from the I'll-come-up-with-a-snappy-Department-later dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Understanding the reasons behind our procrastination can help us regain productivity.
Procrastination, the intentional yet harmful delay of tasks, manifests in various forms. Sahiti Chebolu from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics employs a precise mathematical framework to analyze its different patterns and underlying causes. Her insights could assist in creating personalized strategies to address this issue.
"Why did I not do this when I still had the time?" – Whether it is filing taxes, meeting a deadline at work, or cleaning the apartment before a family visit, most of us have already wondered why we tend to put off certain tasks, even in the face of unpleasant consequences. Why do we make decisions that are harmful to us – against our better knowledge? This is precisely the conundrum of procrastination. Procrastination, the deliberate but ultimately detrimental delaying of tasks, is not only hampering productivity but has also been linked to a host of mental health issues. So it is certainly worth asking why this much talked-about phenomenon has such a grip on us – and what it actually is.
"Procrastination is an umbrella term for different behaviors," says computational neuroscientist Sahiti Chebolu from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. "If we want to understand it, we need to differentiate between its various types." One common pattern is that we defect on our own decisions: we might, for example, set aside an evening for the tax return, but when the time has come we watch a movie instead. Something else is going on when we do not commit to a time in the first place: we might be waiting for the right conditions. The possible patterns of procrastination are myriad: from starting late to abandoning a task halfway through, Chebolu classified them all and identified possible explanations for each: misjudging the time needed or protecting the ego from prospective failure are just two of them.
Can such a classification really help you get stuff done? Chebolu is convinced that a mathematically precise understanding of the mechanism at play is the first step to tackling it. She frames procrastination as a series of temporal decisions. What exactly happens, for example, when we schedule our tax declaration for Friday night but then succumb to the temptations of a streaming service? One way to think of decision-making is that our brain adds up all the rewards and penalties we expect to gain from the alternative behaviors: watching a movie or doing annoying paperwork. Quite naturally, it then picks the course of action that promises to be most pleasant overall.
[...] Chebolu is confident that understanding procrastination as a series of temporal decisions and detecting where and why we usually take a wrong turn can inform interventions: If you discover, for instance, that your brain is a bit too biased towards instant gratification, giving yourself short-term rewards might help. Those who tend to underestimate the time needed for their grunt work could try setting themselves time-bound goals. And if you find yourself abandoning your chores quickly, you might want to avoid distracting environments.
No matter in which category of procrastination you fall (and you almost certainly fall into some of them sometimes): no, you are not just lazy. Recognizing this and forgiving yourself for procrastinating in the past is a good first step towards more productivity.
Reference: "Optimal and sub-optimal temporal decisions can explain procrastination in a real-world task" by Sahiti Chebolu and Peter Dayan, 22 May 2024. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/69zhd
How do you deal with procrastination?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 02 2024, @10:37PM (9 children)
I saw something the other day labeling procrastination as a manifestation of depression... And I can definitely see how that could be related.
It is very easy to logically lay out a schedule of activities, plan to get everything necessary done on time, complete all regular maintenance, etc. Just like it's dead simple to lose weight: just don't eat.
The old, ridiculous, saw about "you only use 10% of your brain capacity" really should be replaced by "your higher cognitive brain functions make up less than 10% of your overall decision making processes."
Unless you are like Jim Henson: able to ignore walking pneumonia and other signs you should take a break from work and just press on. He died of untreated pneumonia at age 53.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aafcac on Wednesday July 03 2024, @04:21AM (6 children)
Procrastination can be a lot of things. Anxiety and depression are common reasons. Anxiety can lead to procrastination because the one thing we can always do is not do the thing. And yes, the results can be catastrophic, but if you really don't want to do the thing, you can refuse to do it. Depression probably does cause procrastination for the reason that you might think that you can't do it.
However, there's a bunch of other reasons like executive function issues, not having the appropriate resources to do it now and sometimes you're just flat out not ready for it because stuff is going on in your head related to the task or it got bumped for other things.
