Posted on 01/10/2007 6:58:45 AM PST by Pharmboy
Research into procrastination shows surprising findings A University of Calgary professor in the Haskayne School of Business has recently published his magnum opus on the subject of procrastination – and it's only taken him 10 years.
Joking aside, Dr. Piers Steel is probably the world's foremost expert on the subject of putting off until tomorrow what should be done today. His comprehensive analysis of procrastination research, published in the recent edition of the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin, presents some surprising conclusions on the subject, such as:
Most people's New Year's resolutions are doomed to failure
Most self-help books have it completely wrong when they say perfectionism is at the root of procrastination, and
Procrastination can be explained by a single mathematical equation
"Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task," Steel says. "Perfectionism is not the culprit. In fact, perfectionists actually procrastinate less, but they worry about it more."
Other predictors of procrastination include: task aversiveness, impulsiveness, distractibility, and how much a person is motivated to achieve. Not all delays can be considered procrastination; the key is that a person must believe it would be better to start working on given tasks immediately, but still not start.
It's estimated that about 15-20 per cent of the general population are procrastinators. And the costs of procrastinating can add up well beyond poor work performance, especially for those who delay filing their taxes or planning their retirement.
Steel says motivational failures such as difficulty in sticking to diets and exercise regimes – frequently the focus of New Year's resolutions – are related to procrastination because impulsiveness is often at the root of the failure. "Temptations that are close at hand are difficult to resist. Addicts often relapse after returning from treatment facilities because drugs and alcohol become easily available and daily habits reassert themselves. Or we load up on bread in the restaurant before the meal is served. Or we check our email 10 times an hour instead of completing a project."
The good news is that willpower has an unusual capacity. "The old saying is true: 'Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're probably right'," Steel says. "And as you get better at self control, your expectancy about whether you can resist goes up and thus improves your ability to resist."
Steel has also come up with the E=MC2 of procrastination, a formula he's dubbed Temporal Motivational Theory, which takes into account factors such as 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 (Ã) and the person's sensitivity to delay (D).
It looks like this and uses the Greek letter Ã: Utility = E x V/ÃD
It's still unclear why some people may be more prone to developing procrastination behaviour, but some evidence suggests it may be genetic. Steel concludes: "Continued research into procrastination should not be delayed, especially because its prevalence seems to be growing."
### The title of the paper is "The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure." The American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin is arguably the top academic journal for the social sciences. Steel's research on the subject is referred to as a meta-analysis, in which he distills and synthesizes the evidence on procrastination from 691 other research sources.
To arrange an interview with Dr. Piers Steel, contact his office at (403) 220-8428 or email piers.steel@haskayne.ucalgary.ca. For more information, or a copy of the paper, contact Greg Harris, U of C Media Relations, at (403) 220-3506, cell 540-7306 or email gharris@ucalgary.ca
I'll read it later.
--bflr--(bump for later reading)
putting this off 'till later bump............
I'll read this. Later maybe.
Free beer tomorrow.
One of the funniest academic papers I read addressed the question:
At what point does a computing task take so long to run, that it would actually be faster to do nothing until a sufficiently fast computer was available?
The paper actually concluded that if a computing task took longer than about 2 years to run (the case for some extremely large computationally intensive problems) using current hardware, one would be better sitting on a beach for a few months (or years), waiting for a faster computer - then run the task, and get it done sooner than originally planned (less than 2 years). If it takes 2 years to run now, and a computer twice as fast will be available a year from now, procrastinate for a year and you'll still get the thing done on time.
Read it right when I opened it....will start list of projects on my to do list today after noon....!!!
LOL
The good news is that willpower has an unusual capacity. "The old saying is true: 'Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're probably right'," Steel says. "And as you get better at self control, your expectancy about whether you can resist goes up and thus improves your ability to resist."
Steel has also come up with the E=MC2 of procrastination, a formula he's dubbed Temporal Motivational Theory, which takes into account factors such as 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 (Ã) and the person's sensitivity to delay (D).
It looks like this and uses the Greek letter Ã:
Utility = E x V/ÃD
Seems to me he forgets the most-common reason for putting off a task you know you should do: the task is unpleasant, boring, or distasteful.
I'm the president of the local Procrastinator's Club...we've yet to have a meeting.
Procrastination........isn't that what makes steers steers?
I'll get around to reading this, sooner or later and when I do, sooner or later thereafter I will respond.
THANKS.
Great handout for my students.
I'm a professional procrastinator. I know whereof he speaks. Yet somehow, at the last minute, I finally get started and almost always get things done by the deadline. I don't know what it is. It sure would be easier to start sooner and take a little longer, lazing over it instead of working like hell at the eleventh hour.
I don't have time to ignore this now.
I'll ignore it later.
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