Procrastination OR Life in 15-minute Segments

Don’t you hate it when people start articles on procrastination by telling you what it is?

As if we don’t know exactly what it is, how it gets in our way, and the challenges of getting past it.

Harumph.

Well, I’m not going to do that to you.

What I am going to do is share some recent research about what makes it easier to procrastinate and, therefore and thusly, what might help us to move through it.

Sean McCrea of the University of Konstanz in Germany and an international team of psychologists were thinking that how we view activities might bear a relationship to our probability of Getting Them Done (mindset, anyone? ;-).

They hypothesized that when we view an activity as “psychologically distant”, we are more likely to put it off. Not rocket science, so far, eh?

But what makes their study interesting is the theory behind their operationalization of “distant”. Without getting into the theory itself, the core idea is that events that are distant in time also tend to be thought about more abstractly than are events that are close in time — we are less specific and more conceptual about “distant” events.

So they asked students to repond to email to email questionniares within 3 weeks (or not get paid). One group was asked to write conceptually about a series of tasks (e.g., what kind of person has a bank account?). The other group was asked to outline the specific steps of these tasks (e.g., to open a bank account).

And then they waited.  And waited. And waited. And then compared the response times of the two groups. And the results? Envelope please….

“Even though all of the students were being paid upon completion, those who thought about the questions abstractly were much more likely to procrastinate — and in fact some never got around to the assignment at all. By contrast, those who were focused on the how, when and where of doing the task e-mailed their responses much sooner, suggesting that they hopped right on the assignment rather than delaying it.”

Hmmm….concrete, specific steps seem to do the trick. So maybe outlining specific to-do’s for a dissertation section, step-by-step self-instructions for each work session?

But wait! There’s more….

Let’s move onto Dr. Piers Steel’s analysis of 10 years worth of procrastination research.

One take-home message from him:

“Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task…”

And how about a Grand Equation of Procrastination? (My title, not his ;-)

Steel has created a formula he’s dubbed Temporal Motivational Theory, which takes into account:

• 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 (Γ - gamma)
• and the person’s sensitivity to delay (D)

This adds up to give you: Utility = E x V / ΓD

But I’m not sure we need to explore the whole equation right now.

Because I’m seeing a huge link between the notion of self-confidence, expectancy to complete the Thing, and the first study’s finding about abstract vs concrete thinking about tasks.

Do you see it too?

Let’s step away from the dizzytation for just a moment.

Let’s just say you need to learn statistics - to become an adept statistician. (Or substitute any awe-inspiring task — for me, it’s learning nonlinear mathematics.) Bit challenging, eh? Do you have it in you?

But what happens when we substitute “read this chapter of a stats text” (or this section or even this page)? If we focus on completing this one sample problem?

Ahh….much more manageable. I can do that one piece.

And the next one.

And the one after that.

Now, let’s head back to the dissertation project (emphasis on “project”). What are the steps of this project? How small and concrete do you need to make them before you start to feel “this I can do”?

I suggest this is a critical step in getting past the “procrastination” piece.

Not because making lists and steps and “breaking it down” are so critical, but because once it’s concrete AND manageable AND do-able in my favorite unit of time (that would be 15 minutes), you are more likely to Just Do It.

And Keep Doing (the next) It.

What do you think? Try it from this perspective and let me know if it makes a difference (or not).