The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do

This can be modeled fairly easy. Let's say we want to do X. In our estimation, it would take some amount of work E divided into effort P over time t (so E = Pt), to borrow language from physics. We estimate this quantity and set out to work on the task. We expect that we'll get there at a rate of dE/dt = P, but we don't. In reality, we most often tend to achieve less per unit of time. I'd say it's when the effort required is more than P that we are most vulnerable to quitting on a task.

But what if we've put no effort into the task yet? Well, I think procrastination of this sort is modeled well by our experience (Victor Hugo was an experienced author by that point). If in the past we've done some tasks and they've taken significantly longer time and energy than we initially thought, even if we don't consciously remember, our bodies will in some sense. I think what's happening is that there is a payoff based on the difference between effort P and required effort P' to finish in the same time. When P - P' > 0, we feel superb. When P - P' You'd think one's perception would be improved after writing a dozen books, but maybe that's part of the reason a person starts writing another book after the first. A little bit of forgetfulness. But the brain doesn't forget. So, internally, it knows. So we have procrastination.

---

Example 1: Losing 20 lbs. How hard should it be?! A good goal to aim for if you do everything right and want to have a sustainable weight loss is 1 lb/wk. But realistically, it ends up being closer to 0.5 lb/wk for most. Would you spend something like 6 months to a year losing 20 lbs? What if there were more pounds to be lost? Now, if you go into this optimistically and not know this, you might lose a few pounds quickly and feel good, but then utterly quit when the real hard times come. (This mirrors any project that is easy to start but hard to complete, like html parsing)

---

Example 2: You intuitively know that a phone call to your phone company can help you save some money on your phone bill, but whether consciously or not, you somehow remember that it will take you 1-2 hours and a lot of emotional energy. You put this phone call off until it causes you enough emotional pain on the daily that putting it off by another day is as bad as the phone call itself. (This is an example of not even starting a project due to the perceived pain)

This highlights another thing. You can accumulate a lot of pain procrastinating on this call, but it's only the day to day pain that seems to matter in this strange internal calculation, because past pain is discounted a lot.

---

Example 3: (A bit tongue in cheek but...) Sleep. Let's say you've had some difficulty falling asleep over the last week. You perceive it as something that takes half an hour of "effort" to fall asleep. Naturally, you procrastinate until that effort is low enough, but this usually leads to too little sleep in the end.

---

Is there actionable advice from this? Yes. The more real-life knowledge you have of yourself, your projects (both successful and dropped), the more realistic your estimates can be. If you then bump up your estimates based on how off you were about them in the past, maybe then you'll get a glimpse on how much real work it'll take. Would you still start that project?

Maybe you'll end up starting fewer projects but dropping fewer before the finish line.

It's related, I think. You're working on something that will take a while, and even though you're doing the work, it's still delayed gratification. Worse, it's often the schlep, as pg puts it - that unenjoyable middle ground of work work work with no tangible reward. But the new thing... it's shiny. It's immediately gratifying to say "I'm going to start on this new thing that won't suck like the old thing sucks."

25 mins is too short for certain types of work. I find 45-50 mins of work with 10-15 min breaks works the best for me. Starting with 25 minutes is mentally easier when you are first starting a task and then once you get the hang of it you can adjust. Sometimes I would go longer because I was really in the zone.

Contrariwise, I just read and loved Deep Work: it's made me more purposeful about directing my attention, and aware of how my environment and lower desires work against this focus.

The journalistic model of doing deep work does seems different than the others, but he's not recommending it, just pointing out that there are outliers who can train themselves to reach intense focus states quickly and do deep work in short periods of time. Not sure why this would bother you -- if it doesn't apply to you, ignore it!

I felt like there was a ton of value here. Recommended for all!

I've found that pomodoro solves two problems.

First, 25 minute is a small, non-frightening investment of time that you CAN do; so it facilitates starting an activity.

Second, since 25 minutes is indeed a short span, the clock usually stops before you have completed the activity (meaning that you know what to do next) and also before you are tired. So after a little rest it is also easy to start another pomodoro. And so on. You keep momentum.