It is somewhat important to know what is driving it because addressing the wrong factor isn't going to get you anywhere and may increase the procrastination.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 03 2024, @01:56PM (5 children)
Agreed: almost all behavior has significant multifactorial bases...
The depression - procrastination connection is a nasty one because of the positive (in a bad way) feedback loop potential.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday July 03 2024, @02:34PM (4 children)
Which makes the more angry variant of depression that's more often seen in men to be kind of enigmatic as anger is generally an approach emotion that causes us to approach things that need to be dealt with, but depression is kind of a slow things down sort of a set of emotions.
At any rate, I'd wager that most people have some sort of a pattern of what tends to drive the procrastination that's worth understanding.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 03 2024, @02:49PM (3 children)
>I'd wager that most people have some sort of a pattern of what tends to drive the procrastination that's worth understanding.
I'd argue that breaking the procrastination cycle, whether you understand it or not, is the value. If simple things like "Just Do It!" motivational posters work, then why bother understanding the root causes ;-)
A lot of things I have worked on are for "treatment resistant" this and that - meaning: all the normal approaches (usually including drugs) have been tried, and this is still a seriously debilitating condition, thus justifying the new unproven experimental treatment approach... I would hope that "understanding the root cause" of procrastination is included in the definition of "you've gotta try this before calling it treatment resistant."
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday July 03 2024, @04:17PM (2 children)
There's also still a lot of undiagnosed autism, ADHD, dyslexia and various other conditions that contributes to it. I'm not sure that I'd go so far as to say that most people have one, but it certainly is far more common than was believed even 20 years ago. On top of that, schools don't seem to bother to really teach students the necessary skills to properly manage the workload either.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 03 2024, @05:03PM
Speaking of (depressing things related to) undiagnosed autism: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2x0le06kn7o [bbc.com]
If you have the time, read at least through the statistics of how many middle aged children are still dependent on their parents...
Lots of causes I'm sure, but that's a sobering look at what's happening in modern Korea and Japan.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday July 03 2024, @05:03PM
What do you mean manage! I'm the manager! Now get back to work peon! Oh, wait, that would be an example of a bad place to work . . .
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday July 03 2024, @04:23AM (1 child)
I think you hit the nail squarely on the head.
Depression. No drive left. Maybe also known as "burnout".
I watched myself and several friends go through this when the aerospace company we worked for was sold to Wall Street, and we had to take orders to cut costs so the savings could be returned to those who bought us. It went against everything in me to do this...it ruined my friend in Quality Control, who felt his job was just to be a scapegoat. If he did his job unhappy executives. If he just swept it under the rug, very high probability he disappoints ( or maybe kills ) the customers.
Knowing just how fast I would be replaced for taking the time to "do it right" ( say, I was doing it for ME ), than that is perfectionist, and "perfect" is the enemy of "good enough". I got laid off, and have really had second thoughts of ever trying to do design work working under an MBA ever since. I guess it took enough wind out of my sails that I lost drive. I've been trying to get it back.
I am just weary of "fighting the system" to do anything, and just wanna sit in the rocking chair, and just keep it to myself if I see anything wrong...let them learn the same way I did.
A terrible attitude for an engineer.
But may be necessary to survive in a minimized "rock the boat" environment for maximal investment return.
I wish I could "reboot" myself without losing an enormous amount of experience. I just want that inner satisfaction of making things back without that nagging feeling that all I am doing is pissing off some leadership type.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 03 2024, @02:28PM
For me, any contemplation of depression includes the "forced swim test" animal model which quantatizes "how depressed" a mouse is: you put a mouse in a tank of water too deep to stand in with a hidden platform somewhere in the tank, they swim around searching and eventually find the platform so they can stand and rest and breathe. Rinse lather repeat until the mouse is trained to search for the platform. Then perform some (or no) intervention for depression, throw the mouse in an identical tank except: no platform, and time how long before the mouse gives up and drowns. Longer swim time = less depressed.
