Procrastination checklist

This list is a revision of this checklist: http://lesswrong.com/lw/hgd/10step_antiprocrastination_checklist/

1. What is the task? Make sure you're going to focus on one thing at a time.  Write it down (helps some people).  (If you need - start with the big picture, one sentence of "what is this for")

Can you do it now? (If yes then do it)

2. How long will you work until you take a break?  Prepare to set a timer and commit to focusing.

Can you do it now? (If yes then do it)

3. What are the parts to this task?  Break things down until they are in *can do it now* steps, if you have a small number of steps that can now be done; stop writing more steps and start doing them.

Can you do it right now?  (If yes then do it)

4. What's an achievable goal for this sitting? Set a reasonable expectation for yourself.  (until it's done, 1000 words, complete research on X part)

Can you do it now? (If yes then do it)

5. How can you make it easier to do the task?

• Is the environment right?  Desk clear, well lit area...

• Do you have something to drink? Get yourself some tea, coffee, or water.

• Are distractions closed? Shut the door, quit Tweetdeck, close the Facebook and Gmail tabs, and set skype to "Do not disturb."

• What music will you listen to inspire yourself to be productive? Put on a good instrumental playlist! (video game soundtracks are good)

• Do you have the right books open?  The right tools in reach?

• Is your chair comfortable?

• Can you make it harder to do the distracting or <not this> thing?

• (step 3 is going to help to make it easier)

Can you do it now? (If yes then do it)

6. Why are you doing this task?  Trace the value back until you increase the desire to do it.

Can you do it now? (If yes then do it)

7. Will gamifying help you? What are some ways to gamify the task?  Try to have fun with it!

Can you do it now? (If yes then do it)

8. What are some rewards you can offer yourself for completing sections of the task? Smiling, throwing your arms up in the air and proclaiming victory, or M&M's all count, a trip to the beach, a nice milkshake...

Can you do it now? (If yes then do it)

9. are you sure you want to do it?  Deciding either to; not do it now; or not do it at all; are also fine.  It’s up to you to make that decision, keeping in mind what “not doing it” means in it’s entirety.

---

In first-person form:

1. What is the task? Make sure I’m going to focus on one thing at a time.  Write it down (helps some people).  (If I need - start with the big picture, one sentence of "what is this for")

Can I do it now? (If yes then do it)

2. How long will I work until you take a break?  Prepare to set a timer and commit to focusing.

Can I do it now? (If yes then do it)

3. What are the parts to this task?  I want to break things down until they are in *can do it now* steps, if I have a small number of steps that can now be done; I will stop writing more steps in the process and start doing them.

Can I do it right now?  (If yes then do it)

 

4. What's an achievable goal for this sitting? Set a reasonable expectation for myself.  (until it's done, 1000 words, complete research on X part)

Can I do it now? (If yes then do it)

5. How can I make it easier to do the task?

• Is the environment right?  Desk clear, well lit area...

• Do I have something to drink? Get yourself some tea, coffee, or water.

• Are my distractions closed? Shut the door, quit Tweetdeck, close the Facebook and Gmail tabs, set skype to "Do not disturb."

• What music will I listen to, to inspire myself to be productive? Put on a good instrumental playlist!

• Do I have the right books open?  The right tools in reach?

• Is my chair comfortable?

• Can I make it harder to do the distracting or <not this> thing?

• (step 3 is going to help to make it easier)

Can I do it now? (If yes then do it)

6. Why am I doing this task?  Trace the value and feeling back until I increase the desire to do it.

Can I do it now? (If yes then do it)

7. Will gamifying help me? What are some ways to gamify the task?

Can I do it now? (If yes then do it)

8. What are some rewards I can offer myself for completing sections of the task? Smiling, throwing my arms up in the air and proclaiming victory, M&M's all count, a trip to the beach, a nice milkshake...

Can I do it now? (If yes then do it)

9. am I sure I want to do it?  Deciding either to - not do it now; or not do it at all; are also fine.  It’s up to me to make that decision, keeping in mind what “not doing it” means in terms of the task at hand.

---

Meta: This took about 2 hours to put together; between writing, rewriting, reordering, editing feedback and publishing.

I couldn't decide whether 2nd person or 1st person was better so I wrote both.  Please let me know which you prefer.

Any adjustments or suggestions are welcome.

My table of contents is where you will find the other things I have written.

feedback on if this works or helps is also welcome.

