One explanation for why akrasia rules our lives and procrastination pulls us in has to do with a behavioural economics term called “time inconsistency.” Time inconsistency refers to the tendency of the human brain to value immediate rewards more highly than future rewards.
When you make plans for yourself — like setting a goal to lose weight or write a book or learn a language — you are actually making plans for your future self. You are envisioning what you want your life to be like in the future and when you think about the future it is easy for your brain to see the value in taking actions with long-term benefits.
When the time comes to make a decision, however, you are no longer making a choice for your future self. Now you are in the moment and your brain is thinking about the present self. And researchers have discovered that the present self really likes instant gratification, not long-term payoff. This is one reason why you might go to bed feeling motivated to make a change in your life, but when you wake up you find yourself falling into old patterns. Your brain values long-term benefits when they are in the future, but it values immediate gratification when it comes to the present moment.
This is one reason why the ability to delay gratification is such a great predictor of success in life. Understanding how to resist the pull of instant gratification—at least occasionally, if not consistently—can help you bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
The Akrasia Antidote: 3 Ways to Beat Procrastination
Here are three ways to overcome akrasia, beat procrastination, and follow through on what you set out to do.
Strategy 1: Design your future actions.
When Victor Hugo locked his clothes away so he could focus on writing, he was creating what psychologists refer to as a “commitment device.” Commitment devices are strategies that help improve your behaviour by either increasing the obstacles or costs of bad behaviours or reducing the effort required for good behaviours.
You can curb your future eating habits by purchasing food in individual packages rather than in the bulk size. You can stop wasting time on your phone by deleting games or social media apps. You can reduce the likelihood of mindless channel surfing by hiding your TV in a closet and only taking it out only to watch specific programmes.You can voluntarily ask to be added to the banned list at casinos and online gambling sites to prevent future gambling sprees. You can build an emergency fund by setting up an automatic transfer of funds to your savings account. These are commitment devices.
The circumstances differ, but the message is the same: commitment devices can help you design your future actions. Find ways to plan the automation of your behaviour beforehand rather than relying on willpower in the moment. Be the architect of your future actions, not the victim of them.
Strategy 2: Reduce the friction of starting.
The guilt and frustration of procrastinating is usually worse than the pain of doing the work. In the words of Eliezer Yudkowsky, “On a moment-to-moment basis, being in the middle of doing the work is usually less painful than being in the middle of procrastinating.”
So why do we still procrastinate? Because it’s not being in the work that is hard, it’s starting the work. The friction that prevents us from taking action is usually centred around starting the behaviour. Once you begin, it’s often less painful to do the work. This is why it is often more important to build the habit of getting started when you’re beginning a new behaviour than it is to worry about whether or not you are successful at the new habit.
You have to constantly reduce the size of your habits. Put all of your effort and energy into building a ritual and make it as easy as possible to get started. Don’t worry about the results until you’ve mastered the art of showing up.
Strategy 3: Utilize implementation intentions.
An implementation intention is when you state your intention to implement a particular behaviour at a specific time in the future. For example, “I will exercise for at least 30 minutes on [DATE] in [PLACE] at [TIME].”
There are hundreds of successful studies showing how implementation intentions positively impact everything from exercise habits to flu shots. In the flu shot study, researchers looked at a group of 3,272 employees at a company and found that employees who wrote down the specific date and time they planned to get their flu shot were significantly more likely to follow through weeks later.
It seems simple to say that scheduling things ahead of time can make a difference, but as I have covered previously, implementation intentions can make you 2x to 3x more likely to perform an action in the future.
Fighting Akrasia
Our brains prefers instant rewards to long-term payoffs. It’s simply a consequence of how our minds work. Given this tendency, we often have to resort to crazy strategies to get things done—like Victor Hugo locking up all of his clothes so he could write a book. But I believe it is worth it to spend time building these commitment devices if your goals are important to you.
Aristotle coined the term enkrateia as the antonym of akrasia. While akrasia refers to our tendency to fall victim to procrastination, enkrateia means to be “in power over oneself.” Designing your future actions, reducing the friction of starting good behaviours, and using implementation intentions are simple steps that you can take to make it easier to live a life of enkrateia rather than one of akrasia.
So, a practical tool is to create for yourself a default diary. This is where you list items and times to do them….the diary entries you make need to be NON NEGOTIABLE……I suggest you trial it for 4 weeks. Modify it and then stick to it for 3 months. Review again in 6 months. It will improve your performance and productivity.
Default items in a business perspective can be things like when am I committing to:
Team meetings
Planning/stratagising
Thinking time
Phone calls- categorise these, for example returning calls/cold calls etc
E mails…..maybe 10am and 4 pm for example
ON the business work
Marketing
Personal —exercise, reading etc….
It’s KEY that these items include what you don’t like doing but need to do. We all have comfort zones and will always migrate to these ……..the trick is to migrate to what needs to be accomplished.
