Get Out of the Procrastination Trap: The Role of Will, Choice and Virtue

If I lock the refrigerator to block my late-night snacking, I might have made a useful predecision to protect myself against my seemingly uncontrollable urges, but there's another route. I could try harder and exert my will. The "will" is an old notion, often forgotten and even denied, but it has resurfaced in an important way in recent writing about how we can resist procrastination.

Fellow blogger, Mark White, is also the co-editor of one of my favorite books about procrastination, The thief of time: Philosophical essays on procrastination (2010, Oxford University Press). Mark's own contribution to this collection of essays is, I think, the most important in the volume. Why? Because he provides an articulate and balanced critique of the behavioral-economic model of procrastination.

To be fair, he is careful to note that his "contention is not that this other work [from an economic perspective] is incorrect, but rather incomplete" (p. 218). This is a very important and neglected point. The portrait painted of procrastination from the perspective of the utility of competing potential actions is incomplete. In fact, I have addressed this in a very early post in my blog about the shortcomings of theories based largely on temporal discounting and other related assumptions. This and related research are important in helping us understand rational time allocation and why we might delay one action (or task) over another, but they don't provide a complete understanding of procrastination or self-regulation failure.

At the heart of the various behavioral-economic models of procrastination is the focus on the structure of preferences and the notion of maximizing utility. I have explained an example of this before in a previous post discussing Temporal Motivation Theory. In sum, either the choice situation leads us to procrastinate or it does not. It's about the nature of our preferences that determine our choice.

Just be clear, as Mark argues, I also want to emphasize that these models are not incorrect, only incomplete. I have written at length in this blog (and my book), about concepts central to an economic perspective on procrastination. For example, consistent with Akerlof's writing, I have discussed the perceived costs of an arduous task that makes procrastination and task avoidance seem desirable. And, as O'Donoghue and Rabin have explained, I have written about how present-focused preferences contribute to our task delay. The economic assumptions, theory and research do contribute to our understanding, it just falls short in explaining the whole phenomenon, particularly how it is we can resist our preferences.

As Mark writes in his chapter, Resisting Procrastination, "The problem with all of these explanations is that they focus on preferences or utility; in these models, it is the conflict among different sets or types of preferences that leads to the self-control problem. These models provide truly fascinating insights into the motivations behind procrastination, but they cannot escape the tyranny of preferences and therefore cannot explain how the agent may resist the pull of his preferences and choose not to procrastinate. For that, we need a model that acknowledges that agents can somehow override their preferences—for instance, by exerting willpower" (pp. 219-220).

A model of will - the irreducible notion of self
As long-time readers of this Don't Delay blog know, I agree that we can resist the pull of preferences and make choices other than to procrastinate. This is the notion of our active agency, our choice. Of course, the reason I think Mark's chapter is the most important in the volume, is that he refutes the psychological determinism inherent in these economic models. He puts the person, "an irreducible notion of the self," into our understanding of procrastination, not simply an equation of preferences (most recently captured in Pier Steel's new book, "The Procrastination Equation.") Mark allows for choices that contradict what might at first seem like the best considered reason for action (or delay). To do this, he posits an active faculty of choice and will; he offers up a Kantian-economic model of will.

Central to his argument is this notion of agency—the conscious effort of trying to do something. The choice of verb—"trying"—is important. Agency does not mean perfection. Mark acknowledges this in setting out a probabilistic analysis of how often we might choose our higher-order goals versus our lower-order alternative (or temptations). In short, we don't always succeed in choosing what we think is in our best interest (the higher-order goal, whatever that may be). We are, after all, only human.

Of course, the ideal of the autonomous moral being is this perfection in action, always choosing the "higher road," but our strength of virtue varies. We can lack the strength or willpower to make the choice we think is best for us. This, in the Kantian-economic model, is strength of character or virtue. This explains the intention-action gap that defines procrastination. We have the best of intentions, but lack the virtue. And, this simple weakness can be seen as we succumb to our emotions - when we give in to feel good.

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All of this comes down to a very old notion, character and strength of character. Character is only as strong as the obstacles it overcomes. It takes moral resolve. It means we have to try harder.

Interestingly, even when procrastination may become chronic (a topic too complex for this blog post, but involving the notion of an "impure will" as opposed to simply a "weak will"), Mark still argues that the escape from this procrastination trap is an act of "inner freedom" of the autonomous agent.

He writes, ". . . the agent still has a way out of the procrastination trap, no matter how long she has been in it: she can choose to break it through an act of will or volition. She can exercise her autonomy, her ‘inner freedom' or virtue, and choose to resist the increasingly strong temptation to continue to procrastinate . . . there is always some willpower left, some reserve of strength the agent can summon up to resist inclination and follow the dictates of duty. But obviously, the sooner she does this, the less time she will spend in a procrastination trap, and the easier it will be to dig out of it." (p, 229).

Summary and concluding thoughts
The gist of the argument is this: rather than seeing procrastination as the outcome of some sort of internal calculation of preferences or competing utilities, we need to situate the choice within the autonomous agent based on duty to the self. Procrastination, as with other instances of weakness of will, "represents a failure of self-respect, a violation of duty to oneself" (p. 227).

It is possible to exert will through the indirect route of manipulating incentives to act. We can, in fact, put a lock on our refrigerator. Alternatively, we can strengthen our will or volition, and with it our capacity to transcend the effects of incentives, temptations and the inclination to act contrary to our intentions. We can volitionally choose not to eat the snack.

Most interesting given a recent blog post by Art Markman about willpower, Mark concludes his chapter by writing, "If a person loses faith in her willpower, her willpower declines, period. As she succeeds in exerting her willpower, her belief in herself grows, and her willpower grows as well" (p. 231).

This act of will is central to the psychological understanding of self-control, and it needs to be part of any complete theory of procrastination. More importantly, our personal understanding of the self-regulation failure known as procrastination needs to take into account that very old notion of virtue. We simply have to try harder to meet our intentions even though we'll fall short at times, because, after all, we are only human.

References
Akerlof, George. "Procrastination and Obedience." American Economic Review 81, no. 2 (1991): 1-19.
O'Donoghue, Ted, and Matthew Rabin. "Doing It Now or Later." American Economic
Review , 89 (1999): 103-124.
--- . "Choice and Procrastination." Quarterly Journal of Economics 116 (2001):
121-160.
--- . "Incentives for Procrastinators." Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (1999):
769-816.
--- . "Procrastination in Preparing for Retirement." In Behavioral Dimensions
of Retirement Economics , ed. by Henry Aaron, 125-156. Washington, D.C.:
Brookings Institute and Russell Sage Foundation, 1999.
--- . "Procrastination on Long-Term Projects." Journal of Economic Behaviour
and Organization 66 (2008): 161-175.

For a good overview of these models, see Don Ross' chapter in "The Thief of Time" entitled Economic Models of Procrastination, pp. 28-50

For a derivative theory of procrastination based on this approach, see the recent book by Piers Steel, The Procrastination Equation.