For me, depression comes from a feeling of helplesness. Why bother: nothing I do will make any difference. I only worked at the "depression treatment" company for a couple of years, during the first 18 months or so I believed what my boss told me: I was hired to get animal research programs going (no mice, we did earthworms in the building and beagles in a dedicated lab). People at my level around the company were excited, even thrilled, that something like this was finally happening. I had people from other departments approach me and ask how and when they could work with the earthworms because, even though they work in quality, electrophysiology and research are their passion. However, after a while I started getting the real picture why things were as they were: my boss was a rebel and he hired me to lead the rebellion. Upper management really really didn't like research. They had a functional cash cow all set up and paying them millions in bonuses every quarter, any research that might show how our product could be improved would initiate the "Apple announces a new iPhone that they can't deliver yet, sales of existing iPhones tank" phenomenon with our product, hurting their presently reliable income streams. Eventually I gave up on the animal research initiatives after I got enough stink-eye from the top floor, and just stuck to writing bogus patents for $500 per application filed bonuses of my own - before bailing out altogether. I wasn't completely professionally helpless there, I was still young enough to have some career mobility.
>just keep it to myself if I see anything wrong
One thing I will say for my present (since 2014) employer: they have a visible training culture of "if you see something, say something" and so far I feel like it really is a core value that management rewards more than punishes. Of course, MBA realities exist and our stock has been in the toilet for years now because we're "only" delivering mid single digit growth, reliably year after year outpacing inflation, but that's boring... there are other companies you can invest in who might double your money in a year, or might go bust, but isn't that more exciting than plodding along a couple of ticks above inflation?
>I wish I could "reboot" myself without losing an enormous amount of experience.
Even when I was in my mid 30s, I took my resume to alternate industries and was continually turned down. I made too much money in my field, I told them I would work for whatever they are paying, they said "yeah, but you'll find something better and leave us" - "yes, but that could take a year or more - your average turnover here in the position I'm applying for is 6 months..." Not interested. I think they were afraid that I might stick around for a couple of years and contaminate their culture with something other than the "I'm just here for a paycheck" thinking they were used to. Worse, I might demonstrate my value and set the precedent that they actually should be paying good salaries for good employees...
Something that helped keep me out of the nuclear industry was a conversation I had while on interview travel at Savannah River. I met the son of a worker at the facility his "daddy did hot laundry, they took real good care of momma after he passed." His tip to me was: he went through school, got out and started working in the food industry: Kellog I think. Anyway, after three or four years in food, he's locked in, can't get anyone outside of the food industry to even talk to him, can jump around food companies whenever he wants, but he's basically locked in for life. Yeah, not a good idea to "just try nuclear for a couple of years" was the message.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SomeRandomGeek on Tuesday July 02 2024, @10:38PM
I was recently exposed to the concept of System 1 and System 2 thinking. https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/philosophy/system-1-and-system-2-thinking [thedecisionlab.com]
I'm in the process of incorporating it into my worldview.
I think that most of the time when I procrastinate, System 2 makes plans to do something that I know needs doing. But when the time comes, System 2 is much too tired to do whatever it is, so System 1 steps up. And System 1 only does things it can do on autopilot.
So, thanks to my new insight into System 1 and System 2 thinking, I can get my steps in while I procrastinate, instead of just watching TV or playing a video game.
(Score: 5, Funny) by jelizondo on Tuesday July 02 2024, @10:47PM (5 children)
The best way to get things done is to get an intern and have him do them. Easy peasy.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 03 2024, @11:38AM (1 child)
An adage I encountered years ago:
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Thursday July 04 2024, @11:35PM
which is an inaccurate oversimplification.
Which would you rather be:
1. the guy shoveling asphalt for 10+ hours a day under the sun
2. the guy arranging all of the permits, ensuring compliance, scheduling labor, materials to all arrive on a sunny day, making sure all of the roads are closed appropriately, communicating between dozens of parties, negotiating contract prices, etc.
