In The News: Procrastination
Dr. Piers Steel, a professor in the Haskayne School of Business and an expert in the research technique known as meta-analysis, has completed a three-year study of just about everything ever written on procrastination. He's analysed almost 700 professional papers from the fields of psychology, economics, philosophy and sociology, and looked at related historical material that dates back 3,000 years.
"We procrastinate because we are built - right in the root of our minds - to value pleasures today more than pleasures tomorrow," Steel says. "Procrastination is an over-valuation of the short term over the long term. It's probably just an evolutionary holdover from a time when a bird in the hand was worth more than two in the bush."
The kind of modern and civilized world we've constructed for ourselves, however, assumes that humans behave rationally. That's clearly not the case, Steel says. "We've built our world around having convenient access to inferior choices, which has made it even harder to choose things that may be better for us in the long run."
At least 95 per cent of the population procrastinates at least occasionally, and about 15-20 per cent do it consistently and problematically. In its extreme forms procrastination causes unhappiness, poor performance, failure to meet life goals and has even been linked to health problems. In the workplace, problems due to procrastination appear to be on the rise as jobs become increasingly unstructured, or at least self-structured.
Steel says procrastination is also quite common whenever you get large groups of people working together. "Governments, or institutions like the central bank, can be impulsive institutions," he says. "They might do what feels good right now and put off making difficult decisions far past the optimal time."
Meta-analysis is a rigorous process of mathematically distilling all the published evidence on a research topic into a conclusion about what we have learned to date. "We don't make progress so much from individual studies anymore," Steel says. "We make progress from studies that amalgamate all the previous work." With meta-analysis, flaws in individual studies tend to cancel out when you combine them among larger sets.
Steel's study, "The Nature of Procrastination," is currently undergoing peer review for publication in an academic journal. Although there are conflicting theories on the subject, he argues that procrastination is directly connected to two major elements: how averse a person finds a given project and, second, to a person's impulsiveness - that is, how much value they place on something in the short term versus the long term.
Some of the earliest known texts, dating back to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, have warned against irrational delays when sowing for the next year's harvest. Eighteenth century English writer Samuel Johnson (1751) said of procrastination: "It is one of the general weaknesses, which, in spite of the instruction of moralists, and the remonstrances of reason, prevail to a greater or less degree in every mind."
Steel says that many people who procrastinate try desperately to stop themselves. "It's very close to an addiction. If you can explain exactly why people procrastinate, you can also explain why some people are susceptible to addictive behaviour."
While men are slightly more likely to procrastinate than women, and younger people are the worst culprits, there are some common factors that can contribute to procrastination. These include lagging energy levels and lack of a set routine or goals.
"People tend to give in to their addictions when they become tired; at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, they are the most likely to procrastinate," says Steel, who advises people to complete their most aversive tasks first thing in the morning.
"It's also important to put distance and space between yourself and any temptations," he says, or to find some other way ahead of time to protect yourself when you know you're going to be vulnerable to the impulse to procrastinate.
Steel is now taking his research on procrastination a step further in trying to develop a unified theory of human motivation that merges streams from several different disciplines. His website, www.procrastinus.com, which has received 800 responses to its online survey, combines both the economic and the psychological ramifications of procrastination.
Dr. Piers Steel, a professor in the Haskayne School of Business and an expert in the research technique known as meta-analysis, has completed a three-year study of just about everything ever written on procrastination. He's analysed almost 700 professional papers from the fields of psychology, economics, philosophy and sociology, and looked at related historical material that dates back 3,000 years.
"We procrastinate because we are built - right in the root of our minds - to value pleasures today more than pleasures tomorrow," Steel says. "Procrastination is an over-valuation of the short term over the long term. It's probably just an evolutionary holdover from a time when a bird in the hand was worth more than two in the bush."
The kind of modern and civilized world we've constructed for ourselves, however, assumes that humans behave rationally. That's clearly not the case, Steel says. "We've built our world around having convenient access to inferior choices, which has made it even harder to choose things that may be better for us in the long run."
At least 95 per cent of the population procrastinates at least occasionally, and about 15-20 per cent do it consistently and problematically. In its extreme forms procrastination causes unhappiness, poor performance, failure to meet life goals and has even been linked to health problems. In the workplace, problems due to procrastination appear to be on the rise as jobs become increasingly unstructured, or at least self-structured.
Steel says procrastination is also quite common whenever you get large groups of people working together. "Governments, or institutions like the central bank, can be impulsive institutions," he says. "They might do what feels good right now and put off making difficult decisions far past the optimal time."
Meta-analysis is a rigorous process of mathematically distilling all the published evidence on a research topic into a conclusion about what we have learned to date. "We don't make progress so much from individual studies anymore," Steel says. "We make progress from studies that amalgamate all the previous work." With meta-analysis, flaws in individual studies tend to cancel out when you combine them among larger sets.
Steel's study, "The Nature of Procrastination," is currently undergoing peer review for publication in an academic journal. Although there are conflicting theories on the subject, he argues that procrastination is directly connected to two major elements: how averse a person finds a given project and, second, to a person's impulsiveness - that is, how much value they place on something in the short term versus the long term.
Some of the earliest known texts, dating back to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, have warned against irrational delays when sowing for the next year's harvest. Eighteenth century English writer Samuel Johnson (1751) said of procrastination: "It is one of the general weaknesses, which, in spite of the instruction of moralists, and the remonstrances of reason, prevail to a greater or less degree in every mind."
Steel says that many people who procrastinate try desperately to stop themselves. "It's very close to an addiction. If you can explain exactly why people procrastinate, you can also explain why some people are susceptible to addictive behaviour."
While men are slightly more likely to procrastinate than women, and younger people are the worst culprits, there are some common factors that can contribute to procrastination. These include lagging energy levels and lack of a set routine or goals.
"People tend to give in to their addictions when they become tired; at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, they are the most likely to procrastinate," says Steel, who advises people to complete their most aversive tasks first thing in the morning.
"It's also important to put distance and space between yourself and any temptations," he says, or to find some other way ahead of time to protect yourself when you know you're going to be vulnerable to the impulse to procrastinate.
Steel is now taking his research on procrastination a step further in trying to develop a unified theory of human motivation that merges streams from several different disciplines. His website, www.procrastinus.com, which has received 800 responses to its online survey, combines both the economic and the psychological ramifications of procrastination.
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