erratio comments on A "Failure to Evaluate Return-on-Time" Fallacy - Less Wrong
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Comments (109)
Wow Jim, that's actually a really really amazing insight.
Do you think people get a feeling of, "Well, I'll get there eventually anyways, so I might as well (have some ice cream / surf the net / watch some TV / screw around)?" Fascinating if true... hmm...
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.