The Procrastination Equation

by Piers Steel

  ORGANIZATIONAL TEAM PROCRASTINATION

  How has procrastination wormed its way into every inch of the business world? For the most part, by way of the same device that tempts students from their studies—the Internet. Dubbed e-breaking or cyberslacking, surfing the Net is the most serious of employees' time-wasting activities.8 About one in four people admit to playing online games on the job. In fact, gaming websites report a sharp drop in traffic at exactly 5:00 p.m., the end of most people’s work day.9 Similarly, “video snacking,” when people surf for and trade clips of all types, is a huge distraction. Though video use tends to spike during the lunch hour, it is prevalent at all times, and is expected to soon account for half of all Internet traffic.10 As summarized by Miguel Monteverde, executive director of AOL Video, “Based on the traffic I'm seeing, our nation’s productivity is in question.”11 Interestingly enough, this trend extends to pornographic sites as well, which get 70 percent of their traffic from the nine-to-five crowd.12 Finally, of course, there is social networking. The company Talkswitch provides a perfect example; it recognized it had a problem when it discovered that all sixty-five of its employees were using Facebook—simultaneously.13

  To cope with this tsunami of procrastination, most companies ban inappropriate Internet use, but it is difficult to enforce. Employees rearrange their computer screens so they can’t be easily seen from the doorway, giving them time to hit a “Boss Key” that quickly opens a legitimate application. There are also several applications that mask illicit activities, such as one that allows Internet browsing within a Microsoft Word shell, making it difficult to detect dillydallying ways. Especially notable is the website “Can’t You See I'm Busy,” which makes it hard to detect games hidden within graphs and charts. In response, two-thirds of companies firewall their servers, fettering people’s Internet access to various degrees. WebSense, which ironically makes software that filters the Internet, automatically monitors employees' Internet use and cuts off their access when they reach two hours of personal surfing. Other organizations enforce wide-ranging, perpetual restrictions on gambling, pornography, video sharing, and social networking sites alike.14

  Banishing people from games and Internet sites does not eliminate polymorphic procrastination because it can manifest itself in so many ways. Solitaire is pre-loaded on most Windows platforms, making it the top computer game of all time, even favored by former president George W. Bush.15 Memory keys often have games embedded on their chips, as do personal digital assistants (PDAs), which provide unrestricted Internet access. You can also go old school and avoid the computer completely. The ritual start of many a working day involves the diversion of the news. When I visit my sister, we scramble to be the first to get to the Sudoku in the morning paper. In the White House, Bill Clinton completed the New York Times crossword puzzle daily.

  Procrastination isn’t fuelled by games alone. As Robert Benchley quipped, “Anyone can do any amount of work providing it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.” We procrastinate on important tasks by doing the unimportant. For many of us, this means e-mail, which now takes up 40 percent of work life.16 With every notifying “ding,” workers instantly redirect their attention to reading the latest in an endless stream of electronic missives. Only a small seam of this e-mail bonanza is useful; the rest is junk. Though this deluge of electronic debris is partly composed of spam—unsolicited bulk e-mail—our greatest threat is the enemy behind the lines. Coined friendly spam, much of the junk we receive is created by our friends and co-workers who carelessly mass e-mail us about every social event, virus hoax, urban myth, trivia tidbit, or arcane corporate policy change. Since all these e-mails have the potential to be useful, they must be read to conclude they aren’t. And then there are e-mail’s peripheral effects. In a study of Microsoft workers, people took an average of fifteen minutes to re-focus on their core tasks after answering an e-mail interruption.17 Combine this with the finding that information workers check their e-mail accounts over fifty times a day, over and above the seventy-seven times they text message, and theoretically no work should ever get done.18 More realistically, the business research firm Basex puts the interruption and recovery time at a little over a quarter of the work day (about two hours),19 which is consistent with studies on multi-tasking that conclude that switching attention is extremely detrimental to performance.20 In short, despite the veneer of activity that e-mail checking provides, there is not much light for all that heat.

  SAVING FOR LATER YEARS TOO LATE

  Procrastination doesn’t just diminish our wealth by decreasing our productive hours. It also reduces the benefit we gain from our productivity itself. Our wealth is determined not only by the money we make but also by the money we save. Saving is a tried-and-true path to riches, as every dollar you put aside starts to reap the miracle of compound interest. Furthermore, since the dollars you save are invested, savings can help the nation as a whole, spurring economic expansion. When adopted, a policy of savings can be hugely successful. Since 2004, average Singaporeans, for example, have been wealthier than the average American largely because they save more.21 Unfortunately, when procrastination overtakes a society, saving becomes the exception and borrowing becomes the rule, a trend that can easily lead to financial ruin. Just consider your retirement savings account.

