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Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability

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Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability

#11

Post by drcross »

mindvirus wrote: post #7

A little bit off topic: Setting goals is something that I'm pretty bad at - at work, I set obvious goals like "finish project X by Y.", but other than that, I have a hard time setting goals in my life. I have some higher level goals - eat healthy, exercise, read a technical book every quarter, but barely anything approaching SMART goals. Because of this, I feel like I lack ambition sometimes. How do you identify goal…

Like this. Reading a technical book is of little value. Using the knowledge contained in the book to give you the skills you need to get you where you want your life to go is of great value. So the first step is visualising (important) where you see yourself and your future career and then retrospectively determining the skills you need to get there. It's a process I think of like dragging yourself up by your bootstraps. If you can visualise yourself as a successful person, making the intermediate steps to equip yourself for that eventuality is easier.

Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability

#13

Post by gwern »

socceroos wrote: post #12
md2be wrote: post #2

I'll post a comment later.

I think your joke was lost on many people.

Maybe they're just tired of it. I'm personally a little sick of how every single article I post on willpower or procrastination to Reddit or HN or anywhere else will attract the same damn joke. Like, do you really think anyone hasn't seen that before? Or that everyone doesn't think of it in the first second? (By this point, I've come to see it not as a genuine attempt at humor, but basically like posting 'First!' or pissing on a wall - it's just doing something to mark your existence.)

Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability

#14

Post by icegreentea »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #8

I didn't see where they separate 'nature vs nurture' in their twins study. Was that done? Is it hasty to label these correlations as 'genetic'?

They compare the degree of correlation between their identical and non-identical twins. If in both groups, twins show on average the same level of procrastination/whatever trait, you can infer that the trait is not strongly genetically linked. If the identical twin group shows more correlation between siblings than the non-identical twin group, then you can infer that the trait is strongly genetically linked. You can read more under the first few paragraphs of their data analysis section.

Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability

#15

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

Xcelerate wrote: post #5
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #3

Little by little the evidence is starting to show that people's problems aren't always a system, a government, an ideology, or another group of people, but rather themselves. Hopefully one day "blame culture" can be ended altogether.

This is an interesting point, and brings up a kind of weird philosophical issue I've often wondered about. Suppose that genetically, someone is predisposed to have very high motivation and discipline. Born into whatever environment, they have the aptitude to improving their life. Now imagine someone who, genetically, is predisposed to very low motivation and discipline. Born into a poor, or low-class environment, the…

What if you could give criminals a pill that will erase their memories permanently. Then re-educate them and release them. Will they end up in a similar path as before? Was it their genetic induced impulses or their environment that caused their criminal situation? Or a combination of both? Should you heal them? If you do, will they end up living normal lives and have kids? If they have kids will they pass on their genetic impulses to their children and create a future problem?

Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability

#17

Post by md2be »

gwern wrote: post #13
socceroos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your joke was lost on many people.

Maybe they're just tired of it. I'm personally a little sick of how every single article I post on willpower or procrastination to Reddit or HN or anywhere else will attract the same damn joke . Like, do you really think anyone hasn't seen that before? Or that everyone doesn't think of it in the first second? (By this point, I've come to see it not as a genuine attempt at humor, but basically like posting 'First!' or…

Maybe you need to chill out, eat some healthy food, enjoy nature.

Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability

#18

Post by huherto »

mindvirus wrote: post #7

A little bit off topic: Setting goals is something that I'm pretty bad at - at work, I set obvious goals like "finish project X by Y.", but other than that, I have a hard time setting goals in my life. I have some higher level goals - eat healthy, exercise, read a technical book every quarter, but barely anything approaching SMART goals. Because of this, I feel like I lack ambition sometimes. How do you identify goal…

The first thing I do in the morning at work is to set goals for the day. Very small concrete goals. 1 to 5 things that you can do in a day.

As long as you work on the right things and make constant progress, you should be ok.

Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability

#20

Post by nooron »

tokenadult wrote: post #4
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #3

Little by little the evidence is starting to show that people's problems aren't always a system, a government, an ideology, or another group of people, but rather themselves. Hopefully one day "blame culture" can be ended altogether.

Do you think we are done with the natural experiment of people moving into places with different systems or different cultures and finding out their own prospects, or the prospects of their children, change?

Thank you for framing this in the way you did. There are so many ways to arrange human affairs. Some people thrive in certain environments and despair in others. Genetics plays a role in how we respond to different stimuli, but we're not finding out as many immutable facts of psychological character via genetics as your parent commenter thinks we do.
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