Beating Procrastination with Self-Imposed Deadlines

castironwok writes "Procrastination attracts us because of hyperbolic time discounting: the immediate (guilty) rewards are disproportionally more compelling than the greater delayed cost. Procrastination is the reward itself. An MIT professor found that when he allowed his students to give themselves their own homework deadlines, they would artificially restrict themselves to counter procrastination. However, they did not set deadlines for optimal effectiveness. I am personally a huge procrastinator and it's always a pull between rational logic (giving yourself the most time by choosing end dates as the deadline), and your past experience saying you will put it off so force yourself to start early."

Hey!

[SeanMon]

I was gonna post this yesterday, but...

Nevermind.

I live one calendar week ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

Forces me into finishing up early. I can't watch TV or listen to the radio and sometimes it is a little odd like when I showed up for last week's Christmas celebrations, but I'm making the deadlines.

P.S. Happy New Year!

Hard work often pays off after time....

[Namlak]

...but laziness always pays off now. http://www.despair.com/proc24x30pri.html [despair.com]

I should be programming right now....

[Pikoro]

But instead, i'm reading an article on slashdot about procrastination.

Talk about the right story for the right job!

Reasons for procrastination

[Tzorcelan]

Top ten reasons for procrastination: 1.

Easier way....

[Junta]

Live one calendar millennium ahead. Since you'll be dead then, you won't have any obligations!

Put best...

[paintswithcolour]

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by."

--Douglas Adams

Procrastination

[I don't want to spen]

Last post!

Re:Procrastination makes me more efficient

[Breakfast Pants]

It works for other things; I once put off a 15 page paper in an english class until the day before, the teacher had watched a documentary on MLK Jr. the night prior to this, and offered members of the class the opportunity to turn in a poem about MLK Jr. in place of the paper if they wanted. I turned in a haiku and got an A. This was at Yale.

Re:Procrastination makes me more efficient

[orangepeel]

And now, having long since left Yale, you spend your days reading and posting to Slashdot ... under the name "Breakfast Pants".

Oh yes, I can see clearly that procrastination hasn't hurt you at all.

;-)

Good comment

[NineNine]

I have a really great comment to make on this article.... but, I'll get around to posting it tomorrow at latest.

Re:Field notes from the field in question

[Anonymous Coward]

You weren't an English major, were you? This fact is obvious on more than one level... ;)

You Know how the Saying Goes

[Slipgrid]

As Writ on the bathroom stalls in Miami Universities CS Dept:

Procrastination is like masturbation: it feels good until you realize you are fucking yourself.

Re:Hey!

[complete loony]

Never leave till tomorrow, that which you can put off indefinitely.

I'll procrastinate tomorrow.

Re:Procrastination makes me more efficient

[mattwarden]

You laugh, but Breakfast Pants is the first person on Slashdot ever to use a semicolon correctly. If that's why people attend Yale, and I submit that it is, then Yale did its job.

Re:Anxiety

[BokLM]

This is interesting. I bought the book a few months ago, but never had time to read it. It's on my TODO list.

See - He isn't the only one...

[Hanners1979]

Now you're just talking out of your semi-colon...

Re:/. is once again a full day behind reddit and d

[bhamlin]

Me too. :D

Re:Real deadlines...

[Neoncow]

I'm trying out a new system now. After 23:00, my router blocks slashdot. Interestingly, the router rule is called goToSleep. It seems to be working okay for me so far. :)