  Aside from your plans to win the lottery, retirement rests on a three-legged stool. The first leg is the government, which, due to a bad habit of spending more than it receives, won’t always be able to deliver on what little it promises. In the United States by the year 2040, for example, people can hope to receive only about two-thirds of their scheduled Social Security benefits, and on the heels of the 2008 global financial crisis, this percentage will probably decrease.22 The second leg is represented by businesses, which can put money aside for you as a form of compensation, typically in the form of a Defined Contribution plan.6b In such a plan, you decide how much, or rather how little, of your paycheck to contribute, and most allocations are matched by the company. The third leg is you, your decision to initiate and open independent retirement accounts. This is the most dependable option—except, of course, that it still depends on you.

  By becoming a society of procrastinators, we have caused the retirement stool to be increasingly wobbly, as most people are socking away less.23 People are neither starting their own retirement accounts nor contributing to company plans, despite the fact that allocation matching is the equivalent of getting free money. When they leave work, their financial backsides rest on a stool supported by a single stubby peg derived from the government’s forced savings program. Again, procrastination proves to be particularly poignant in the United States. In 2005, after decades of decline from originally double-digit rates, American household savings finally went into the negative. In other words, instead of saving today’s money for the future, people were going into greater debt by spending tomorrow’s money today—on average about half a percent more than they earned. To do this, not only did they borrow against their homes, in the form of mortgages, but about one in five borrowed against funds they had already set aside for retirement, putting themselves further behind.24 Worst of all, some of this financing was arranged through “liar loans,” which initially seem affordable but eventually create financial ruin. Variable mortgages entice homeowners to buy well beyond their means, while “pay day” advances provide the desperate with temporary respite but leave them much worse off. They end up repaying each loan many times over; the interest rates of “check cashing” shops often exceed 500 percent a year.25 These are financial products that procrastinators are prone to fall for, products with short-term benefits but exceedingly high long-term costs.

  The experts share the consensus that this situation is not ideal. At least something should be put aside for retirement; ideally, you should be saving 10 to 20 percent of your salary or higher if you are already in your forties.26 Even before the 2008 global financial crisis, which alone lowered pensio
n accounts by at least a fifth, an increasing number of Americans believed they were not putting enough aside for their old age.27 And they are right. When retirement comes, more than four out of five Americans will find they haven’t saved enough for their needs and by then it will be far too late to do anything about it.28

  Retirement procrastination transforms the golden years into grim and gray poverty. It means living on skid row or with the kids, if you had them and if they'll have you. To prevent this from happening, governments have employed a few tricks. Tax breaks for contributing to registered saving plans are a good start, but to make the most of them, these breaks need to be accompanied by a definite deadline: that’s what procrastinators respond to. Stipulating that retirement contributions must be put aside by tax time is an effective strategy, as it breaks down long-term retirement savings into a series of yearly goals.29 Still, on its own, it hasn’t proved to be sufficient, and so governments around the world are exploring another technique: automatic enrollment.30 Applying the same negative-option marketing ploy used by mail order book clubs, employers can now automatically enroll their employees in pension programs with default investing options. Employees are free to withdraw or adjust their investment strategy at any time, but procrastinators will typically delay this decision, too. The result is a huge bump in enrollment.31 Another neat trick comes from the trademarked Save More Tomorrow plan, developed by the behavioral economists Richard Thaler and Schlomo Benartzi.32 Rather than automatic enrollment, they use a strategy that exploits procrastinators' tendency to discount the future: employees can choose now to save later.6c That is, they must decide this year whether to start saving next year, and just as in automatic enrollment plans, once they have filled out the paperwork that commits them to saving, they will put off filing more paperwork to reverse their decision.

  POLITICAL PROCRASTINATION

  Governments, like people, have a bad habit of spending more than they receive. As I write this book, central government debts around the world are reaching commanding heights, often exceeding half the wealth their respective countries annually generate. By the time you are reading this book, it will be even worse. The United States, for example, will likely have finally hit the 100 percent mark, the point where it owes everything it makes in a year (that is, its total GDP). In dollar terms, that’s an eye-popping $16 trillion. How did we get so deeply in debt? Governments display the same intention-action gap that defines all procrastinators: they form intentions to stop spending but change their minds when the moment to act is upon them. The United States has repeatedly tried to curb its own spending by legislating a borrowing limit—essentially reining in the government credit card.33 Unfortunately, this is akin to an alcoholic locking the door to the liquor cabinet but leaving the key in the hole. Politicians simply vote away their previous debt resolution and install a new higher limit, a process they have repeated hundreds of times.

  Governments are perpetually focused on quick fixes that solve the issues of the moment; the urgent displaces the important. This isn’t a new insight. The American founding fathers understood this early on. I opened this chapter with a quotation from Alexander Hamilton, “Father of the Constitution,” featured on every American ten-dollar bill. Similarly, James Madison, “Father of the Bill of Rights,” wrote, “Procrastination in the beginning and precipitation toward the conclusion is the characteristic of such [legislative] bodies.” And regarding the threat of debt specifically, here is a revealing quotation from George Washington: “Indeed, whatever is unfinished of our system of public credit, cannot be benefited by procrastination; and, as far as may be practicable, we ought to place that credit on grounds which cannot be disturbed, and to prevent that progressive accumulation of debt which must ultimately endanger all governments.”