Lukeprog has written an excellent summary of The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel. However, since everybody has a different style that they enjoy, I thought I'd post my own summary in the style that I like best: the bullet-point outline. In fact I'm hoping this post can also serve as a test of whether others find this style useful as well. So please comment on the style as well as on the content.

Disclaimers

• This summary is by no means comprehensive.
  • I've focused on the areas that primarily interest me, which is mostly just the practical suggestions. There is a lot more to the book than this though.
  • I've skipped some things that appeared redundant to me, or because I didn't understand them, or because they just didn't resonate with me.

• Don't trust my interpretation.
  • I didn't double-check that everything in this summary faithfully adheres to the book.
  • I have very little expertise in this area outside of reading the book and my own personal experience.
  • On occasion I felt that what the author said didn't make so much sense to me, so I re-wrote it based on a combination of what the author was saying and my own understanding. However, since I originally wrote this summary a while ago, I don't necessarily remember anymore where all of the places I did this were. Where I do remember that something was my own comment I've put it in [brackets].

 
The Procrastination Equation

• Different people procrastinate for different reasons, corresponding to the different variables in the Procrastination Equation: Motivation = (Expectancy x Value) / (Impulsiveness x Delay). Procrastination results from lowering Motivation too much.
  
  • Expectancy = how likely you think you are to reach your goal
  • Value = the value you place on the goal
  • Impulsiveness = how influenced you are by short-term vs. long-term gratifications
  • Delay = how far into the future the goal is

• Understanding why you procrastinate is a major first step towards reducing procrastination.
  • The book has an assessment tool you can use to help you identify why you procrastinate.

 
Reasons for procrastination with suggestions for improvement:

• Low Expectancy (= lack of optimism): Some people procrastinate because they lack the optimism that they'll be able to achieve their goals, so why try too hard? The following are some suggestions:
  
  • Success Spirals - one difficult accomplishment leads to another. If you can set yourself a challenging goal and achieve it, you will likely feel more optimistic about your chances in other areas of life. This will likely lead to another (maybe even bigger) accomplishment, leading to yet another, etc.
    • Outward Bound and similar programs have good track records for this
    • Try splitting really big goals into smaller achievable ones so that you can succeed at those. The smaller achievement will likely lead to eventually accomplishing the larger goal.
    • Try getting in achievements in areas like volunteering, hobbies, contests, etc.
  • Vicarious Victory - by seeing how others persevere and achieve you gain the confidence to do so yourself.
    • Inspirational stories of people you can identify with in some way
    • Peer groups (clubs, support groups, friends, etc.)
  • Mental contrasting - imagine positive future vividly, then contrast to a stark realization of current situation (focus on gap). If the positive picture is powerful enough to overcome the realistic assessment of where you are then you'll end up very motivated. The following is a step-by-step for this:
    
    • Clear your mind in a quiet place & think of the life you want
    • Focus on just one aspect of that life (relationship / job / health / etc.)
    • Vividly flesh out what makes it attractive - can do it mentally, visually (e.g., collage), or in writing
    • Mentally contrast this with where you are now - focus on and vividly think about the gap
    • If you're still optimistic it'll increase motivation

• High Expectancy (= overconfidence): This is the opposite of lack of optimism. People with this issue delay because "I can always do it later". Suggestions:
  
  • Try to be pessimistic / realistic
    • Think about / discuss / research what could go wrong
    • Have a disaster / failure plan before you start
  • Realize that you can always find excuses, which lead to more, etc. - so don't start the cycle
    • Reflect on how many times you've failed due to this in the past. You can keep a log to help you remember.
    • Helps just to acknowledge that coming up with excuses is your main issue.

• Low Value (= lack of enjoyment): Many people procrastinate because the goal isn't high enough value to make them want to do the unenjoyable steps that lead up to it. Suggestions:
  
  • Make the process a game
  • Tie the goal to more powerful goals ("increase willpower" might itself be a good goal)
  • Tell people about it
  • Use positive rather than negative goals ("do x" vs. "don't do the opposite of x")
  • Try making some tasks at least relatively enjoyable - perhaps accept procrastination of a less-enjoyable activity in exchange for tackling a more-enjoyable but still needed (& procrastinated) other task
  • Reward yourself (can be positive self-talk) - eventually the activity leading to the reward becomes pleasurable too
  • Mix a pleasurable activity with the unpleasant (e.g. work with a friend), but make sure it doesn't cancel out the benefit (e.g., spending too much time talking rather than working)

