badger comments on Fighting Akrasia: Incentivising Action - Less Wrong

8 Post author: gworley 29 April 2009 01:48PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (56)
Tags: loss motivation akrasia willpower aversion

Comments (56)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: badger 29 April 2009 11:31:41PM *  2 points [-]

Anecdotal counter-advice: Taking fewer credits each semester was counter-productive for me. When I took 4 classes a semester, the homework and study was too spaced out. I can't maintain a regular schedule, and end up procastinating more because I have more time available. This can go too far though. Taking 7 classes, including a thesis course, and working part-time was a recipe for disaster. There is a sweet-spot where the work is steady, but not overwhelming.

Graduating in five or six years is just as good as graduating in four.

Except when you consider tuition and the opportunity cost of not starting work earlier. At my school tuition was the same between 12 and 21 credits a semester, so my wife completing her degree in three years made us better off by at least $40,000.

Comment author: Jordan 01 May 2009 08:19:59AM 2 points [-]

I second your anecdotal account. I'll procrastinate forever if I have little to do, and will become a zealous workaholic when I have endless work piled up. I call it hard-core mode.

I wonder to what extent this relates to Yvain's post on Typical Psyche Fallacy?

Comment author: gwern 01 May 2009 07:01:40PM 2 points [-]

I'll procrastinate forever if I have little to do, and will become a zealous workaholic when I have endless work piled up.

Reminds me a lot of Structured Procrastination:

"All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important."

Comment author: gworley 01 May 2009 01:27:32PM 0 points [-]

Quite a lot, which I plan to use to help inform my next post on akrasia.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit