Procrastination – How to defeat
it
By the summer of 1830, Victor Hugo was facing an
impossible deadline. Twelve months earlier, the famous French author had made
an agreement with his publisher that he would write a new book titled, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Instead of writing the book, Hugo spent the next year
pursuing other projects, entertaining guests, and delaying his work on the
text. Hugo's publisher had become frustrated by his repeated procrastination
and responded by setting a formidable deadline. The publisher demanded that
Hugo finish the book by February of 1831—less than 6 months away.
Hugo developed a plan to beat his procrastination. He collected all of his
clothes, removed them from his chambers, and locked them away. He was left with
nothing to wear except a large shawl. Lacking any suitable clothing to go
outdoors, Hugo was no longer tempted to leave the house and get distracted.
Staying inside and writing was his only option.
The strategy worked. Hugo remained in his study each
day and wrote furiously during the fall and winter of 1830. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was published two weeks early on January 14,
1831.
The Ancient Problem of Akrasia
Human beings have been procrastinating for centuries.
Even prolific artists like Victor Hugo are not immune to the distractions of
daily life. The problem is so timeless, in fact, that ancient Greek
philosophers like Socrates and Aristotle developed a word to describe this type
of behavior: Akrasia.
Akrasia is
the state of acting against your better judgment. It is when you do one thing even
though you know you should do something else. Loosely translated, you could say
that akrasia is procrastination or a lack of
self-control. Akrasia is what prevents you from following through on
what you set out to do.
Why
would Victor Hugo commit to writing a book and then put it off for over a year?
Why do we make plans, set deadlines, and commit to goals, but then fail to
follow through on them?
Why We Make Plans, But Don't Take Action
One explanation for why akrasia rules
our lives and procrastination pulls us in has to do with a behavioral economics
term called “time inconsistency.” Time inconsistency refers to the tendency of
the human brain to value immediate rewards more highly than future rewards.
When
you make plans for yourself — like setting a goal to lose weight or write a
book or learn a language — you are actually making plans for your future self.
You are envisioning what you want your life to be like in the future and when
you think about the future it is easy for your brain to see the value in taking
actions with long-term benefits.
When
the time comes to make a decision, however, you are no longer making a choice
for your future self. Now you are in the moment and your brain is thinking
about the present self. And researchers have discovered that the present self
really likes instant gratification, not long-term payoff. This is one reason
why you might go to bed feeling motivated to make a change in your life, but
when you wake up you find yourself falling into old patterns. Your brain values
long-term benefits when they are in the future, but it values immediate
gratification when it comes to the present moment.
This is one reason why the
ability to delay gratification is such a great predictor of success in life.
Understanding how to resist the pull of instant gratification—at least
occasionally, if not consistently—can help you bridge the gap between where you
are and where you want to be.
The Framework You Need to Beat Procrastination
Here
are three ways to overcome akrasia, beat procrastination, and follow through on
what you set out to do.
Strategy 1: Design your future actions.
When
Victor Hugo locked his clothes away so he could focus on writing, he was
creating what psychologists refer to as a “commitment device.” Commitment
devices are strategies that help improve your behavior by either increasing the
obstacles or costs of bad behaviors or reducing the effort required for good
behaviors.
You
can curb your future eating habits by purchasing food in individual packages
rather than in the bulk size. You can stop wasting time on your phone by
deleting games or social media apps. You can reduce the likelihood of mindless
channel surfing by hiding your TV in a closet and only taking it out on big
game days. You can voluntarily ask to be added to the banned list at casinos
and online gambling sites to prevent future gambling sprees. You can build an
emergency fund by setting up an automatic transfer of funds to your savings
account. These are commitment devices.
The circumstances differ, but the message is the same:
commitment devices can help you design your future actions. Find ways to
automate your behavior beforehand rather than relying on willpower in the
moment. Be the architect of your future actions, not the victim of them.
Strategy 2: Reduce the friction of starting.
The
guilt and frustration of procrastinating is usually worse than the pain of
doing the work. In the words of Eliezer Yudkowsky, “On a moment-to-moment
basis, being in the middle of doing the work is usually less painful than being
in the middle of procrastinating.”
So why do we still procrastinate? Because it's not
being in the work that is hard, it's starting the
work. The friction that prevents us from taking action is usually centered
around starting the behavior. Once you
begin, it's often less painful to do the work. This is why it is often more
important to build the habit of getting started when
you're beginning a new behavior than it is to worry about whether or not you
are successful at the new habit.
You have to constantly reduce the size of your habits.
Put all of your effort and energy into building a ritual and
make it as easy as possible to get started. Don't worry about the results until
you've mastered the art of showing up.
Strategy
3: Utilize implementation intentions.
An
implementation intention is when you state your intention to implement a
particular behavior at a specific time in the
future. For example, “I will exercise for at least 30 minutes on [DATE] in
[PLACE] at [TIME].”
There are hundreds of successful studies showing how
implementation intentions positively impact everything from exercise habits to
flu shots. In the flu shot study, researchers looked at a group of 3,272
employees at a Midwestern company and found that employees who wrote down the
specific date and time they planned to get their flu shot were significantly
more likely to follow through weeks later.
It seems simple to say that scheduling things ahead of
time can make a difference, but as I have covered previously, implementation
intentions can make you 2x to 3x more likely to perform an action in the future.
Fighting Akrasia
Our
brains prefer instant rewards to long-term payoffs. It's simply a consequence
of how our minds work. Given this tendency, we often have to resort to crazy
strategies to get things done—like Victor Hugo locking up all of his clothes so
he could write a book. But I believe it is worth it to spend time building these
commitment devices if your goals are important to you.
Aristotle coined the term enkrateia as
the antonym of akrasia. While akrasiarefers
to our tendency to fall victim to procrastination, enkrateia means
to be “in power over oneself.” Designing your future actions, reducing the
friction of starting good behaviors, and using implementation intentions are
simple steps that you can take to make it easier to live a life of enkrateia rather
than one of akrasia.
If you want more practical ideas for
breaking bad habits and creating good habits, check out my course The Habits Academy, a premier training platform for
organizations and individuals that are interested in building better habits in
life and work.
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Credits
The article was posted by JAMES CLEAR,
Original title: The Akrasia Effect:
Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do and What to Do About It