• Tiredness (#1 reason for procrastination): This is really just a special case of the work being unenjoyable - people who are tired just want to relax and/or rest, not work.
  • [I'd add that tiredness can also increase depressive tendencies, thereby reducing expectancy. Also, tiredness can reduce self-control, which increases impulsiveness.]
  • Determine circadian rhythm (are you a morning lark or a night owl?) and schedule your biggest  / most important / hardest tasks for peak energy times (= usually about a 4 hr. period towards the earlier part of the day)
    • Try to do only those big / important / hard tasks during your peak energy time
    • A 20 min. nap can extend this period; a brisk walk can also help
    • Later in the day should usually be for less IQ-intensive tasks
  • Keep from getting hungry
  • Exercise
  • Get enough & predictable sleep

• Impulsiveness: People who are impulsive find it hard to focus on long-term goals and to keep from getting distracted or tempted along the way.  Suggestions:
  
  • Precommitment: Throw away the key (= lock up temptations)
    • Leechblock, [Internet Lock], etc.
    • Very hard to do in foolproof way, but at least increases chances of success
  • Precommitment: Keep yourself satiated to reduce temptations getting the better of you when you least want them to.
    • If you feel a need to play - create an "unschedule" (schedule times for play before fitting in time for work) to keep satiated
    • [Problem is some things need way too much to be satiated, or indulging a little actually increases the temptation to try to get more]
  • Precommitment: Punishment
    • Have an accountability partner who will punish you for not sticking to your goals
    • StickK.com, [Beeminder.com], etc.
  • Focus on the abstract or (better yet) harmful / disgusting aspects of the temptation
    • The more vivid and terrible you can make it the better
    • Only works temporarily though
  • Get rid of cues for distractions / temptations
    • Turn off the phone before getting to the office, etc.
    • Organize / clean up (itself a strongly procrastinated chore, of course)
  • Increase cues to remind you of your work and its importance
    • Sticky notes, inspirational quotes, etc.
    • Dedicate a work-only area (relax elsewhere) so that the area itself becomes a subliminal cue

 
Other suggestions

• Set good goals
  • Goals should be:
    • Attainable but challenging (challenging is the more important)
    • Meaningful (tied to larger goals / values)
    • Short-term
      • [This reduces the Delay part of the Procrastination Equation.]
      • Day goals are good
      • 5-10 min. goals if main challenge is getting started
    • Specific
  • Break down large goals into sub-goals
  • Goals can be inputs (time worked) or outputs (words written) or both (e.g., whichever comes first)

• Good habit formation makes work routine, subconscious, and effortless
  • Have a predictable environment, especially time and place
  • State an explicit intention to act, even just "if X happens then I'll do Y" (really works!)
  • Habits are hard to start, and only start working after a bunch of repetitions, so keep that in mind when coming up with excuses for the first few times
  • Might be worth extra money to pay someone (coach, personal trainer, etc.) to help get it up and running

 

Some other procrastination resources: [this part's not from the book]

• Lukeprog's algorithm for beating procrastination
• Akrasia Tactics Review 1
• Akrasia Tactics Review 2
• Website for the book

Review of our LessWrong Hamburg First Meetup:

I arrived early and the location was somewhat crowded and the reserved table in the back had been replaced by a center table - but I managed to switch for a better one.

Then I put up some books and a sign and was quickly greated by the first LWer.

We started with smalltalk, finding common background quickly. 

I had brought some books from the LW reading list I had in my collection and surprise: Half of them were recognized and the remaining quickly started a discussion (the Kahneman I later lent to C.F.).

Some friends trickled in and after some introduction we played Wits and Wagers and then Pandemic (without biasing because the game was new to most).  

Summary: The Meetup was a success for me. We introduced some friends to LW ideas and we enjoyed a lively discussion not without controversy. I adapted to the Meetup format easily.    

One idea I had was a Meetup Diary which I used to plan the Meetup and take notes in. I think it still beats digital for things like quick notes and diagrams. I had it handy to check our schedule, draw Bayes diagrams and write down a telephone number. I plan to have it around and maybe lend it to later Meetup organizers.

Outlook for the next Meetup: We planned it for Friday 21th in company offices somewhere in Hamburg, Altona (thanks to F.R. who will confirm the location later with a separate Post).

Topics will be then

• Procrastination (I committed to read up and present some techniques in exchange for C.F. committing to use beeminder).
• More discussion of LW topics, most likely: effective altruism
• I will bring books and games again.