  The American founding fathers were right; just take a look at the graph on the next page, which is similar to the two you have already seen, on student procrastination and the dillydallying of organizational teams. This one shows the average length of time it took the U.S. Congress to pass bills over the years from 1947 to 2000.34 For every session in fifty, Congress passed the bulk of its bills toward the end of the session.

  CONGRESSIONAL PROCRASTINATION

  Though some bills are delayed due to political maneouvering, a large part of the delay should be due to procrastination. Furthermore, one can determine which groups are the worst procrastinators by comparing the surface area between the two lines—that is, between the steady work pace (the dotted line) and the actual work pace (the solid line). The more they are procrastinating, the greater the surface area. And Congress soundly beats out even the average college student when it comes to putting things off.

  The result of all this procrastination is more than simply delay dealing with the national debt. All long-term national goals and challenges tend to be put off as well, no matter how threatening. The outcome of America’s War of Independence was partly determined by procrastination. In a key battle, George Washington crossed the Delaware to destroy a Hessian garrison: Colonel Rahl, head of the garrison, actually had prior warning of the invasion but decided not to read the report until later, after a card game he never had the chance to finish playing.35 Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower, both wartime leaders, explicitly struggled with procrastination in their own governments, which put off preparing for war with Germany and, later, the Cold War with Russia.36

  Today, the most pressing issue facing all governments is environmental depletion and destruction. We are in the midst of several ongoing ecological disasters, all projected to peak at the same time: 2050. That may seem far away, but environmental issues are like supertankers. They take so long to stop that they must be tackled decades in advance; by the time they are in your face, they can’t change course. Across the board, governments are putting off the issue until it is too late.37 To begin with, the soil beneath our feet is eroding and depleting.38 With about 40 percent of agricultural land already damaged or infertile, what will happen in 2050 when the little remaining arable land must feed over nine billion people? It is also doubtful whether there will be enough fresh water to grow the necessary crops; the projection is that 75 percent of countries will be experiencing extreme water shortages by that same date.39 The sea tells an almost identical story.40 Approximately 40 percent of oceans are already fouled and overfished, with species disappearing around the world. But it won’t get really bad until 2050, when the last of the wild fisheries are projected to collapse.

  Interestingly—if that’s the right word—these environmental disasters make the debate over global warming almost superfluous. With so many catastrophes projected, the consensus is grim. Even the futurist Freeman Dyson, who doubts global warming, concludes, “We live on a shrinking and vulnerable planet which our lack of foresight is rapidly turning into a slum.” However, if climate projections hold true, we can expect about a three-degree increase in temperature by 2050.41 No matter what country you are in, there won’t be any place that will truly benefit from this change. Entire ecosystems, like the Amazon rainforest, are expected to collapse, about a third of all animals and plants will become extinct, and billions of famine refugees will fight to determine who starves to death first. Since many of us will be around in 2050, it is worth taking a private moment to envision what this tomorrow will mean to you.

  Government bodies have been alerted to this possible future for a long time. In 1992, 1,700 of the world’s leading scientists, including most Nobel Prize winners, signed the “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity,” which stated in the most explicit terms: “A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.” For even longer, we have known what to do about it. Unfortunately, we are procrastinating about translating this knowledge into action.42 We could have avoided all these environmental issues if we had acted early. We can still mitigate them if we act now. The proble
m isn’t informational or technological; it is motivational.

  Still, be thankful that government procrastination isn’t worse. Since the founding fathers of America were among the first to acknowledge the problem of procrastination, they did try to reduce its effects. Recognizing that what is expeditious can too easily prevail over what is wise, they tried to put temptation at a distance through bicameralism: legislation must pass through two houses or chambers. Using the exact terminology of “hot” and “cold” cognition favored by today’s scientists, George Washington explained to Thomas Jefferson why they needed a senate as well as a house of representatives.

  “Why do you pour coffee into your saucer?” Washington asked.

  “To cool it,” Jefferson replied.

  “Even so,” Washington said. “We pour legislation into the Senatorial saucer to cool it.”43

  Aside from Washington advocating a scandalous breach of etiquette (as “to pour tea or coffee into a saucer . . . are acts of awkwardness never seen in polite society”), it is a solid strategy that has been widely adopted.44 What can be initiated immediately will hold much, much greater sway over tomorrow’s better options. By purposefully building in delays, such as a sena-torial house of sober second thought, the Constitution reduces the effects of time. Since it takes longer to pass all legislation, bicameralism focuses decision making on factors other than whether an aim is immediately obtainable. In other words, the added delay of a second house ensures that everything is going to take a while.