The Procrastination Equation

by Piers Steel

  COMMIT NOW TO BONDAGE, SATIATION, AND POISON

  Known as Odysseus or Ulysses, this King of Ithaca reigned more than three thousand years ago, but is widely remembered to this day. In the battle to retrieve the beautiful Helen, it was Ulysses who thought up the famous Trojan horse, a giant wooden statue in which forty Greeks were hidden. Since the phrase “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” was still hours away from being coined, Troy accepted the peace offering, only to have Ulysses and his men descend from the horse’s belly behind their lines. For us, the most important of Ulysses' stories happens afterward on his sea voyage return. In a poorly planned itinerary, he fights dozens of monsters—the Cyclops, giants, drugged-out hippies known as lotus-eaters—but most important of all, the Sirens. These beautiful women, despite being perpetually naked and available, are unattached for good reason. They sing and their voices are so pure and captivating that they are irresistible; enthralled by their melody, you will want nothing but to listen and will blissfully starve, die, and rot. What do you do? Fortunately, on one of his previous stops, Ulysses had met the goddess Circe, who gave him some handy advice: fill his men’s ears with wax to make them deaf and bind himself to the ship’s mast so he could hear the irresistible song but couldn’t act upon his urges. The bondage worked and Ulysses traveled on.5

  How does this apply to us? Consider Ulysses' situation in terms of the Procrastination Equation in the chart on the following page. On the vertical axis, we have Ulysses' desire, showing that he always acts on what he wants most. On the horizontal axis, there is the time dimension, starting off on the left with the way he feels right now and then moving to the right, tracking the way his desires change over time, especially as he approaches the Sirens and then Ithaca. Initially, he wants to go home to Ithaca, surprise his wife, Penelope, after his twenty-year absence, and slaughter all the suitors vying for her hand—as represented by the dashed line. He is noticeably less enthusiastic about dying at the hands of the Sirens, as represented by the solid line. However, his preference reverses when he reaches the island of the Sirens, where briefly the solid line peaks above the dashed line. If he hadn’t taken Circe’s advice and protected himself and his crew, they would have all stayed and died on the island. This is exactly what the Procrastination Equation predicts. As you get closer to a temptation, your desire for it peaks, allowing the temptation to trump later but better options. This probably happens to you all the time.

  Right now, I'm sure you have no shortage of long-term goals: you want to lose ten pounds, stop smoking, get out more, or work harder. Maybe you want to start saving money for retirement or just for a trip. Standing between us and our aspirations are our Sirens. Instead of beautiful bare-breasted babes, they are the dessert cart, the television, or the amazing videogame. We wake in the morning with a clear desire to hit the gym in the afternoon only to succumb to the succubi of the immediately available. We want to diet but when some apple-crumble cake wafts under our nose, our willpower crumbles too. But if you can anticipate these powerful temptations, you can act in advance to ward them off. You can use the concept of precommitment.6

  Because he heeded the warning about the Sirens, Ulysses acted before the urge was upon him, precommitting now to prevent himself from later weakness. Because he followed Circe’s advice, Ulysses lived to sail another day. Unfortunately, we don’t have our own goddess to warn us of our Sirens; it is notoriously difficult to anticipate our own temptations in the moment. Using economic terminology, sophisticates acknowledge their self-control problems, while naïfs are caught unaware by sudden shifts in their inclinations.7 Most of us are naïfs, unable to fully anticipate how we will feel when cravings leap upon us.8 In biological terms, our prefrontal cortex and limbic system just don’t get each other, so we tend to underestimate the power of our own arousal—the heat of the moment—whether it is hunger, anger, or sexual excitement. And we forget the degree of regret we will feel after acting on these urges. Looking groggily into the mirror the morning after, we are mystified by exactly what our limbic system was thinking the night before.

