Blogger's note: This is a long entry. If you just want a quick read, skim the three short paragraphs below and skip to the very last two paragraphs. If you're still interested, you can read backwards from there.
The Set up
The example of the 5 a.m. alarm and the choice to sleep more instead of fulfilling the previous night's intention to run is Peter's, taken from page 96. Using the economic notion of "utility," Peter writes,
"I faced a simple choice between the pleasures of sleep and the benefits of exercise, and because of how I FELT about those activities that morning, I chose to snooze. No one could call this choice irrational. Indeed, given my preference that morning, it was obvious that the utility of sleep loomed much larger to me than the utility of, ugh, a morning run" (emphasis added).
He adds in the next paragraph, "Only one problem with this story: at bedtime the previous night, I held an equally strong preference for exercise over sleep. Why else do you think I set the alarm for 5 a.m.? What's more, when I finally awoke at 6:30 a.m., I told myself I'd get up the next morning at 5 a.m. and get in that run" (p. 96).
Is this procrastination? Is it irrational?
Let's see, in this example, Peter had an intention and failed to act on it, delaying it until tomorrow. It has the necessary conditions for procrastination, but is it sufficient? It is a delay of an intended act, but is it an irrational delay? That would make it truly procrastination as opposed to just a delay (recall that I have argued previously that all procrastination is delay, but not all delay is procrastination).
I think it is irrational because, in this example, Peter provided no indication of being exceptionally tired, requiring the rest that morning. It was simply a preference for more sleep. Had he been up unexpectedly half the night and exhausted from the lack of sleep, the choice to get more sleep may have been rational despite the earlier intention to run. However, in Peter's case, the choice to sleep is only a preference BASED ON HOW HE FELT- a momentary mood in the context of a cozy bed.
How he felt - this is the key issue, I think. Although Peter writes about his choice as a preference, this preference for not running is based on how he felt. Interestingly, when he wrote about his preference the night before when he set the alarm, he didn't write that he felt like going for a run, just that it was an equally strong preference. My guess is that he reasoned that tomorrow morning would be a good time to get out for a run - a time in his very full days to squeeze this in (his words were "get that run in"). It certainly was not based on the feeling the night before, because the run was still only an intention, hours away yet. (I'll come back to this with some discussion of "there's always tomorrow".)
Certainly, a preference can be irrational. In fact, Peter argues this convincingly in his book. Is it rational, for example, to prefer heroin? Only if you begin with the assumption that humans are by nature rational, always acting on their rational preferences. However, Peter does a thorough job of explaining that this isn't true.
So, my first point is that in this example the decision to stay in bed is a voluntary irrational delay of an intended action - truly procrastination.
Why do we stay in bed?
There are a few explanations to explain this choice. Peter deals with two, whereas I think a third and fourth are the most parsimonious. Below I have listed the 4.
1. Multiple selves compete for control
2. There's always tomorrow
3. We give in to feel good
4. We're really are good at deceiving ourselves
I'll say a bit about each.
Multiple selves compete for control
Borrowing from the Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling, Peter sets out a theory of multiple selves. Here are two selves: 1) Long-term self - Invest in a safe retirement account, exercise regularly, eat healthily, vs. 2) Short-term self -
Enjoy spending now, forgo exercise unless we feel like it, and eat what we want when we want. Of course, in is example, the short-term self won.
Peter writes, "If people have multiple selves, the free marketers say, it is for them to decide which self to obey at which time" (p. 97).
The thing is, we don't have multiple selves per se, only multiple motivations for this self to approach or avoid. To the extent that we have multiple selves, these are the selves of the future or the past that serve as self guides for motivation of the present, actual self. This actual self is a creature with limited self-regulatory strength, as Peter acknowledges, and a self that has many possible intentions for action at any one time.
Although we may have selves that we may want to become (ideal selves), think we should become (ought selves) or fear becoming (a feared possible self), it is the "actual" self that makes this choice. Notwithstanding the tremendous difficulty in defining the notion of self, what I think remains clear is that the self that made the intention to run in the morning did so on the basis of an ideal or ought self in the future, but failed to act on this intention when the time came. Why?
Peter offers reason #2 -
There's always tomorrow, and "tomorrow's always one day away"
Peter's argument here, in brief: ". . . when tomorrow arrives, it had become today, and the desire for immediate gratification once again wins out" (p. 96).
I agree. Chrisoula Andreou, a philosopher at the University of Utah, has developed this thoroughly as the notion of intransitive preference structures. As she explains it using the example of quitting smoking, no individual instance of smoking will actually be responsible for making you ill, so someone in the position of deciding whether to have a smoke at any given moment can rationally say that this cigarette won't harm his or her health. "I can quit tomorrow." As with the choice about running, but with potentially much more devastating consequences, we know how this can play itself out as the cumulative effects of these decisions can truly be fatal. There's always tomorrow.
Commitment devices
Both Chrisoula Andreou and Peter Ubel acknowledge that many people adopt strategies to ensure they will follow through with an intention and not irrationally put it off to tomorrow. Again, from Schelling, Peter points out that we adopt strategies to have one self (typically the long-term self) win out over the other.
For example, we put the alarm clock on the other side of the room to make it more difficult to shut it off and go back to sleep. Or, as Chrisoula discusses, we adopt an automatic savings account to ensure that we don't have to make the choice to save, we're already committed.
The alarm goes off at 5 a.m. Why? Because you set it last night with the intention of an early-morning run. Instead, you shut off the alarm, choosing the pleasures of sleep over the benefits of exercise. Peter Ubel writes, "No one could call this choice irrational." Not so. I can, and it's an irrationality that we know as procrastination.