Oh, and if something really expensive goes wrong, it's 2. who's responsible. But hey, you get to sit in an air conditioned office! And you get paid more (wonder why)!
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 03 2024, @03:49PM (2 children)
Jeez... we've got some intern level talent located on the other side of the planet. I have been "mentoring" one of them in a little project that A) was 90% completed years ago and is still in the code base, and B) even done from scratch should be a couple of hours kind of thing. At this point, I have given enough guidance and insight such that if I spent the same amount of time on my own I could have learned enough C# and our use of it to get into the codebase and make the changes myself.
Yes, our worker bee discovered the existing code, 90% complete ready for him to take over as a 15 minute cleanup job. No, he hasn't decided if he's going to use it yet or not.
What I'm hoping is that worker bee is at least good at the surrounding process control form filling, which should normally take about 15 to 30 minutes per work item all-in. He's been on it for two weeks. I don't have to teach him the form filling side. Nobody has asked me yet what I think of his delivered value / efficiency.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday July 04 2024, @12:19AM (1 child)
When it comes to coding, if it's something I can do, I'd far rather code it myself. If not, then I would go for someone else to code it, providing he teaches me, as most likely, I will be involved in supporting it.
Example...I am very comfortable around my Arduinos, but have no Android experience. I know, YouTube has lots of tutorials on this.
I want to use "scrap" smartphones as remote HMI via TCP. ( Human-Machine Interface ). So I can code a specialized app that works with my Arduino providing all the controls, indicators, meters graphics, whatever, I can dream up.
I can code both the app and Arduino to find each other, connect, and display.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 04 2024, @12:55AM
In Raspberry Pi Pico land, I use their Python environment to expose a web server, which I can then control via my smartphone or any other browser on the network.
The web server parses incoming requests to trigger actions in the Pi, and it serves up web pages showing status and with clickable links for action triggers.
I'm not a Python fan, but in picoland the same trick in C++ is many times more effort, not only in coding but also in deployment debugging etc.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Tuesday July 02 2024, @11:03PM (1 child)
When I was working, if it didn't get done by Sunday night it didn't get done until the following Saturday.
Now, if it doesn't get done by Sunday night, shrug, I can do it tomorrow. Or the day after. Or....
I'm not joking here, it's getting harder and harder to do anything outside of eat and poop.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 3, Funny) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday July 03 2024, @06:39PM
These things will also become hard to do, I've heard.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by acid andy on Tuesday July 02 2024, @11:11PM (4 children)
Is the world asking too much of us or are we expecting too much of ourselves? In my own experience, procrastination tends to happen when there is too much to do whilst being low on the time and energy to do it. You can only push through tiredness and stress for so long before your brain tries to enforce a break. If you have to keep switching between lots of tasks, it is harder to get in the frame of mind to start a big, more challenging task, and this difficulty can lead to reduced confidence, and time spent thinking about what can go wrong.
So what I'm saying is there may be biological defense mechanisms at play here sometimes, so when it's not so crucial to plow on with the task, maybe you shouldn't feel guilty for heeding those signals.
On the other hand, when you have had enough rest and really do need to get on with the task, that's when it's time to start using some tricks to keep yourself motivated, confident and focused. Although it sounds trite, an SN fortune the other day said:
And you know what, even with all my cynicism, I actually found that quote helpful when motivating myself to get on with a big project. Remembering not to dwell on the little annoying setbacks and to keep dreaming about the end result, the reason why you are doing the project in the first place, actually makes a big difference.
Ah, now I got that off my chest, let's move along! Normal dark cynicism will be resumed as soon as possible!
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 3, Informative) by krishnoid on Wednesday July 03 2024, @12:38AM (2 children)
It's sort of subtle if you're not looking for it, but you point out different (correlated) groups of concerns on the first line versus the lower sentence. I'm not saying this is what you're experiencing [youtu.be], but, well [youtu.be] ....