  Though we might be slow learners in regard to the power of our temptations, we do eventually learn. Give it some thought. When you are procrastinating, what are you doing? Do a few specific distractions come to mind? Can you name your Sirens? If so, let’s start precommitting. Keeping true to your goals can be a limited time offer, so here’s how to act now.

  THROW AWAY THE KEY

  A common military strategy to prevent your ships from being captured is to destroy them yourself, but such destruction has another purpose. The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés scuttled his own ships after landing in Mexico by filling them with water, even though the enemy was not yet in sight.9 Similarly, William the Conqueror burned a few of his boats symbolically and had the rest dismantled when he made landfall in England.10 In both cases, these men profited from their decision and went on to establish new dominions. Cortés destroyed the Aztec Empire and took their ruler Montezuma hostage. William’s conquest of England ensured that the native-born nobility were replaced by those of Norman origin for centuries to come. By eliminating the means of retreat, they left their troops no option but to win, a strategy that dates back thousands of years. Sun Tzu summarizes it in his sixth-century text, The Art of War: “Throw the troops into a position from which there is no escape, and even faced with death they will not flee. For if prepared to die, what can they not achieve? Then officers and men together put forth their utmost effort.”

  Applying this principle to procrastination, we can also shield our long-term goals from immediate temptations. Our ships in this case are our alternatives, which we try to eliminate. Herman Melville reportedly had his wife chain him to his desk while he wrote Moby-Dick. To keep writing, Victor Hugo had his servant strip him naked in his study and not return with his clothes until the appointed hour.11 Knowing that I will devour half the Halloween candy ahead of time, I don’t buy it until hours before the trick-or-treating starts and take leftovers to the office for my colleagues the day after. Smokers, attempting to quit, give their packs away, telling friends not to lend them cigarettes. Revelers going out to the bar leave their credit cards at home and bring limited cash so they don’t break their budgets.9a

  Unfortunately, as with so many of the strategies we have already encountered, precommitment can be difficult to enact, especially on your own. Ulysses had his crew to tie him up to the mast, but we usually find ourselves without sailors at our command. Technology is beginning to fill this gap. A few years ago, I was interviewed for an article in Newsday celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the snooze button.12 The snooze button is the devil’s device, a procrastination-enabling technology that lets you easily put off your original goal of waking up, in order to grab a few more minutes of low-quality slumber. To counteract this temptation, people hide their alarm clocks across the bedroom, or make use of Clocky, a clock on wheels that, after you hit the snooze button once, bolts off your nightstand and beeps and flashes like a robot in distress. A number of similar applications have been developed for the computer. Google has the “Take a break” button, which disables your e-mail for fifteen minutes. Another feature is Mail Goggles, which prevents late-night drunken e-mailing by requiring you first to solve simple math problems after 10:00 p.m.13 Others are being constantly developed, including a wide selection of add-ons for the Internet browser Firefox (MeeTimer, LeechBlock); for Apple users, there is the Freedom program, which will block your access to the Internet for up to eight hours. Unfortunately, most elaborate commercial time-control software, such as Chronager, is based on the idea of parental control instead of self-control; once you have the system of checks and balances set up, you will need a friend to surreptitiously change your password and keep the new one a secret.

  Despite their usefulness, however, such precommitments aren’t entirely effective. Most of these examples merely make succumbing to temptation difficult but still not impossible. The crux of the problem is that th
e same cunning you employed to set them up is now turned against you; indeed, you are your own worst enemy. You can always run to the store to buy another treat, reformat your computer to get around nanny software, and throw pillows to suffocate Clocky. Samuel Coleridge hired thugs to prevent him from frequenting opium dens, only to fire them when the urge came upon him once again. In Trainspotting, Ewan McGregor’s character nailed himself into a room so he could quit his heroin habit, only to extract himself later with the same determination.14 More realistically, the mechanism at work here is delaying—not preventing—your access to temptations. As the delay lengthens, with luck the desire for the temptation is reduced in strength. A bowl of ice cream might beckon if placed within arm’s reach, but its voice is muffled when shut inside the freezer. Naturally, the greater the desire for the vice, the greater the distance required to silence it.