More Meetups will likely follow roughly every fourtnight and alternating Friday and weekends.

In one project, 256 members of a health-insurance plan were invited to classes stressing the importance of exercise. Half the participants received an extra lesson on the theories of habit formation (the structure of the habit loop) and were asked to identify cues and rewards that might help them develop exercise routines.

The results were dramatic. Over the next four months, those participants who deliberately identified cues and rewards spent twice as much time exercising as their peers. Other studies have yielded similar results.

-"Lifestyle Intervention by Self-Regulation of Action (LISA)" study by Stadler, Oettinger and Gollwitzer 2005.

I don't think this topic needs a huge introduction.  Most of us have tried, at some point, to establish a new routine only to have it crash and burn. We came up with and discussed some of the more obvious failure modes at last week's southbay meetup, which generated the material here.  It would be awesome to further refine this.  Particularly, some overarching ontology of failure modes would be useful for turning them into a more mentally compact checklist. So feedback on how this material can be organized and presented better is most welcome.

Failure is Always Failure

"I would have succeeded if it weren't for those meddling kids!" The "perfect plan" that you can't actually execute on is not the perfect plan. Take responsibility for the failure and figure out what's really going on. 

Mental cue: Bad news is good news.

Negative Reinforcement

Taking responsibility for failure doesn't mean beating yourself up over it. If you have bad feelings every time you think about habit X due to past failures you are only reinforcing the act of not thinking about habit X.  Failure means you are aware that something went wrong, which means you can improve.

Mental cue: The process failed, so fix the process. Failure and iteration is part of good processes.

Perfectionism

That a good process will yield good results doesn't mean we should fall prey to paralysis by analysis. It also doesn't mean we should give up and go back to the drawing board every time we experience a bump in the road.  People commonly engage in visualizing a perfect version of themselves, who obviously wouldn't have failed.  This is frustrating, demotivating, and possibly what is going on with the planning fallacy. Notice when you are constructing a fictional narrative about how well it is possible to do.  How well would you expect a friend in the same situation to do?

mental cue: The perfect is the enemy of the good. You are your own worst critic.

Going too Big too Fast

In the perfect world of our minds, we choose big, exciting-sounding goals and execute on them flawlessly. We become fit, write the next Pulitzer-winning novel, and found a successful startup.  We usually gloss over the fact that getting fit actually means doing pushups, writing a novel involves writing individual pages, and running a successful startup involves emptying your own wastepaper basket. When there is a disconnect between our big goals and everyday actions we don't feel motivated to do those mundane tasks.  Goal factoring, and other techniques for connecting our little goals to our big goals help here.

Mental cue: Granularize

Assuming Constant Motivation

When we create sub-goals we choose things we think we can do. "Of course I can walk 30 minutes everyday." We ignore that when we are creating and evaluating plans we are likely to be in a highly motivated mood. Of course everything seems easy when we are in a motivated mood. Apportion your limited budget of highly motivated time to ensuring that you will be surrounded by cues that encourage your new habit, whether this be people, things, or situations.  This can be as simple as "surrounding yourself" with alarm apps that cue you to do the things you precommitted to doing.

Mental cue: You are the average of your surroundings.

Not Quantifying the Results

Far goals are often qualitative.  We're not sure how much we want to improve by, we just know it's a lot. The problem is that qualitative goals aren't very motivating in terms of actual actions. "I want to get better about responding to emails." Notice the word "better". Contrast with "I want to cut the number of emails I don't respond to by 50% over the next 2 weeks." Now we're getting somewhere, and we have somewhere to start. This is also related to the concept that motivation is hard to maintain when one of our sub-agents has an objection to what we're doing (usually because they aren't convinced it is a good use of time.)

Mental cue: Be specific.

Brittle Plans

This bit was somewhat disorganized. But it involves having a Plan B, as well as figuring out when you are going to reevaluate and update your plan. Also recognizing that what matters in habit formation is getting it mostly right and one shouldn't give up just because they screwed up one time, or even several times.

I'm all fired up to form new habits, now what?

If you don't have anything you're currently working on I suggest instilling the habit of researching new, possibly beneficial habits to have.

 

Note: In writing this I'm noticing similarity to SMART goals.  Perhaps adapting that would be better since it's already nice and memorable.