(Score: 5, Interesting) by acid andy on Wednesday July 03 2024, @07:37AM (1 child)
Interesting you should link to those because you're not the first person [soylentnews.org] to suggest AD(H)D.
To quote my reply from there:
And to that I will add that living with someone else who has ADHD can result in some of the problems associated with it being passed onto you!
I will admit that there is also a little bit of overlap between ADHD symptoms and some of the things I experience but anubi and Joe were probably closer at the top of this page mentioning burnout and depression. Without going into too many details, I am in a situation these days where there is too much for one person to realistically do. Some people throw money at problems like that. For a variety of reasons, I usually won't do that anymore.
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 4, Insightful) by krishnoid on Wednesday July 03 2024, @05:07PM
Interesting that you specifically say "overlap", as (amateur researcher here, so don't believe anything I say) a count of some "executive function" symptoms are commonly used to produce an "ADHD" diagnosis. Fewer than that number, and it's not "ADHD" proper. However, they're still "executive function" issues, which sometimes accompany other mental health issues -- or just being stretched thin and burned out -- both of which you pointed out.
Since you live with someone with ADHD, though, I'm not telling you anything you likely don't already know. I'm very sorry to hear that with all the technology advancement in automation and efficiency we've gained over the last few decades, having too much for one person to do is still a problem for so many people, and for you in particular.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 03 2024, @04:17PM
>procrastination tends to happen when there is too much to do whilst being low on the time and energy to do it.
This is where I start to call it depression: feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, I can't finish so why bother starting?
If it were a rational response to overload, you'd still chip away at the low hanging fruit. When I pass the precipice of the pit of procrastination I generally just don't even try for the easy things, with some internal rationalization of: if I can't make the big things happen, the little things just don't matter.
I have been stuck at an unfortunate point in our kitchen remodeling project for a long time now... the "next step" involves removal of the kitchen sink and stove - in our one kitchen house this means living out of the microwave and washing dishes in the bathroom sink until the wall behind is rebuilt and the sink and stove restored to functioning. Of course there's added fun of propane gas supply to the stove, crappy PVC plumbing to the sink that I could work around but would much rather replace with larger diameter pipe so our sink faucet can flow faster, the old 50A electric stove outlet that should be replaced in case the gas stove is ever replaced with electric... all these things mean: I could do a quick out and just put it back with the wall re-surfaced in a couple of days, but if I really do all the things I want to do it's more like 6 to 10 working days to get it all right. Doing the quick job and adding the "like to haves" later only makes the total working time longer still. And when do you think the whole family will be thrilled to have a week, maybe three, with no functional kitchen? Meanwhile, vacation time is all planned by the spouse for the next 8 months, so I either do this work on weekends (10 days = 5 weeks), or play hooky from my paycheck earning endeavors. I suppose an industrious younger man might work during the day for pay and remodel the kitchen in the evenings / nights, but at my age I know that a sustained effort along those lines will result in mistakes, regrets, and re-work possibly including latent failures that manifest as emergency repairs later. There are two or three "little jobs" I might do to move the progress needle forward, but they involve a lot of tool setup and then re-storage that would be much easier to just set the tools up once and do the whole remaining task at once as well. Bottom line: the kitchen is functional (if somewhat unfinished looking) as it is, so it makes it far too easy to just go on vacation and get to it "whenever the time is available" which, potentially, might be never.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by acid andy on Tuesday July 02 2024, @11:23PM
I linked to this blog before, but it's so funny whilst managing to also be genuinely helpful that it's worth repeating:
https://structuredprocrastination.com/ [structuredprocrastination.com]
The TL;DR:
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 4, Touché) by jman on Wednesday July 03 2024, @10:42AM (2 children)
I wanted to read this whole article, but think I'll do it later.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2024, @11:08AM
Yeah, I was going to write a longer comment yesterday, but never got around to it...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Hartree on Friday July 05 2024, @06:18AM
It's Now July 5th. And I'm just getting around to replying to this.