  SATIATION

  Have you ever gone to the grocery store hungry? Bad idea. You likely wheeled down the aisles, filling your cart with indulgences that weren’t on your list. Unpacking the bags at home, you loaded your cupboard and freezer with goodies that took you weeks to plow through and added pounds to your midriff. Really, all you needed was a small treat but in your state of deprivation you impulsively bought yourself a sizable feast. The pearl of wisdom, aside from “Never grocery shop on an empty stomach,” is that more basic concerns must be attended to before concentration can be applied elsewhere.15 Abraham Maslow, the father of humanistic psychology, based his theory of self-actualization on this insight, positing that we have a hierarchy of needs whereby basic, more visceral desires, like food and safety, must be attended to first.16

  To precommit using satiation, we try to meet our needs in a safe and managed manner before they intensify and take control. If your appetite becomes too extreme, you will gorge yourself in seeking to satisfy it. Two common precommitment strategies are having a glass of water and garden salad at the beginning of a meal and grazing on small healthy snacks throughout the day.9b A rather fun way of encouraging fidelity is to make love before your partner leaves for a prolonged trip, endorsed by no less than St. Paul the Apostle.9c Smokers use the nicotine patch to reduce their cravings while heroin users take methadone. A broader use of this strategy is to schedule your recreational activities in your calendar first. Then pencil in your chores. Called an “unschedule,” it can breathe energy back into life’s grind.17 In all these cases, the idea is to let off a little steam before our boilers burst.

  TRY POISON

  Even though registration deadlines are posted months ahead and reinforced with early bird discounts, the crush of applications for anything from training courses to 10K races typically occurs just before the deadline.18 No surprises here. Presenting at a conference in New York a few years ago, I met Victor Vroom, an expert in leadership and motivation. Crossing Times Square with him, I noticed that neither of us had managed to secure rooms in the main hotel because we had both registered too late. Procrastinators, however, are paradoxically not always the last to sign up; sometimes they are the first. In an effort to precommit, they sign long-term health club contracts, buy season subscriptions to the symphony, or request home delivery of highbrow films from DVD movie clubs far in advance.19 By acting now, they hope to irrevocably force their future selves to do what their present selves are unwilling to pursue, even if it means poisoning other alternatives.

  A one-time common form of this precommitment device was the Christmas Club.20 Invented by the Carlisle Trust Company in 1909, banks offered low-interest savings accounts that penalized you for early withdrawal. Despite today’s easier access to credit, variations on Christmas Clubs still exist.21 Why would anyone use them? Because they want to be under the threat of punishment: without the looming penalty, they fear they will withdraw and spend their money prematurely, and have nothing but good intentions to leave under the tree. The same principle can be useful in preventing weight gain. Weight Watchers is an international company designed to punish people for putting on the pounds. It provides assistance and advice for getting to and maintaining a target weight. Once you are firmly established at your ideal size, you receive a free Lifetime membership. But there is a catch. You must weigh in once a month and if you are more than two pounds over, the membership fees are reinstated until you again shed the pounds. I've also heard of a Danish chain of gyms that offers membership free of charge as long as you show up once a week.22 Fail to exercise regularly and you have to pay.23

  With the help of a merciless friend or perhaps an agreeable enemy, you too can raise the stakes on any venture. Just make a painfully large bet that you will lose only if you put off striving toward the goal you want to attain. Economists John Romalis and Dean Karlin, for instance, opted for their own enhanced version of Weight Watchers. In their pact to stay trim, either of them can call an impromptu weigh-in, with the fine for weight gain being $10,000.24 Karlin later teamed up with a different economics professor, Ian Ayres, to create stickK.com, a website to help others devise their own precommitment contracts. A similar but earlier effort is the website “Covenant Eyes,” founded by Ronald DeHass. To curtail pornography consumption, it tracks and e-mails all your Internet visits to the “accountability partner” of your choice. It could be a friend, a spouse, or perhaps a pastor. For a technological solution in the same cast as Clocky, there is the alarm clock SnuzNLuz. Every time you press the snooze button, it donates ten or more dollars to your most detested charity; a little extra sleep comes at the cost of assisting groups that represent the antithesis of your political position, sexual orientation, or environmental stance.