Related: The Power of Pomodoros, Working Hurts Less Than Procrastinating, Cached Procrastination

Follow-up To: Reinforcement and Short-Term Rewards as Anti-Akratic

I'm still working on cleaning up my scheduling system for release, like I mentioned in the comments to my last post. However, I managed to forget the end of my college semester, which is taking up a distressing amount of my time. So, although progress is being made, I'm not done quite yet and probably won't be until sometime after my final exams end on the 16th. In the meantime, I'm going to explain my scheduling system and some of the modifications I've made to it.

My system is derived from the Pomodoro Technique. In it, work is separated into individual 25-minute blocks also called "Pomodoros." To ensure that blocks last for the full 25 minutes, they're timed; once the timer has started, the block should not be uninterrupted until the timer runs out. There's a short break between each Pomodoro; after several Pomodoros, there's a longer break.

The biggest benefit I've noticed from using my system is in fixing my problems with task switching. When I was doing something I didn't much like, I used to think about doing something else almost constantly; it usually wasn't long before I stopped working to do something else. The original Pomodoro Method solved this problem by forcing me to wait until the timer had expired to stop working. However, I had another problem with task switching that the original Pomodoro System didn't touch. When I was slacking off, I could sit contented for hours without doing anything else; I found it hard to start working or stop slacking off. That's where my changes came in. These problems are both very similar; in this one, I change tasks too infrequently, where in the other, I changed tasks too often. It stands to reason, then, that they could both be solved the same way: by timing them. So, in my system, everything I do is treated like work is under the Pomodoro System, even slacking off.

That's the biggest change my system makes: everything is a block (or a Pomodoro), and I'm in a block all the time. However, my system is more than just a few rule tweaks. My system is computerized; I use a web application for my block timer, as well as for managing my task list and the various other add-ons my system has. I've also made a number of more subtle decisions that better adapt the system for computerization.

Like in the Pomodoro System, my system times each block of work I do. After the work period ends (usually 25 minutes), my system enters a 5-minute break period. During this break period, I preload my next task into the system so that I can start working as soon as the break ends, without having to futz with the timer. If I forget to preload a task, my system doesn't start anything automatically; I'm just left outside of a block, which I consider to be a failure state that I always try to avoid.

My system also integrates a task list; to start a block, I must choose my task from the list. This also helps to improve my productivity. Because I choose tasks from a list of all my potential activities, it's easier to find and select tasks with higher activation energy, instead of falling back on cached procrastination. Forcing me to select a task from a list also makes me explicitly consider what I ought to be doing with my time.

A web application is nice, but there are a lot of things about it that, on its own, make it a bit less useful than the traditional timer. It doesn't ring, for instance, and I have to open it up every time I want to check how much time I have left. So, I built an application that runs on another computer on my desk that handles all of those things. It rings a digital gong when the current timer ends. It shows me whether I'm in a break, in a task, or if my task has expired by changing the color of the screen. It displays in text the current task, some information about it, and how much time is left on the timer. Right now, this is a fairly bare-bones terminal application; one of the things I'm working on in my current revision is making it look a bit nicer.

Of course, my extrinsic motivator from my previous article is tied into this system as well. Simply put, it rewards me with candy for keeping on track with my schedule. The rules it follows are more precisely explained in its own article. I'm rewriting the rules, however; expect a new article about them in a few weeks.

Even the best scheduling system in the world would be of no use if I couldn't bring myself to follow it. That's what my browser plugin is for. When I don't have a block timer active, or if I'm trying to access a non-productive web site during a productive block, my browser plugin will block the site and tell me to go start a block. I can still override the plugin, but the plugin requires me to wait 10 seconds before I get the option. Since most of my procrastination time is spent on the Internet, the plugin is an effective way of reminding me to turn the system back on.

Since my goal is to keep the system on at all times, it's a bit problematic that many of real-world tasks don't divide neatly into Pomodoro-sized chunks. These are things like eating dinner, walking the dog, or sleeping. In order to track them, my system has a category of "real-world" tasks which run for an indefinite amount of time. However, such a task would seem open to abuse; in order to prevent that, my browser plugin blocks my access to the Internet during them, just as if I weren't in a block at all.

My original plans for the system included things like reports on time usage and a system to help me calibrate my expectations for the amount of time a task is likely to take. However, I've yet to implement any of these, and honestly I'm still not sure what the best way to implement these would be. Any interesting suggestions would be appreciated; I hope to write an article about building these systems sometime soon.

