
However, that’s not all. Maybe you are very motivated, but why acting now? The deadline is yet far away, you think. And the later the task needs to be done and your goal needs to be reached, the more you are inclined to postpone working on them. Therefore formula a) must be divided by the “delay”: the time you have till the deadline. So we get:

b) Motivation = Expectancy x Value

                                Delay                 

Formula b says that your motivation will decrease the farther away in future your task or goal is. However, so Steel, there is yet a fourth factor that has a clear impact on motivation: We need also to take account of someone’s character (although Steel doesn’t use this word). Some persons want to get things now instead of later, if they can choose, even if it would be profitable to get them later. For other persons it’s not a problem to wait if it is worth it. People who tend to take what they get now instead of what they get later, tend to postpone working on goals yet far away. “Why not going out with my friends this evening; that exam will be only next month”, a student may think. But if she thinks too often so, in the end she may lack enough time for a good preparation. So the more you tend to be distracted by less important tasks or by (futile) pleasures now, the more you tend to postpone working on the more important task with a deadline still far away. Steel calls this character trait “impulsiveness”. Because it diminishes your motivation, it must be put in the denominator of the formula. Then we get:

b) Motivation = Expectancy x Value

                                Impulsiveness x Delay   

Now we are done and we have got, what Steel calls, the Procrastination Equation (see note below). In his book Steel describes also types of procrastinators. Some procrastinate because their expectancy in the task to do is usually low; others often give a low value to their tasks; again others are impulsive. And, of course, some people are a mixture of these types. Whatever type of procrastinator you are, if you are, the procrastination equation shows what the factors are you can work on in order to “deprocrastinate” yourself, and what the effects of these factors are. How to do that? Steels gives many tips or you can find them on the internet. 

Note
For technical reasons, also a constant +1 must be added in the denominator of the formula. See the Penguin edition of Steel’s book, p. 37, and see here.