erratio comments on A "Failure to Evaluate Return-on-Time" Fallacy - Less Wrong

47 Post author: lionhearted 07 September 2010 07:01PM

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Comment author: erratio 07 September 2010 09:57:54PM 6 points [-]

For me: yes, definitely.

I have to be careful setting my goals because if it looks something like (read this paper by the end of the day), then unless I have other more pressing concerns, it will take all of my productive time that day to read the paper. Even though the paper will in actuality take at most 2-3 hours to read and understand, probably closer to an hour and a half.

My best counter to the problem is to remove the time limit on the goal. It's counter-intuitive, but there's something in my brain that will see a concrete time limit and decide that as long as it gets done by that limit it's fine to be wasteful with the rest of my time.