Related: Time and Effort Discounting, Akrasia, Hyperbolic Discounting, and Picoeconomics, The Power of Reinforcement, Basics of Animal Reinforcement, Basics of Human Reinforcement

I built a robot that feeds me candy when I get work done, to try to solve my akrasia problem. And, so far, it seems like it might actually work.

Naturally, the story starts with procrastination. I finish things the night before they're due. Or, sometimes, I don't. I'd like to fix that. One theory explains procrastination as a result of discounting, the idea that human brains discount long-term rewards in favor of short-term ones. For instance, my brain prefers watching Neon Genesis Evangelion now over nearly missing my project deadline in a few days. The same principle applies to consequences, and there are already tools like BeeMinder that are built to combat it. Its tagline, "bring long-term consequences near," is a very concise description of a clever way to short-circuit discounting. It's very interesting, but I'm not really comfortable with paying money as a consequence. Instead, I'm going to try a similar technique: bringing long-term rewards near.

There are already a lot of techniques about bringing long-term rewards near. Generally, they're called reinforcement learning. The classic reward in reinforcement is candy, which seems like a good idea: I like it, and I'm more than willing to abuse my youthful metabolism for productivity. And, in fact, there are a wide variety of folk solutions of that sort - advice to reward yourself with some candy once your work is done. I've tried those already, but they never seem to work out for me - I always seem to wind up cheating. I need to do something trickier.

CFAR describes reinforcement in a very striking way in some of their course materials: they call it "training your inner pigeon." Not only is that a nice, snappy turn of phrase, it illustrates the problem with attempting to self-administer rewards very nicely. Did Skinner's pigeons self-administer their rewards? No, of course they didn't. I shouldn't expect my inner pigeon to, either. So, my next step is to build a robot that gives me candy when I get stuff done.

Why do I think I can keep from cheating on the machine, when I couldn't restrain myself from cheating on regular old bags of candy? Well, I'm far from certain; it's my biggest worry with the project, in fact. But I am reasonably confident, because the machine will give me an easy way to establish a Schelling fence. Where taking a handful of candy out of the bag is sometimes right and sometimes wrong, taking a handful of candy out of the hopper is always wrong, since the machine will dispense the candy when I deserve it. Precommitting to never take candy out of the machine seems like it'll be a lot easier than precommitting to only sometimes take candy out of the bag.

Now, the description "robot" for my machine is a bit fanciful. It's actually an automatic dog feeder, modified and connected to the Internet. It has a small screen mounted on the front, which tells me how many rewards I've earned. If I've got any, I can press a button on the screen to dispense them. Not counting parts I already owned, the device cost me around $50 to build. To provide the data, I linked the device to an earlier productivity hack that I already had around, a custom webapp integrating a task list with a Pomodoro timer.

Rewards are given based on a few simple rules. When I finish a task early, it gives me the number of days early in rewards; if I finish tasks out of order, it gives me the nearer task's number of rewards, so I've got an incentive to finish tasks in order. I also get an extra reward for my first Pomodoro in a week for each of my projects, so that I have an incentive not to forget old projects. The system can also take away rewards. If I get distracted during a Pomodoro, I lose a reward. I'm blocked from redeeming rewards if I have a task within a day of its deadline. If I finish a task more than a day late, I lose any rewards in the system.

Results have been mixed so far. My greatest concern seems to have been unjustified: I haven't cheated on the machine once. However, it seems like the rules need some more work. The system has definitely helped some, but there are a lot of problems that could be improved.

The system doesn't account for the difficulty of tasks, meaning that I get more reward for less effort if I do easier work. As a result, I've done all of the reading up to next Tuesday for my literature class, but my Computer Science assignment due on Friday is unfinished, and my "research" for an exceptionally abhorrent humanities course is languishing on the vine.

The point of the system was to bring long-term rewards near, but there are a lot of circumstances in which it doesn't seem to bring them quite near enough. For deadlined tasks, I get no rewards until I've actually completed the task; if I think a task will take me more than a day to finish, that's more than a day of work which earns me no short-term rewards. This gets even worse if I happen to have a long task (or, many short tasks) that have reached the day before their deadline. Then, I don't get any rewards until I finish all of those tasks. While this is quite motivating, it's still a long-term motivation, i.e. it doesn't work very well.

I deliberately built the system to encourage doing tasks in order, but this seems to have backfired a little bit. Since I would be giving up rewards, I don't want to work on a task that's due later if there's another that's due sooner. However, if I really don't want to do the nearer task, I'll end up wasting time, since I get no rewards for that either way. Nyan_sandwich describes a similar failure mode in his Akrasia Case Study: if I know I have something more urgent to do, but I don't want to do it, I wind up procrastinating instead of doing less urgent things.