  Like all precommitment methods, these devices aren’t foolproof. To begin with, they are inflexible, so you can’t change your mind even for legitimate reasons. Where would Ulysses be if his ship started sinking or was attacked by pirates with him still bound to the mast? You might desperately need the money you've tied up in Christmas Clubs or fall ill and be unable to use long-term gym memberships. On the other hand, if you don’t make them strong enough, disincentives can be circumvented. In keeping with the saying, “Those who flee temptation generally leave a forwarding address,”25 be careful that your future self isn’t smarter or more determined than your present version. If there is a will—and there most definitely is a will—then there'd better not be a way. Adults who nail-bite will coat their fingers with the same bitter ointment used to discourage children from sucking their thumbs, only to endure the taste or find inventive ways to wash it off.26 Similarly, in Mordecai Richler’s novel Joshua Then and Now, Joshua Shapiro helps his friend Seymour overcome a precommitment strategy by swapping underwear with him: Seymour was wearing “black satin panties with a delicate lace trim” to prevent his adulterous ways.27 After all, what type of woman would want to sleep with you after she found out that you clad your manliness in lacey undergarments? Well, I guess it depends on what crowd you hang with, but that’s beside the point.

  1. Action Points for Commit Now to Bondage, Satiation, and Poison: Staying true to your goals can be a time-limited offer, requiring you to act before temptation overcomes you. You first need to identify your temptations, what distracts you when you should be working. If you need assistance, ask your family and friends. They likely know. After identifying your temptations, you have three options about what to do about them. Take your pick.

  • Bondage: Put these temptations out of reach or at least far away. For example, erase your video games or disconnect your Internet connection. Remove the battery from your PDA or unplug your television set.

  • Satiation: Satisfy your needs before they get too intense and distract you from your work. Ironically, you can often work harder if you first schedule in some time for leisure.

  • Poison: Add disincentives to your temptations to make them sufficiently unattractive. For example, a monetary bet with someone else that you won’t give in to your temptation can be applied to almost anything.

  MAKING PAYING ATTENTION PAY

  About t
he time I was born, the award-winning psychologist Walter Mischel started experimenting on children using marshmallows to test the power of their will.28 In a series of studies, he would offer the kids a marshmallow, but tell them if they could wait a little while, they would get two marshmallows. Some waited a little, others a lot, with the average being about five minutes. The children’s ability to delay gratification and get the larger but later treat proved critical as they grew up. The self-control they exhibited as kids predicted everything from their Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores to their adult social skills.29 Character is indeed destiny. Subsequently, Mischel tried to change the destiny of a new cohort of children by improving their strategies for dealing with temptations, usually tripling their self-control, getting them to wait three times as long. What was his magic? He simply showed them how to pay attention.

  Mischel’s approach to conquering inattention will seem very familiar. As I do for the Procrastination Equation, Mischel emphasizes our mind’s dual nature; procrastination arises from the interplay between our limbic system and our prefrontal cortex. To master attentional control as a means of increasing our self-control, we must first go from the inside out, to change what we see and how we see the world. Second, we go from the outside in, to remove or reinforce external cues, changing the world we see.

  INSIDE OUT: PAY ATTENTION PLEASE!

  It is time to play a game called “The Unlikely Beast.” It will take precisely a minute. Take out your watch to time yourself and for the entire minute don’t think of a pink elephant. No pink elephants, not even one. Got it? Since you probably didn’t think of any pink elephants today, this should be pretty easy. If you can make it an additional sixty seconds without thinking of pink elephants, you win. Are you ready? Go!