From Procrastination to Productivity: How to Overcome Impulsiveness and Delay

Procrastination is the art of delaying work until the last minute or even not doing it at all. It’s a common phenomenon that most people deal with. However, we can use an equation that would enable us to understand procrastination better, and thereby, overcome it. Piers Steel has described an equation that can help us understand procrastination. According to him, motivation is the willingness to do work, which is essentially the opposite of procrastination, and it can be represented using the equation:

Motivation = (Expectancy * Value) / (Impulsiveness * Delay)

In this article, we will discuss the equation and how to use it to our advantage to overcome procrastination.

Expectancy

Expectancy refers to how much you expect to succeed in doing a task and thereby getting the anticipated reward. The more you expect to be successful, the less likely you’re going to procrastinate. So, to increase expectancy, we need to break down tasks into smaller steps. This would make the tasks seem much easier to accomplish than larger projects. Also, you need to be specific with timelines. For example, if you need to study for an exam next week, think of which lectures you should complete each day as well as how many practice problems you need to do. Putting everything into a to-do app like Things 3 would help. This would increase your expectancy and make the task seem less daunting.

Value

Value refers to how much you enjoy doing a task and how much you’re going to enjoy the reward. The more value you derive from a task or the reward, the more likely you’re going to get straight to work. So, to increase the value, you can give yourself a reward for completing a task. For example, you can reward yourself with a healthy and tasty meal or hang out with your friends after finishing your homework. This would increase the value and help you overcome procrastination.

Impulsiveness

Impulsiveness refers to your tendency to get distracted by other things. High impulsivity lures you to Instagram or Facebook instead of doing the work at hand. So, to minimize impulsiveness, you can use the Pomodoro technique. This technique involves working in 25-minute blocks, each separated by a five-minute break. During each block, you focus on just one small task. This would increase expectancy and help you stay focused on the task at hand.

Delay

Delay refers to the time-lapse until receiving the anticipated reward. The longer the delay, the more likely you are to procrastinate, as you figure it’s something you can just take care of later. So, to minimize delay, you can set the goal to something less than what you were actually capable of. For example, if you want to meditate, instead of setting the goal of meditating for 20 minutes, aim to meditate for just two minutes. By lowering the bar, you would find yourself meditating most days, and even though you set the goal as just two minutes, you almost always exceeded it.

In conclusion, procrastination is a common phenomenon that most people deal with. However, we can use an equation that would enable us to understand procrastination better, and thereby, overcome it. The equation involves maximizing expectancy and value, and minimizing impulsiveness and delay. To overcome procrastination, break down the task, keep the task small, set the bar low, and hack pleasure from the experience of studying.