I get sick of candy more quickly than I expected. The portion my machine emits (about a small handful) tends to stop motivating me after about 4 in a day. Additionally, I seem to be entirely incapable of pacing myself; if the reward is in the system, I tend not to wait very long before using it. This has crippled all of the rules about involving taking away rewards - unless the rewards are blocked, they don't stick around in the system long enough to be taken away.

Not all of the things I want to change are a result of problems, though. There are a wide variety of interesting improvements I could make. Many of these are expansions: aside from my task list, what else can I connect to? Can I track note-taking in class? Can I set it up to reward continuing effort towards a task, like writing a few hundred words a day? Can I use it to create new, more rational habits? There are all kinds of possibilities to consider. If you've got anything you'd like to suggest, let me know - I'm open to anything interesting.

There are also a lot of techniques to research; I'm sure the program isn't nearly as effective as it could be. Operant conditioning techniques like variable-ratio schedules might help improve performance per candy. Or, I could look into gamification, basically a form of applied human operant conditioning; it's not a standard tool on the site, but if you've ever watched an experience bar rise, you know what I'm talking about. Again, if you happen to have some relevant ideas, let me know.

Obviously, I'm going to be making some rule changes in the near future. Expect another post in a few weeks about what's changed and how the changes have worked out for me.

Also, does anyone want to help me think of a good name for the system? Right now it's called the "extrinsic motivator." While descriptive, this name isn't snappy at all.

One of the odd things about the procrastination equation is that part of it resembles an expected value calculation: value * expectancy.  Why does the equation's numerator present a problem at all then, if it's just the expected value of what you're trying to do?  Shouldn't that be the main factor in your motivation anyway?

One answer: In lukeprog's post, he conflates the "value" that task presents intrinsically (how much you enjoy doing it), and possible extrinsic motivators (some reward you hope to achieve after the task is completed).  So part of the reason your motivation system is miscalibrated is because not all valuable tasks are proportionately enjoyable.

But today I thought of another answer: Your subconscious expected value calculation may be falling prey to biases that aren't affecting your conscious expected value calculation.  Thus you correctly assign the task a high value consciously, but subconsciously, a particular bias may be bringing your estimate off.

Paul Graham writes:

Morale is tremendously important to a startup—so important that morale alone is almost enough to determine success. Startups are often described as emotional roller-coasters. One minute you're going to take over the world, and the next you're doomed. The problem with feeling you're doomed is not just that it makes you unhappy, but that it makes you stop working.

Let's pretend that we were running a betting market for your startup's chance of success.  If you and your cofounders are the only people in the market, you could picture the value of a contract in this market fluctuating up and down wildly.  But if you let others play in the market, there's an obvious money-making strategy: take the average of recent fluctuations.  Whenever the price fluctuates below that average, buy.  Whenever it fluctuates above that average, sell.  You and your cofounders can expect to lose a lot of money playing this market, at least early on in your startup's life.

The point I'm trying to make here is that this "emotional roller coaster" represents a kind of irrationality on the part of entrepreneurs.  And fixing this irrationality, especially in a way that hooks in to your motivation system and changes the numerator of your internal procrastination equation, could be very valuable for them.

One idea for a bias that contributes to this effect is the availability heuristic.  This suggests that your subconscious rates very recent, "available" events related to your startup higher than earlier less "available" events.  To fix this, you might be able to try to bring to mind older, less "available" data that suggests your startup will be successful and make it more salient.

Another possible bias is simple overconfidence.  It's really very difficult to know in advance whether your startup should succeed, so if you're either very bullish or very bearish, you're probably overconfident.  A common path to startup success seems to be discovering some fact about the market you're in that lets you re-make your business as something much better.  Since it's hard to predict the discovery of such facts in advance, it's hard to say much about how you will do.

the video

Author and Stanford health psychologist Kelly McGonigal, PhD, talks about strategies from her new book "The WillPower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It" as part of the Authors@Google series. Topics include dieting/weight loss, health, addiction, quitting smoking, temptation, procrastination, mindfulness, stress, sleep, cravings, exercise, self-control, self-compassion, guilt, and shame.

I'm posting this because akrasia, procrastination and willpower are often discussed on LW. I haven't read the book, but for those that are interested "The Willpower Instinct" and "Maximum Willpower" are, from what I can tell, exactly the same books.

