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pwno comments on Cached Procrastination - Less Wrong
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Whenever I set mental deadlines for myself I'm much more likely to get things done. It seems that when my brain queries TimeToGetThisDone(), if I set no mental deadline, it's apt to return "plenty of time" or the due date. Of course, for time management reasons, it's better to get stuff done well before the due date so you have enough time to get everything done (e.g., 3 papers due on the same day). If I set an earlier mental deadline, I'm less apt to procrastinate because "time pressure" is (artificially) increasing.
This doesn't always work though, primarily because it's hard to get the mental deadlines set. It seems that my procrastinate mode won't let my planning mode take over and think about when things should be finished. In fact, I often catch myself thinking "but if I think about when to do stuff, I won't be able to procrastinate..."
I do this with other things too. For example, when I'm about to make an impulse buy, I'll start to think "is this really worth $20 to me?" but then I'll think "I better not do the cost-benefit calculation, because then I won't buy it."
It's as if there are 2 agents battling for control of my brain. Is there a term for this? Does anyone else have this problem? What about a solution?
You realize that there is a cost to making a cost-benefit analysis, but not sure if that cost is worth it (meta-cost-benefit analysis?). Faced with alternatives that have more or less equal outcomes, I choose not to do a CB analysis and pick an option at random. The expected benefit of choosing the best alternative minus the benefit of choosing the worst alternative is smaller than the cost of a CB analysis. Choosing between eating a hot dog, hamburger, or burrito are a good example for when I am best off just choosing something at random immediately.
Of course, though I still run into analysis paralysis for inconsequential choices like your example. Another thing to work on.
However, the choices I was referring to above are choices where my decision is overdetermined, and it's quite likely that I've already performed (a good approximation of) the cost-benefit calculation beforehand and only need to call the answer. I.e., I don't play MtG enough to justify spending $4 on another booster pack. The only reason to ignore this calculation would be to show that the approximation is bad in this case, i.e., do the calculation for this specific case. However, I end up neither doing the calculation or using the approximation to determine my decision.