I'm going to steal Anna's idea and change it to the instrumental side of rationality. In Luke's algorithm for beating procrastination, Step 1 is to Notice You Are Procrastinating. I'm not so sure this is easy. For me, the knowledge sort of fades in and out without being explicitly grabbed by my consciousness. If I actually held onto that fact, the moment that I was evading a task, and made it clear to myself that I was doing the sub-optimal, and the consequences involved, I think it would go a long way towards getting me to actually get things done.

What do you use to catch it? How do you notice you're procrastinating? Leave your ideas below (one idea per comment), and upvote the comments that you either: (a) use; or (b) will now try using.

The New York Times just published this article on how companies use data mining and the psychology of habit formation to effectively target ads.

The process within our brains that creates habits is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future. Over time, this loop — cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward — becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving emerges.

It has some decent depth of discussion, including an example of the author actually using the concepts to stop a bad habit. The article is based on an upcoming book by the same author titled The Power of Habit.

I haven't seen emphasis of this particular phenomenon—habits consisting of a cue, routine, and reward—on Lesswrong. Do people think it's a valid, scientifically supported phenomenon? The article gives this impression but, of course, doesn't cite specific academic work on it. It ties in to the System 1/System 2 theory easily as a System 1 process. How much of the whole System 1 can be explained as an implementation of this cue, routine, reward process?

And most importantly, how can this fit into the procrastination equation as a tool to subvert akrasia and establish good habits? 

Let's look at each of the four factors. If you've formed a habit, it means that the reward happened consistently, which means you have high expectancy. Given that it is a reward, the value is at least positive, but probably not large. Since habits mostly work on small time scales, delay is probably very small. And maybe increased habit formation means your impulsiveness is low. Each of these effects would increase motivation. In addition, because it's part of System 1, there is little energy cost to performing the habit, like there would be with many other conscious actions.

Does this explanation sound legitimate, or like an argument for the bottom line?

Personally, I can tell that context is a strong cue for behavior at work, school, and home. When I go into work, I'm automatically motivated to perform well, and that motivation remains for several hours. When I go into class, I'm automatically ready to focus on difficult material, or even enthusiastically take a test. Yet when I go home, something about the context switches that off, and I can't seem to get anything done at all. It might be worth significant experimentation to find out what cues trigger both modes, and change my contexts to induce what I want.

What do you think?

Edit: this phenomenon has been covered on LW in the form of operant conditioning in posts by Yvain.

I want to test different techniques for decreasing personal procrastination.  What would be an easy way to measure procrastination so that I can do the comparison?

I would also like to hear suggestions for measuring the inverse i.e. how can I measure getting-things-done-ness.

What should a rationalist do about confidence? Should he lean harder towards

1. relentlessly psyching himself up to feel like he can do anything, or
2. having true beliefs about his abilities in all areas, coldly predicting his likelihood of success in a given domain?

I don't want to falsely construe these as dichotomous. The real answer will probably dissolve 'confidence' into smaller parts and indicate which parts go where. So which parts of 'confidence' correctly belong in our models of the world (which must never be corrupted) or our motivational systems (which we may cut apart and put together however helps us achieve our goals)? Note that this follows the distinction between epistemic and instrumental rationality.

Eliezer offers a decision criterion in The Sin of Underconfidence:

Does this way of thinking make me stronger, or weaker?  Really truly?

It makes us stronger to know when to lose hope already, and it makes us stronger to have the mental fortitude to kick our asses into shape so we can do the impossible. Lukeprog prescribes boosting optimism "by watching inspirational movies, reading inspirational biographies, and listening to motivational speakers." That probably makes you stronger too.

But I don't know what to do about saying 'I can do it' when the odds are against me. What do you do when you probably won't succeed, but believing that Heaven's army is at your back would increase your chances?

My default answer has always been to maximize confidence, but I acted this way long before I discovered rationality, and I've probably generated confidence for bad reasons as often as I have for good reasons. I'd like to have an answer that prescribes the right action, all of the time. I want know when confidence steers me wrong, and know when to stop increasing my confidence. I want the real answer, not the historically-generated heuristic.

I can't help but feeling like I'm missing something basic here. What do you think?

This is the first of two trailers for the book 'You Are Not So Smart', by David McRaney.

You will know why I posted it when you watch it, very relevant.

Thinking about thinking is the key.